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CO-creation...CO-production...All the COs! - Interview with Rachel Baynton
18 Plays2 years ago
Thanks for making us a part of your audio worlds!
Amy on the Air interviews TLC Co-Producer Rachel Baynton. Talking "Student As Producer", Collaborative practice & Proto-type Theater.
Find out more about Proto-type Theater: @proto_typetheater
As always, ArtsPod is an @thelincolncompany production
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Rachel Bainton and Lincoln Company
00:00:00
Speaker
that thing they say about writers isn't it if you want to be a writer write if you want to be an artist art
00:00:49
Speaker
Hello and welcome to another episode of TLC Pod and you've got Amy Eyre on the air with you today and we have the queen of the linking company with us, the literal queen Rachel Bainton. So thank you so much for joining us Rachel and thank you so much for giving up your time. That's quite all right if I'm gonna get called a queen I'll turn up for things more my goodness.
00:01:17
Speaker
So, obviously, this is a Lincoln Company podcast, so I think we should start off with Lincoln Company questions. So, you are a co-producer, the staff co-producer of the company. What does this role entail for you?
00:01:32
Speaker
So, interesting. So the reason I'm a co-producer is because we remodelled the company a few years ago. So I've been in post at Lincoln as a kind of split role. I have an unusual role for a higher education institution in that I'm split between lecturer
00:01:51
Speaker
and creative engagement producer for
Evolution of Lincoln Company
00:01:53
Speaker
the school. And I keep saying publicly and loudly that I think I'm the only embedded producer in a university department in the country. We think Lincoln is the only place that has one. I know that other universities pull on producers for specific projects.
00:02:08
Speaker
or they might have them there for kind of to drop in for teaching but no one that's actually embedded as a core member of staff and that came out of I think there was an away day for the school and all the schools obviously before I was here and they realized that you know students were putting on all this fantastic work making these great projects doing concerts performances
00:02:28
Speaker
all sorts of stuff and quite often it'd only pop up for assessment and then you'd never see it again and they said you know if we're working in the sector you'd have a producer, a producer would be the kind of person that would get that work out there and help make things happen and so I think the school collectively decided that they needed a producer
00:02:45
Speaker
and they realised that they wanted someone who could also teach that kind of stuff and so I took on this role and as part of my job interview I remember saying that I thought the Lincoln Company could be perhaps more than it had been initially. It had been sort of historically a bit of a badge that was put on extracurricular student work
00:03:07
Speaker
And if it was made outside of the course, they'd call it a Lincoln Company show and just kind of go, this is a Lincoln Company production. But it was a bit of a sort of brand in name only.
Student Leadership in Lincoln Company
00:03:16
Speaker
It was a bit of a logo, a bit of a badge. And I sort of, you know, as a bold gambit, a job interview, I sort of said, I think you're getting this wrong and I think it could be more and I think it could be a real
00:03:27
Speaker
company and try and run properly and that the students could take proper roles within it, something that actually gives them some skills and employability skills, professional experience, that actually what's the point of us as staff doing everything for students, that's not who we are, we're teaching.
00:03:48
Speaker
place. We're a place of learning. So if I'm doing it all for everybody, there's no point. And actually that's expanded over my whole producer role for the school. If I'm producing everything for everybody, then they're leaving and they don't have those skills. So actually lots of my work has been passing on those skills either through modules or sort of through extracurricular stuff. And so with the Lincoln Company,
00:04:11
Speaker
It was sort of initially gifted to me as kind of tasked to me that, you know, this is your new job and you're going to be in charge of the Lincoln Company. I think previously it had been staff members who've got, you know, a full kind of full slate of stuff to do already were doing Lincoln Company things and doing sort of Edinburgh in and around the edges and didn't necessarily have dedicated time. And they went, right, you've got dedicated time. And so I traded on the thing that seemed to work at Job Interview because it got me the job and said that I would
00:04:41
Speaker
I would like it to be staff and student led maybe co-led and so I was it like the producer of the Lincoln Company and went nope I'm going to be co-producer and worked with a cohort of students who were here at the time which included Laugher Thompson and Mary Legge.
Core Values and Manifesto of Lincoln Company
00:04:59
Speaker
Mary stepped up as our first ever well
00:05:02
Speaker
actually initially we got the students that were already involved in Lincoln Company projects or who wanted to be we got them together and we sort of had a chat like what do we do how I said I've got this idea I'd like this to be a student-led company I'd like you to make the decisions I'd like you to make the choices and I'll help I'll kind of be along to facilitate that and steer and teach and help and support and whatever but I want it to be a co-production I want it you know this student as producer ethos we have at University of Lincoln let's
00:05:31
Speaker
let's walk the walk as well as talk the talk. And so it was decided that we'd have a general manager, we'd have a co-producer, and I wouldn't just produce, I'd have someone work alongside me, that we could have other roles as well as and when they arrived. But yeah, Mary stepped up as our general manager, Lager as my co-producer, and we went from there and started trying to shape and define what that looks like. So that's a very long-winded way of getting round, but as basically as co-producer,
00:05:58
Speaker
I am there to help produce the work we do. And as you know, the role of the producer is a malleable, bendy, bespoke thing to what the situation needs. And we've been sort of led by what the membership wants to do.
00:06:14
Speaker
Yeah I think that's really important as well because it's nice and refreshing to hear a company that where kind of the leads people go well no what do you guys want to do and I think that's just it's really nice to be part of that so thank you for that. That answer was just like perfect because I've got like questions here and I'm like
00:06:34
Speaker
am I going to have time to ask these but you just answered them all at once and that's just great. So the linking company obviously is known for its shows and also but also its student as producer as
Co-production Model and Edinburgh Success
00:06:49
Speaker
well. Yeah students become producers of
00:06:52
Speaker
knowledge of work of maybe you you learn to produce your own opportunity and you know sometimes it gets described as making your own luck or that kind of thing that actually you rather than sitting passively waiting for opportunity to arrive that you might produce the circumstances in which those moments can occur or which that opportunity can happen
00:07:14
Speaker
Lager and I had talked about wouldn't it be really nice to tell this story of the Lincoln Company and how actually it's a really beautiful example of student as producer and you're literally a producer we've also got a student who is a producer because that that student as producer ethos doesn't necessarily mean theatre producers or arts producers it just means producers of knowledge of work of
00:07:34
Speaker
opportunity but yeah we were like well we've actually got a producer and we're doing all of this we're producing opportunities for our students to gain professional skills to have professional platform experiences to put something nice on their CV but also be able to evidence what they've learned within that it's not just the badge like I was in this but actually these are the things I did within it
00:07:57
Speaker
Lager as one of his first actions for us as co-producer put together a kind of manifesto for the company or like maybe not quite a manifesto and not quite a list of expectations and not quite a contract but maybe a set of values we could all line up behind and go yeah this is what we think our new look new direction is and it was really beautifully written and really nicely done but at the end it had a too long didn't read and just said don't be a dick
00:08:24
Speaker
and so it became the Don't Be a Dick document. So alongside this as well there's also recently been a chapter in a book I'm sure? Yes, that's in Michael Pinchbeck. So we've got a chapter in The Rootledge Companion to Audiences in the Performing Arts which has just been released and this was again it was this idea of co-producing co-production
00:08:54
Speaker
And it was, we've discussed in this chapter Michael's work with the Lincoln Company because one of the first things we did when I took over in this kind of co-producing role, we wanted to take a piece up to Edinburgh and I was new in post and I thought, well, wouldn't it be good if we have, you know, we've got a professional theatre maker working with us. We've got Michael Pinchbeck, brilliant Michael Pinchbeck with his fantastic work. I love his stuff.
00:09:19
Speaker
And I was like, he's here, so why don't we work with him and we can take a student piece, perhaps if there's anything out there that's ready to go, a third year piece, a graduate piece, but also wouldn't it be nice to have something that involves the younger members of the company who perhaps, or not even younger, but the members of the company who are in lower years of their degree and perhaps haven't got that final piece ready to go, something that involves everyone.
COVID Adaptations and Remote Collaboration
00:09:42
Speaker
So yeah, Michael had an existing piece called Sit With Me For A Moment And Remember, which was a sort of one-to-one semi-audio performance. And I'd spoken to him and said, you know, would you like to work with the company? And he said, well, I often wondered what would happen if I expanded this piece or worked with it or invited other voices in or did something else with it.
00:10:06
Speaker
And so we adapted Sit With Me for a moment and remembered, to Sit With Us for a moment and remember. And invited members of the company from all disciplines, from all years, to write in it, perform in it, all of that. We took it up to Edinburgh. It had some really good success. We were a Best Quickie Show of the festival in, I think it was The Telegraph of the Times.
00:10:30
Speaker
Lynn Gardner of The Guardian and the Stage called it an eight minute little wonder, which we were all delighted about. We absolutely wanted to sky write that over the cathedral, like eight minute little wonder, Lynn Gardner, yes. But not only that, we had these lovely press responses and we got some good stars and things in reviews, but we also had an overwhelmingly brilliant response from audiences.
00:10:55
Speaker
And so we realised that the audiences were kind of co... Because it was one-to-one, the audience member is co-creating their experience of that performance with us. It's not just the space that we have created within this audio piece. It's also about what they're bringing to it because the piece was beautifully written by Michael and then also the company members wrote sections for it and recorded their own texts and recorded their own voices.
00:11:22
Speaker
And so this book chapter that we've done talks about lots of types of co-creation, so kind of the audience and the performers co-creating that experience together. It talks about Michael as an artist, an academic, and me as a producer and academic working together to make that happen. It talks about us as staff working with students and all these different levels of co-creation, co-production that have gone into creating this kind of eight minute little wonder, this beautiful experience.
Audio Walk Project and Future Plans
00:11:49
Speaker
And so yeah, we were, because we're,
00:11:52
Speaker
because we're like that. We had thought that we might try and write the chapter together side by side on a bench because this piece was sat on a bench. We're like, we'll write it on a bench, we'll record what we think and then Covid happened and I haven't seen him since. So we ended up writing something that we were going to write together co-producing, co-creatively, all of these codes that we were discussing and we ended up writing it kind of remotely sat at our kitchen tables.
00:12:16
Speaker
and passing things back and forth and it's actually been published as almost a conversation between the two of us and actually ended up becoming quite a lot about COVID and how this really simple piece that was about a one-to-one connection and two people sat side-by-side on a bench with just a literal moment of hand-hold physical connection
00:12:40
Speaker
how over covid that was essentially illegal and deviant and you know two people sat side by side on a bench touching hands would not be a thing that you were even allowed to do anymore so it it became yeah weirdly weirdly current and yeah that's just been published and i'm delightful that's out there because it talks again about the work of the Lincoln company
00:13:00
Speaker
it talks about what we did and it's a kind of another another string to our to our company bow that we're now a kind of academic text we're in a book that can be studied and researched and looked at by other students and other people so that's that feels good yeah that definitely feels good it fills my heart a little bit um so this leads nicely it's almost like i planned it but i really didn't so this leads nicely into the current project that we are working on as a company which is hello my friends
00:13:29
Speaker
So can you talk a little bit about that? So yes, this bench piece, this sit with us for a moment and remember this was a few years ago and since then we've taken other pieces to Edinburgh physically, we've taken pieces digitally over Covid, over ZooTV's platform, we took some digital pieces up there, some dance and other things and we had that work showcased against professionals.
00:13:53
Speaker
But we were starting, I think, as well as being able to do studio work and sort of what you might think of traditionally as kind of touring work. We'd started to get a bit of a reputation for doing stuff that was site-specific or unusual or outside of traditional performance spaces. So we'd done this bench piece, which we situated in a bench looking up an after seat, the kind of looking up at the hill and the landscape in Edinburgh.
00:14:19
Speaker
We'd done a fantastic piece that was led by Madara Vimber and Sophie Baker who came out of the fine art course called UGA which was a kind of live art like weird wonderful bonkers celebratory dance performance live art piece that had students from every year and every discipline in it and we again we took that to Edinburgh we performed that on Lincoln High Street
00:14:42
Speaker
We performed it at Link the Performing Arts Centre here outside in a welcome week and blew all the new first year's minds. And we'd started making unusual work in unusual locations, which references the fact that the Linking Company aren't just a theatre company, that actually we've got artists in there, we've got musicians, we've got dancers.
00:15:04
Speaker
as of next year we're going to have creative writers, we've got a whole load of different disciplines and specialisms and that we've gone from being the Lincoln Company as a kind of theatre company to being the Lincoln Company as a company of interdisciplinary artists working together and working cross art form and challenging each other in different ways.
00:15:24
Speaker
And so we thought, right, okay, especially post COVID, perhaps we need to have some strategically, you sort of have these two warring conversations, don't you, in your head. You want to make the great art, but you've also got to think strategically. And the sweet Venn diagram is where the great high quality art overlaps with the strategic stuff that you have to do with what budget you've got, what time you've got, what resources you've got.
00:15:50
Speaker
And so we knew, again, we wanted to make a piece strategically that could involve lots of people. We knew strategically we wanted to make a piece that was high quality and had a good experience and might get us some nice press. Of course. Of course. That's always, you know, that's part of what we do. We also thought strategically, what if theatres don't reopen, which was a really valid concern. I mean, they are reopening now and that's at the light.
00:16:15
Speaker
But a strategically valid concern was what if they don't reopen? Should we kind of trade on the fact that we know how to make stuff for outside spaces and we know how to do things a little bit differently or at least we've got some experience in that. And some of it also came kind of in the great art and inspiration way.
00:16:36
Speaker
over COVID, the general manager of the Lincoln Company at the time was Alicia Pierce and co-producer was Rose Arnold. And me and Alicia and Rose went up to Edinburgh on the year that it reopened. So sort of last year, just kind of to go and see, we weren't taking anything up as the company. We went up for two nights just to find out what was going on and what was happening. And one of the pieces we did was a kind of an audio walk experience with a kind of some installations along route.
00:17:04
Speaker
and it was about an hour long and it was called Nicarbi Ninja and it talked about the Arab Spring and it was a fantastically kind of emotive brilliant piece and the three of us went and did this audio walk late at night through Edinburgh and really just
00:17:22
Speaker
were totally immersed in that experience of how fantastic it was and we were like this is something we'd like to experiment with this is something we'd like to do as a company we've not done an audio walk before we've had this kind of semi-audio performed piece with the bench piece we've done outside kind of spectacle
00:17:41
Speaker
maybe this is something that we can do that would bring lots of people in, if we're creating a kind of audio piece as opportunities for moments of performance within that moments of installation, for our creative writers to be involved, for our technicians to be involved, it's kind of strategically doing all of that.
00:17:58
Speaker
and so out of that we started thinking about what that might look like and what that might be and so at the moment we've got a sort of 10 minutes of a work in progress that some of the company have met together
00:18:13
Speaker
some of the core team and some students of different years in different disciplines. We've met together, we recorded a sort of 10-minute little taster and we tried it out the other day at the opening of the Fine Art degree show. We gate crashed our opening, they're very kindly letters. We're like, we're just going to sit up over here and do a sneaky audio walk and then go see the art and then come and do an audio walk. So yeah, we gate crashed, but they very kindly let us do that.
00:18:37
Speaker
And we're just testing it out to see how that works, and we crowdsource some text. So I've been acting as kind of director of the piece, but in the Lincoln Company ethos of co-creation, co-production, all the goes.
00:18:54
Speaker
we crowdsourced kind of collectively co-wrote the work so I set up a series of writing prompts of tasks met with whoever from the company wanted to be there they've all responded really generously with lots of different responses to these prompts
00:19:10
Speaker
And then I collated and shaped all of their responses into this kind of first 10-minute draft. And some of us got together, yourself included, and recorded this 10 minutes to test it out. And then put a kind of small performative moment in with that as well. And we've just trialled it. And actually, we had some really lovely responses of people testing it with us. So now we've got to, yeah, think about having a conversation this week about how we develop that further and what we might do with it.
00:19:38
Speaker
But again, it was a kind of started off as a bit of a covid proof idea. We could do something outside where you're on your own. You don't need anyone near you. And now actually now the world's opening up a bit. Perhaps we can start to put more into it and and and think a little bit beyond that kind of practical constriction of walking solo outside. And actually, how do we how do we embellish that?
Post-COVID Performance Revival
00:20:02
Speaker
What do we do with it? Yeah, we've got some conversations to have and things we might want to do. And I'm hoping that, yeah, we'll
00:20:07
Speaker
we'll have something more robust in place towards the end of the year and maybe that's something we take to festivals or try and show in the future but again it's sort of a slow burn thing. There's no pressure on this because we're all just finding our feet again now the sector's reopening and seeing what that looks like.
00:20:28
Speaker
yeah it's definitely been tricky for artists especially um over covid i mean it's self-explanatory if the theatres are closed where do you take your work but yeah uh it's just nice to be back doing work oh it is isn't it it is yeah we we make work for audiences no matter what artistic discipline you're in you are making work
00:20:49
Speaker
with, for, by people, like you're making work that needs an audience in some way or is designed, even needs, is designed to make a connection, a human connection to someone else, whether they are a Bum-On-C audience or whether they are a participant in a kind of a project or whether they're having a fantastic experience, whatever it is, we're making work for people and at the moment that people are
00:21:14
Speaker
forbidden from connecting it really does shut some of that stuff down at least in physical form so yeah it has been it's been a challenge and it is delightful that it's it's kind of opening back up again and we're realizing you know how much we value that
Rachel's Multidisciplinary Roles
00:21:29
Speaker
stuff.
00:21:29
Speaker
Yeah. So we talked a lot about your roles at the university. Um, and I actually did a little bit of a scroll further down on your emails and found that you have a lot on the staff page. You've been in my staff bio. My goodness. You have, you have a lot of, um, I don't want to call them labels, but you have a lot of roles, Rachel. Yeah, you have a lot of hats. You have creative hats, of course.
00:21:54
Speaker
So you have senior lecturer, creative engagement producer, co-artistic director and co-producer of course at Lincoln company. And now let's just zoom in on the co-artistic director because of course alongside all of the stuff that you do at the university, you are still an artist outside of that as well. So I know prototype is your company. So would you like to talk to us a little bit about that?
00:22:18
Speaker
Yes, I can. Gosh, we've been going a while now, so don't stop me if I go on too long. But yeah, there's three of us now. We did start as a company of four initially. And in fact, prototype started in the States and was led by a guy called Peter Petralia.
00:22:36
Speaker
And I think prototype essentially, as far as I understand it, all those years, mid-90s, I think it was kind of his graduate theatre company. And over the years, while he was still in the States, it had expanded and contracted depending on who he was working with, and he was a writer and director.
00:22:52
Speaker
And he moved over to the UK and was in Lancaster the same time that I was in Lancaster and my other co-autistic director, Andrew Westeside-Wes, was in Lancaster. We met Peter and started working with him and also with a performer from Glasgow, performer and artist called Gillian Lees.
00:23:11
Speaker
and we started basically making work together as a four and Peter wanted to kind of use that prototype banner and would we join the company and we kind of equally share it so we we formed the kind of UK version and we made some work together with Peter writing and directing and after a time he went back to the States and actually it's been the three of us now as co-artistic directors for
00:23:36
Speaker
Gosh, a long time.
Prototype Theatre's Artistic Exploration
00:23:38
Speaker
Yeah, a long time now. I think we're on our 12th or 13th anniversary, a year of working together in this country. And as a three, maybe we're approaching the 10-year mark, maybe a little less. Yeah, I haven't got my calendar. I can't do dates for that calendar.
00:23:55
Speaker
but essentially yeah we work as a three and we at the moment we've been making quite kind of politically based art and theatre. We're primarily we started as a theatre company and but actually we found ourselves doing all kinds of different things from installation to kind of radio dramas to participatory projects summer schools mentoring
00:24:17
Speaker
There's been all sorts of different things we've done. We're called prototype theatre and we do keep trying to drop the theatre. But then people just sound like you're prototyping and you're not fully formed. You haven't fully finished the thing. It's just a prototype. But yeah. We make work together. We all have our own strengths and different disciplines. Gillian works as a live artist in her own practice.
00:24:42
Speaker
I work as a producer, as you just heard, but also my interest is often in kind of participatory and community projects and kind of ethical models for making sort of large-scale participatory work, especially with people who've not worked, who've never had any experience or access to arts or culture before. I like working with people who might be a first-time performer. That's a real joy.
00:25:05
Speaker
and then Wes obviously has his role at the University of Lincoln as head of the School of Creative Arts but he's a writer, a director and has that kind of trajectory so we've all got these kind of different disciplines and strengths and
00:25:23
Speaker
day jobs and things we do outside of the prototype. And when we get together, we make work that we couldn't make on our own. It's the result of the three of us working together and our brains and we don't, you know, we don't always agree on
Truth to Power Trilogy
00:25:35
Speaker
everything. We have very different perspectives on things. And that meeting point, that's where the interesting stuff comes out. And so for the past.
00:25:42
Speaker
Yeah, seven years. I think we've accidentally found kind of accidentally and then we leaned into it. We've been involved in a body of work called the Truth to Power trilogy. And that started with a kind of conversation about what kind of work we want to make. We'd finished a project and we'd kind of got to a blank slate moment and went, what do we want to do? And we were at that time, all in our early thirties, feeling deeply powerless about the state that politics and, you know, stop me if this is familiar.
00:26:13
Speaker
deeply powerless about the way that politics was going, the world was going, everything felt in crisis and we all felt like, you know, we're grown ups, we're supposed to know what to do here and it's so overwhelming and so terrifying and we don't know, we don't know and we don't know what to do and so we started thinking that we might actually, I think previously our work had been
00:26:33
Speaker
very concerned with form and aesthetic and it had been kind of, we were proud of the work we made but it wasn't necessarily kind of connected to now. And so we were like, right, we want to make a piece of work that does something, we want to make a show that maybe does something that actually says something that is connected to what is happening in the world right now and maybe expresses some of that powerlessness and maybe by making that work we will
00:26:59
Speaker
find a strength, an energy, a power, a something, maybe we will find a momentum. And the first piece we made was, one of the first things that we did was we got together and made lists of what made us angry. Oh wow, I love those lists. Jill and I spent a lot of time together kind of, yeah, shouting about things like the tampon tax and David Cameron's Big Society and all of these different things that were,
00:27:23
Speaker
very current right then and made us absolutely livid and we didn't know what to do and we just knew we were angry and had nowhere to put it. And one of the things that claimed came to the top of that list at the time was the Edward Snowden stuff had just come out. All the Edward Snowden leaks and all of his revelations about
00:27:42
Speaker
global mass surveillance and the fact that our governments were spying on us and all of that stuff was coming out but it all sounded like conspiracy theory nutty stuff and it was also quite boring like it was really sort of it was coming out in very dull articles and dry facts and there was shock but nothing to nowhere to put it and it wasn't sort of traveling as information and
00:28:02
Speaker
And so we ended up, yeah, surveillance culture kind of came to the top of our list and we made a piece called A Machine They're Secretly Building, which was about kind of how this kind of global government surveillance had arisen. And off the back of that piece, which had some, you know, had some really great success, arguably it was one of our most successful pieces and marked a real turning point for us. Again, we had some great press reviews, but more than that, we had some really just fantastic audience responses and
00:28:32
Speaker
conversations and it opened up new relationships with all different kinds of people in in all different parts of the UK and we've ended up making a kind of a seven-year body of work off of that which is included like I say like a radio drama about democracy everything's been about democracy and speaking truth to power we made a piece about the global financial crisis the current piece we're touring right now Dead Cats is about that kind of slipperiness of language and that political kind of
00:29:02
Speaker
the uneven ground of kind of political manoeuvring and the lies essentially that kind of throwing the dead cats on the table and the constant barrage of lies that makes it so that you don't know where the truth lies anymore. So yeah we've ended up with this whole kind of body of work out of that and yeah we work as a three and currently we've got a arts council application in Fingers Cross that will allow us to tour that a little bit further over the next year, that's the plan.
00:29:29
Speaker
That's great. And I remember seeing dead cats at the Alpac here and yeah, highly recommend. So yeah, if you haven't seen it yet, definitely go see it because it's still very current and yeah, it will get you angry about
Radio Collaborations and Personal Reflection
00:29:46
Speaker
the world. And I think that's what we all need a little bit.
00:29:49
Speaker
Obviously, amongst your many, many roles, there is one thing that people at the university might not know that you also do outside of your time, which is you also work at BBC radio. Yeah, I do. All right, boss. Yes. So how how did this happen?
00:30:05
Speaker
That's kind of come out a prototype again, so like I said we did a radio drama and it was when we were making A Machine That's Secretly Building and we were putting in for some funding to make that but we were also aware that I think sometimes if you make touring studio theatre
00:30:25
Speaker
you are preaching to the choir because people who come and see theatre are often people who really like theatre and we wanted to talk about politics and democracy and we wanted to talk about the way the world was and so we absolutely wanted to try and find different ways of making things so we make our theatre work as accessible as possible, we do everything we can in terms of
00:30:48
Speaker
inviting different community groups and working in different participatory ways while we're making the work so that it's not just this kind of insular thing that we've written out of our heads that actually we're having real conversations with the real people that we're hoping to perform for. We're having that to inform the making of the work. But we thought, well, you know, what's a really good way of reaching people in? Because we're like, we're in Lincoln now. We relocated from Manchester just at that time. It was about 2000...
00:31:15
Speaker
I can't even remember, I'm not even going to guess. We've moved to Lincolnshire from Manchester and how do we reach Lincolnshire? How do we kind of say, hello, new home, we're here and we want to talk to you? And we were like, what are the ways that people in Lincolnshire, because it's a big old broad county and so obviously BBC Radio Lincolnshire came to the top of that list because they reached that whole county.
00:31:39
Speaker
so we're like wouldn't it be great and this was pie in the sky again you know people say making it up as you go along as if it's a bad thing but it's literally like that's imagination and creativity let's make it up and we thought wouldn't it be great if we could do some kind of project or something with radio Lincolnshire and pitch something to them that that they might
00:31:57
Speaker
that might allow us to fulfil our goals of wanting to open up conversations about creativity, culture, democracy, politics, all of those kind of things, but also fulfil their goals of reaching the county and being entertaining and something interesting to listen to, perhaps younger audiences, but something for everybody and maybe something that really keys it into Lincolnshire.
00:32:20
Speaker
And so we thought, right, well, maybe we try and make some kind of, you know, we're primarily theatre makers, maybe we try and make some kind of radio drama or some kind of performance for radio, some kind of audio performance. And because we were looking at democracy and politics, we were kind of, we were doing a bit of research and like, you know, what's out there.
00:32:40
Speaker
it was like what's Lincoln shit and it was coming up to it wasn't quite there yet but it was going to be coming up to the anniversary of the women's right to vote and things like that so it was just a few years ahead on the horizon the kind of the hundredth anniversary but it was it was coming up and so were there any suffragettes from Lincoln was there anyone who did anything and we
00:32:58
Speaker
found I'm a good Lincolnshire girl and to my shame didn't know this story and thought that was interesting because it was like I'm a good Lincolnshire girl and I don't know this story. Jessie Butcherette was a fairly privileged woman living out towards Louth.
00:33:16
Speaker
but she wrote a book on self-help for women and she wrote the cheque that allowed votes for women to be aired in parliament for the first time. No way. So she was based out near Louth in a big stately home that I don't think exists anymore but essentially she'd inherited and as it was kind of unusual for a woman at that time and her and her sister had inherited and she was kind of fed up of what she called a
00:33:40
Speaker
was it superfluous woman and she didn't mean that in a kind of derogatory way but she meant that she was just expected to sit and sew and play piano and read quietly and she was like but I've got I'm clever and I've got things I can do and stuff I'd like to do and she started trying to help women get employment and do all sorts of kinds and yeah wrote this first check
00:33:59
Speaker
So we did a radio drama about her and about her story and about the kind of how brilliant she was. And in fact, there's a charity now called Futures for Women that provides funding for women to train in a variety of professional roles that is directly from the organization that she first set up, which I think was called SPEW, which was the Society for Promotion of Employment for Women, SPEW's an unfortunate title. So now they're Futures for Women, but yeah, her charity exists. So we did this radio drama.
00:34:29
Speaker
BBC Lincolnshire were brilliant with it, they serialised it over a week and then did an omnibus edition at the end and they built an entire week of programming around this where they had like the Women's Equality Party on, they had local women's organisations, they had all, yeah, they built a whole kind of week of programming around democracy and women's rights across the world around this radio. It was fantastic, we were so grateful for how wonderful they were working with us.
00:34:55
Speaker
But again, long story short, someone heard my voice and decided that I sounded a bit Lincolnshire and a bit posh, which is absolutely both all over. I'm from Lincoln originally, but yeah, my dad's from the South, so it was like a bit Lincoln, a bit posh, and quite like my voice, and went, would you like to come and, have I got an offer for you? Would you like to come and
00:35:21
Speaker
Have a ride along on this show. We do call pirate gold and so I've ended up here traveling around the county solving clues and Occasionally getting to work with you as an actual producer very strange. Yes
00:35:36
Speaker
Wow, that's just, yeah, it's a pleasure working with you at the radio, it's nice. Delightful. Delightful. So we're coming to the end of the podcast now. And I did prep you before, for this, but I don't know if you've got an answer, you might not have an answer and that's completely fine. But do you have an embarrassing or a weird story that has happened to you as an artist?
00:36:00
Speaker
I've probably got loads, but this blanks my mind. When they do this in interviews and things like, have you got any, like, no, it absolutely blanks my mind. I'm going to think of something really cracking to tell you, but it's going to be 10 minutes after I've left this booth, isn't it?
00:36:13
Speaker
I know that it might not be one that comes to your head and it might not even be an embarrassing one but you tell me quite often when I'm feeling down about work I've created about your solo. Oh yeah gosh that was awful there you go that's a good one. Yeah that was my third year degree piece and I've been looking forward to doing like the solo elective module. I did a degree at Darlington College of Arts in Devon
00:36:37
Speaker
and it was a degree in primarily device theatre but it was such a small institution and it had such an interdisciplinary ethos but yeah we kind of worked across art forms a lot which has you know absolutely influenced everything I do in my career so I'm very grateful for that but yeah I've been really looking forward to the third year solo elective of getting to do my own 15 minute one-woman show and I tanked it
00:37:03
Speaker
Oh, absolutely tanked it. I ended up, and everyone only gets one of these in their career, and I've already used it up, I ended up making a show about not being able to make a show. Oh, can you imagine? I mean, I'm so grateful there was no social media, that there's no recording. I mean, maybe there was a recording. I am just grateful that does not exist.
00:37:24
Speaker
because that's a nightmare. Yeah, I made a horrific solo piece about not being able to make a solo piece. What saved me is I think it was equally weighted with a viva. And in my viva, I knew what I'd done.
00:37:40
Speaker
I knew exactly what I'd done and no one was more rigorously critical of that piece than I was. And I, yeah, I absolutely, I mean, this is, you know, pay attention to your vibe as kids. It absolutely saved my bacon on that module because I was able to in, you know, pinpoint forensic detail explain exactly where I'd gone wrong at every turn and what I should have done and what I should have been looking at and what I really, really didn't do.
00:38:09
Speaker
So yeah, my reflective viva was, absolutely saved me. And I came out with a perfectly fine mark from what should have been just a, yeah. I mean, even like, just, just cringy. Just, just. Oh, gosh. No, it makes me feel funny even thinking about it. I don't like it. So yes, we'll put that behind us. And I've never worked solo. Did you not hear me talking about co-production, procreation,
Advice for Emerging Artists
00:38:34
Speaker
collaboration? I have never worked solo since I play well with others.
00:38:39
Speaker
So there you go listeners at home. You can still have many many a role and still tank your solo performance. It's all good. We like to be humbled in the arts. It's what makes us artists. So also to finish on
00:38:55
Speaker
Do you have maybe like one or two big tips for little budding artists or current artists who are listening at home or on a walk on an audio walk that you can kind of give?
00:39:11
Speaker
Well, I'm going to borrow Laga Thompson's one of Don't Be a Dick. Yes, good one. And it sounds flippant, but actually the industry is smaller than you think and people talk and it's hard to build trust and it's easy to lose it. And I guess whoever you find yourself working for and whoever you're working with,
00:39:41
Speaker
be cool, be kind, be supportive, be generous, and give with no expectation of anything in return, not to an exploitative point, but be generous with your feedback and with your thoughts and with your kindness and with your listening and with your signpost. If an opportunity is not for you, signpost it to someone it is for, or if someone's not finding these things, help them. There are ways to be cool to each other that
00:40:08
Speaker
that make you, you know, it's a good ethical human thing to be in the world, be cool, but also like we don't need to be that viciously competitive of hoarding stuff and being mean and people talk if you've got a reputation as someone who's good and nice to work with
00:40:26
Speaker
that travels and if you've got a reputation as someone who's an arsehole to work with that travels you know you you quickly make your bed and then you end up lying in it so there's again that Venn diagram there's a strategic reason to be cool and not a dick and there's also the good human ethical high-quality artistic reason not to do it so yeah that's that's that's a very good one and and then I guess my my other one is
00:40:51
Speaker
This is something that's come up recently actually, talking to lots of students, talking to new artists, talking to different creatives about like how you get started or how you make things happen. And I guess sometimes, it boils down to like you don't always need to ask for permission. I think sometimes people wait for, especially maybe post-graduation,
00:41:15
Speaker
that for something to arrive and waiting for that perfect opportunity or waiting for that thing to happen or waiting for that like these things never happen to me and I guess as far as possible you can to a certain extent make your own luck or make your own opportunities and I realize this smacks of great privilege because there are lots and lots of barriers to people making their own opportunity
00:41:40
Speaker
So maybe I'm phrasing it wrong, but I guess it's about not necessarily asking for permission. If you want to make that piece of art, make that piece of art. If you want to go and find that thing out, go and find that thing out. If you want to start that conversation with somebody, email them, get in touch. Don't just wait for the thing to arrive. Take the first step and try and make it happen yourself.
00:42:03
Speaker
And if you are facing some kind of barrier or something like that, then maybe ask or find someone to talk to or buddy up and strengthen numbers and shout louder and all of those kind of, maybe I'm not being hugely articulate here, but yeah, I guess I'm just encountering a lot of students that don't realise that they could do the thing. You can go and do the thing now. You want to do that, yeah. It's that thing they say about writers, isn't it? If you want to be a writer, write. If you want to be an artist, art.
00:42:35
Speaker
They call it a practice for a reason, you know, you do a bit every day, do a little bit every day and you know, I worked all the bar work and cafes and sandwich making money jobs and shops and worked for Claire's accessories for far too long and I did all of those money jobs but those money jobs bought me headspace to do the art stuff round the edges and bought me a bit of time and
00:42:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's difficult but I guess place yourself in the way of opportunity and if there isn't any maybe try and make some or find someone like-minded.
00:43:08
Speaker
Yeah, no, they're perfect. So thank you so much for coming and speaking to us today, Rachel. That's quite right. Thank you for having me. I heavily enjoyed it. And thank you for sharing your wisdom because you have so much of it. I'm just very old, just very old. I'm just further along the path. Yeah, we always end up saying that with prototype. It's not necessarily, you know, there isn't one right way into arts and a creative career.
00:43:30
Speaker
there absolutely isn't one right way in and if you speak to anyone they will have come in the most roundabout different route and found their own entry point but you know we're a little bit further along the path now so we know where some of the potholes are and like you can hold your hand as you come over so yeah I'm just a little bit further down the road