How To Thrive

Imagine a world where budding creatives are encouraged to pursue their desired field. A world where parents don’t gently advise their child to perhaps consider a safe career instead. Imagine a world where governments and companies create and hand out grants for artistic research like they do for the science sector. Imagine a world where the general social narrative is not that of a ‘starving artist’ but that of an accepted and lucrative profession. Imagine a world where access to technology was simple and easily attainable. A world in which learning a technical skill or finding a mentor was as simple as it is in the fields of mining, investing, or politics. Where a hyper specific and technical skills are identified and available to be shared, and the tools needed to learn those skills are easy to access and available. Can you imagine this world? I can.

Now, I recognize and adore that there are occasional resources out there for the creative person to reach to. However, what I dream of, what I think this world really needs, is an abundance of emotional, financial, and technical support for our creatives. An entire shift in our societal narrative. Our culture needs our artists. All of our artists. Not just the artists we see and recognize now, for they are the survivors of a long and brutal trudge through a really difficult path. We need all the writers, sculptors & designers that were forced to drop their dream due to financial pressure very early on. We need all the filmmakers, dancers & painters that gave up hope after being told by family, friends, government, and society that you couldn’t possibly achieve your goal. We need all the printmakers, animators & musicians that shifted careers because they couldn’t access the technology, or the technical learning they needed to bring their ideas into reality. We need every single person, that has ever had an idea, to have access to the encouragement, space, and tool to make that idea happen. Whether that person would call themselves an artist or not, we need them to be able to follow that idea through, because creativity is a human soul necessity.

I know I can’t shift the perspective of the world in a day, but I know I can create a space that is a microcosm of the world I dream of, to give people access to the financial, emotional, and technical support they deserve along their journey of creative development.

My goal, my passion, is to bring into this world a wonderland for creatives of all kinds. I dream of a diverse group of creatives, belonging to the one collective. A group of people with identified established and emerging skills are vast and plentiful, and available to contribute to each other’s technical growth & emotionally support each other’s passions. This collective will also ease the financial burden by providing all that a creative could need in the one place. Membership in this collective is by application, and comes with a commitment to non-negotiables of core values such as inclusivity, skill sharing, time sharing, positive emotional support for our fellow creatives, and a commitment to coming together for group projects that assist in continuing the running of the collective and the space. Part of the membership process is also to sit down and define the negotiables for the individual entering the collective, how much time they can commit themselves to a group project, what kind of technical support they need, down to the finest detail. All ranges of needs are accepted and supported, and a membership type is given accordingly. There will also be room for a type of membership that is one of purely being able to access and hire the vast tool and tech library, for the creatives or DIY humans that just want to be able to do the odd task here and there, so only need to access the tools occasionally.

Which brings us to the space itself. The physical space that houses this creative wonderland will include the above mentioned ‘tool library’ where multiples of a wide range of tools exist to be loaned out like a public library does its books, and to be used in house at any time by the humans of the collective in the expansive workshop. There will also be a ‘tech library’, full of items for photography, filmmaking, external site sound recording, projectors, sound systems, ipads/laptops, headphones etc that can be loaned our hired out. There will be a tech hub on site, where computers are already loaded with the software required for video editing, graphic design, game design, animation, projection mapping and music production where our creatives can access and create using these powerful technologies, without having to buy these incredibly expensive programs themselves. There will be a complete recording studio for our musicians and sound producers for other fields, which all too often comes with a significant price tag to simply hire out. The recording studio would be a space available to be hired out by the public as well, as a means to support continued running of the entire space. The space will include large wet and dry studio spaces, for our painters, printmakers, sculptors, ceramicists, jewelers and textiles creatives. Designated places where you can guarantee will be clean and dry for your paper and personal tech, and places that are free to have paint and water and ink thrown all around. There will be rooms to house specific and technical machines and processes, such as dark rooms for photographers, exposure machines and acid baths for our print makers, ventilation hood work stations for any toxic work that needs to be done by any number of creative techniques, a forge for our metal workers, and the list goes on. There will be down time and meeting spaces for group think exercises and the cultivating of wonderful creative ideas that can only come from bouncing ideas around the creative brains of multiple humans. There will be storage for artwork in progress that needs to stay on site, and a couple of vehicles that can be accessed for transporting larger works. These can also be hired by the public and will contribute to the financial maintenance of the space. There will be dance studio space. There will be a space designated for the changing scape of needs, available to showcase our creative’s work. It can be home to an exhibition of one of our member’s work, without them needing to hand over the huge commission a gallery would traditionally take. It can shift to be a yoga studio for classes that can help pay for the space. It can be hired for private functions of any kind. It can be a dance hall by night for our musicians and producers to hold events without needing to search for a venue that will let them play. It can be the home of a weekly life drawing class open to the public. The space will be to support the individual’s or group’s work, while cutting out the middle man, and can be used by the collective as a whole as a means to support itself.

A few times a year, the entire collective will come together to commit to a project that’s profits go entirely back to supporting the collective itself, buying more tools, software, hardware, paying for a masterclass to be brought in, anything agreed upon by the collective itself.

Finally, I dream of this being a worldwide collective. There will be a space in Melbourne, Berlin, San Fran, London and more. You will be able to apply for residency at any of these locations, and once you are a member within the collective in one city, you have virtual access to the members in all these locations. There will be a huge online support component to this collective because we all will hold a passion in supporting one another’s creative processes. I dream of a program where a member can apply to transfer to another city, and are paired with a human in that city desiring to do the same, so a swap can occur. Despite that member potentially not knowing anyone in their new city, they will be walking into a building full of like-minded individuals that are part of the same initiative, and hold and honor the same values, so in a way, that person will be walking into a room full of friends.

I am passionate about art, artists, and the wellbeing of humanity as a whole. I believe this project is my small way to allow many humans become who they really want to be. I believe that the world where we are all supported to discover and become who we want to be is not far away. This collective is my way of bringing that world a step closer to reality.