At Croydon’s Stanley Arts Centre, queers gathered to spend three days moving and making, being paid for their time without the pressure to produce. They were brought together by Amy Mitchell and Emilia Nurmukhamet, founders of Bold Mellon Collective, to explore creativity and wellbeing, community and space through a programme of workshops that explored dance and movement, writing and collage, and a final showcase that was allowed to be empty but ended up being full.
I first came across Bold Mellon when I applied to be part of their workshop ‘Up to No Good’ which took place in the Croydon Clocktower in a wood panelled room lined with books that turned out not to be real.
We discussed what getting up no good meant to us, as queer people steeped in all that rebellious history of survival, as makers queering everything we touch. We each brought fabrics and sentences and sounds, which we shared with each other and then sewed into a tapestry. We melted plastic bags and sewed newspaper until we each had a square which together formed a patchwork whole.
IS IT OKAY to to move unbeautifully
to melt plastic and sew paper
to stretch limbs
to make for ourselves, for our communities?
It was an incredibly exploratory space, something that Bold Mellon have brought into their latest workshop ‘IS IT OKAY?’ with participants Ediz Enver, Frances Gillard, Kiara Zhanaè, Mickey Durante and Christopher Lieberman.
“It was so great to have time to create and meet people, to do as much as we could in whatever way we could, to have so many different things to play with, to have a go,” says artist Mickey when I speak to the participants about their experience of the weekend. “It was so freeing and grounding at the same time: the idea of being paid to connect with other people, attend workshops and then create anything, and if you want to do nothing, that’s fine. That seemed so unreal, especially with the state of the world and cost of living crisis. Even two days after it’s ended, I feel way more creative. I’ve got more ideas, I want to use more different things. I don’t feel that stagnant energy when I get a sketchbook out. I hope that anytime I feel stuck in my creativity, I’ll remember it and think, “Try it completely differently, stand on your head for a while and then come back to it.”’
Writer and performer Frances adds, “I think something I’ve noticed since leaving creative education and then trying to make your life as a professional doing that, is that you often fall into being very observed, judged and criticised before you even have the resources, the time and the space to create. That’s a real shame, and the death of a lot of good work. I don’t think it’s possible to do it unless we have spaces like this where it’s about trial and error. I’m often asking myself what art should I be making right now to feel heard, to feel seen, to feel like I’m fulfilling a brief. It’s not about what we should make, it’s about what we want to make, which is the engaged art that is tender and connected and important.
“We all started on Friday as strangers and then in a very short space of time made all this work together. It was very different but it all ended up complimenting each other in the final showcase,” adds illustrator and graphic designer Ediz.
IS IT OKAY not to make
to help someone else make
to make in a way you have not made before?
Bold Mellon has an interdisciplinary approach to everything they do, and each of their workshops gather people from a whole range of creative backgrounds.
“It allowed me to explore art in a way that I haven’t really thought about,” says performer and writer Kiara. “Exploring collage opened something up in me because I don’t think I’ve done it for such a long time. It expanded more ways for me to express myself, it adds to what I can do.”
“I still feel very afraid of being silly with my body and it not being graceful or interesting,” says Frances. “Bodies are very observed and watched and we are constantly having to adjust our bodies into spaces. Annie Dearnley’s workshop really gave us an opportunity to be silly with it, to be childish, playful, joyful. It’s something to be reminded of: that you don’t have to move in a perfect way, or a strong way, or an anything way.”
At the heart of what Bold Mellon does is a desire to offer people paid opportunities where the focus isn’t on production, it’s on experimentation. I ask the participants whether being paid to be creative without the pressure of production had an impact on their practises.
“I’ve been graduated for almost two years,” says Frances, “and I’ve done so much free work and exhausted myself alongside attempting to survive through other jobs I don’t really want to do that are draining because they aren’t fulfilling. What is interesting is that I almost felt a guilt and a shame for accepting the money, partly because the workshop had a focus on wellbeing and partly because I’m so used to doing free work for things that I do creatively. This has revealed a lot to me about the respect you give yourself as an artist and how you’re respected by employers and the industry. I feel very empowered by it, and it’s a real awakening. Already in three days we were creating in a way more organic way and it was like nothing I’d ever experienced. If the money had come with an expectation I don’t think it would’ve felt safe or brave to be in that space. It’s an interesting mentality shift; that people want to pay you for the things you have worked very hard to understand, that you’re good at, that you have something to say about.”
“If you use the word inclusive, don’t just use it. Talk your shit as well. Do the actual work,” adds Kiara. “Art is supposed to challenge you, it’s supposed to inspire you, it’s supposed to evoke something in you. If you’re hiring the same group of people who are recycling the same ideas, it’s going to be redundant. Creatives are working two jobs, breaking their backs trying to be seen, and you wonder where the creatives are, why they aren’t here. Pay creatives, give people resources - that’s how it’s going to thrive.”
IS IT OKAY to ask for more
to be impatient
to resist gratefulness when it is expected of us
to demand room?
Almost every creative I know is fighting to be paid for what they make, is creating between jobs, juggling the things that pay with the things they love, burning themselves out trying to hold it all. t’ART is a labour of love, a voluntarily run collective which we make time for around more than full time work schedules and our own creative practises, sometimes more successfully than other times. And this experience is far from uncommon. Bold Mellon itself was born out of Emilia’s frustration with doing free gig after free gig. She figured if she was going to be working for free anyway it might as well as be for herself and with friends. It’s only recently that Emilia and Amy have started to value their producing jobs as well, putting lines into the budgets to pay themselves for organising, marketing, making it all happen. “Every time we get to pay ourselves, I still have to pinch myself,” says Amy. It’s aspirational to see how Bold Mellon have built themselves up towards being a collective that pays itself and the people who engage with it, and the need for this is echoed by the participants.
“The truth is I spend most of my time working for free,” says actor and comedian Christopher. “I can only manage one gig a month because of travel costs; the inevitable effect of not paying performers is that working class artists get left behind. There are so many stories that will never be told because marginalised groups cannot afford to treat their art like a hobby.”
Opportunities to be paid to create without a condition attached is something we see so rarely in the art world, where success is often measured in sales and Instagram followers, in commissions where the vision isn’t always your own, in ‘opportunities’ where we are expected to offer our traumas and our perspectives as marginalised people to serve an institution’s DEI mission.
“It’s stealing,” says Frances. “Especially when you want something from a particular community because you find it exciting, because you find it beautiful, because it challenges you, because you find it new and fresh. In order to gain insight, knowledge and experience about that community, there’ll often be an opportunity that is unpaid to extract that information. It is quite a violent thing that goes on there. It’s an unjust exchange. It perpetuates the class system, power dynamics and superiority which will not create good art in the end. The art will be better if creatives are paid. The resources will be better, their minds will feel better, they will feel braver to take risks in the space because they feel supported.”
“I often try to shrink down, or underplay my queerness,” continues Ediz. “This was the first ever application I had written where I explicitly said I’m trans. Sometimes I feel like if I’m too loud about it, it will hold me back from opportunities. I’ve also had the experience where it’s been treated more as a novelty, rather than a part of me that affects who I am. Particularly in certain art spaces, I was told I should make things about my transness because it would reflect well on the organisation, without anyone really being interested in how I felt about that.”
Like most artists making under those conditions, the group have fierce words for institutions:
“This is my body,” Frances reminds us. “My body is my job, my mind is my job. I’m not just a service that you pay for, that has logistics and machinery. This is a living organism that is producing work for you. Where is the understanding of the weight of that? And people don’t get paid for months and we’ve been expected to just swallow that. It’s still free work in that period of time. It’s really dangerous because it creates a culture of too much patience. Only privileged people can feel safe in those spaces.”
Emilia adds, “If you, as an institution, have anything about inclusion in your ethos or statement, you must pay creatives. Otherwise you are perpetuating a class hierarchy within the industry. Rework your budgets and prioritise artists.”
IS IT OKAY to take up space
to fill blank walls
to stretch across floors
to leave our queer selves lying around?
Despite all of this, again and again, the discussion comes back around to joy. “I think this idea of a tortured artist is not very queer,” says Emilia. “It’s a bullshit thing that a white cis skinny man created around smoking lots of cigarettes and not eating or having any friends. For so long that’s how I imagined art should be, torturous. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life and my career torturing myself. I want to enjoy what I do. I think that’s what queering the art practise is: making it more enjoyable.”
“To be who you want to be, and get paid for that, takes the pressure off,” continues Kiara. “It’s a confirmation that you can be creative and you can be yourself. There was no need to come as something different, or be someone else. You being you is enough. It makes me think life can actually be like this. I want to be paid for who I am. And I don’t need to go through these gruelling processes, these long-ass auditions and interview stages where it feels like I’ve had to fight my way in. It can be easy to be who you are.”
“I feel like I came out of the weekend feeling lighter,” adds Ediz. “On the Saturday we were drawing on the floor and it was like being five years old again and going back to the very core. At some point as a child I decided I really liked doing this and it wasn’t because I had any goal in mind and it just felt like going back to that. I got home and immediately started making more. Art also has a great use as a therapeutic tool. It’s often a very stressful experience being queer, whether or not we want it to be. But I also think it’s really crucial that this happened in an area like Croydon because Croydon has a really poor mental health service that is generally very inaccessible to people. So it’s then even more important to have these alternative avenues to explore things like therapeutic art in an area where people generally won’t have as much access to that service.”
“I’ve struggled with physical disability in the past and present,” says Mickey. “Every second of the day I put extra effort into holding my body together. I feel like a rag doll half the time, like all my joints are strings. Participating in a movement workshop was something I never thought about doing. It’s never occurred to me that I could, that it would benefit me, that I would be possible, that it would even be fun. I will hold this experience for a very, very long time, and honour it for my entire life.”
IS IT OKAY to be ourselves
to be paid as ourselves
to make queerly?
And a lot of this joy came down to each other, to this queer taking and sharing of space.
“The most interesting parts of the weekend were when I stopped thinking of myself as an individual and got lost in building relationships with the people around me,” says Christopher.
“A highlight for me was seeing everyone collaborate,” continues Amy. “Seeing everyone before and after the workshops led by Annie Dearnley and Sama Hunt, the bonds happening and how conversations and friendships were starting - creativity was in the air. A lot of art spaces can be really competitive or gatekept. You created a space that asked: how can I help you make your work better, how can I help you achieve what you want to make, how can I help you access that? It was really supportive and I want to continue being in those spaces and helping make those spaces.”
“I think what all you did really beautifully was being really good at sharing space. You can’t really teach that, it comes from within, from wanting to learn from other people. You were taking space by sharing space,” adds Emilia. “That’s what, for me, this weekend was about. It’s this amazing value of community, and that being how we navigate space.”
We deserve to be given the time and the space to create, to be paid for the things that we make, to be remunerated for the time it takes to learn and explore our creative practices, to spend time in the processes that need to happen before production can.
We shelve our guilt and tell you, with smiles on our faces, that our art is valuable, that we make best when we are allowed to stretch in all directions, to lean on and learn from our community, to play our way towards producing.
Give us what we deserve, and we will make art that can change the world.
Photography: Amy Mitchell (aka Tainted Saint)
Bold Mellon Collective is an award-nominated multidisciplinary arts collective with a mission to create and sustain uplifting creative opportunities for underrepresented LGBTQIA+ creatives, centering community wellbeing.
This project was generously supported by Croydon Council.
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