Develop Your Creative Practice Advice for Creatives; What kind of Activities would DYCP cover ?
So you want to apply for DYCP from Arts Council England. What activities might be useful to think about when looking to develop your practice, when it is not about tangible results or making a product ? The Activities need to support your individual development.
Below are a few examples to get you thinking about some of the possibilities.
ACTIVITIES TO DEVELOP YOUR PRACTICE
WORKSHOPS - Arts council will not fund a full course for you for example, but they will consider bespoke workshops that you need in order to develop your skills. In my case I identified 3-4 workshops I would attend and described what their content should be. So these workshops did not exist yet when writing the application, except for two. Also consider one to one session in a studio as a workshop when someone is coaching you privately in a specific skill.
OTHER - PRACTICE AS RESEARCH / R&D ( research and development ) Activity to test your learning so far. Part of the development for me is to be able to work with new collaborators, and to work in new ways , such as focus on creating movement for screen. I decided to take a few days of Practice as Research, so I would get in the studio with other creatives and explore film making. This again was a small part of the bigger picture in my DYCP.
READ / RESEARCH - Having time to read and research around the topics you are wanting to progress in, is so valuable and often as professionals we do no have the time for such in depth research. Calculate a few hours per week that you might do this, or as a monthly amount of hours. I think it is useful to be specific on what your research topics would be, it shows you have really thought about it and are already invested in this step change.
OBSERVE - Observing is a huge part of learning and adds to your own
development. I recommend to add this in your DYCP. By observing other creatives for example, you might learn new approaches, how other people run a room, how they navigate challenging moments in creative process to mention a few etc. You also learn a lot about yourself as a creative and it is a good way to reflect on where you situate your practice.
NETWORK / INTERVIEW - Meet creatives you would like to work with, learn from. Never know where things will lead. This kind of networking also takes time, so it makes sense to have it in your DYCP, as you can then invest time to really network.
WHO ELSE IS GOING TO BE INVOLVED IN YOUR DYCP , IF ANY ?
Mentor , Coach , Producer, Manager , Collaborator ?
THE ACTIVITY HERE could be Mentoring sessions weekly or monthly during your DYCP.
This I think needs a lot of consideration.Think about what kind of support you need and what your aims are in your DYCP.
Mentoring and Coaching are a little different, so it all depends what you think you might benefit from most. Main thing is that the person supporting you need to really care about your process and you ! They need to invest in you just like you invest in them !
So make sure you meet up with potential mentors to find the right one for your journey.
You want someone who can have your back, who you can trust, who genuinely wants to help and that you don’t feel like going at it completely alone. Especially if you have many moving parts in your DYCP like I do.
It could also be you just need someone supporting you through your project more practically.
I would have loved to have a Project Manager or Producer…someone who looks after the plan and checks in without asking, checks in regularly what the plan should be and how it is going forward. Someone who keeps an eye on admin work such as budget and bookings etc.But alas, I did not factor this in my own DYCP and I wish I had!
That is all for now, hope that is helpful to get you started.
Have an excellent and groovy day !
Kindly,
Krista