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Video version to go live on Saturday, 7pm UK Time.

In the Village

On a landscape of savannahs and rolling hills, upon a long and rich history of human habitation,  sits the small village of La Villa de Los Santos. Located in the Azuero Peninsula of Central Panama, where Spanish colonial architecture meets archaeological sites and agrarian traditions, La Villa is often described as the cradle of all things Panamanian. A big hat to wear for a village that can be cycled from end-to-end in about 30 minutes.

Irina Ruiz Figueroa, filmmaker, engineer, director-producer, has been working in this small town since 2002. She and a collective of cultural industry experts have been pioneering methodologies in the use of documentary and non-fiction filmmaking as a way to rescue intangible heritage and traditions from the fog of “el olvido” - the space-action of being lost to memory.

ACAMPADOC is many things: a documentary film school, the only non-fiction film festival in Central America, a cultural exchange programme that reaches far afield. And, of course, a creative hub where film is a tool to safeguard local traditions.

La Villa “is a window for the region,” Irina tells us, where most of those identifying ideas of culture are reflected locally. This is something people who live there are keenly aware and protective of. The town of La Villa, as an imaginative hub and cradle of culture, has citizens who care a lot about safeguarding their traditions; for they know that, in the absence of government assistance, these traditions are the foundations of their future.

Students working in situ during ACAMPADOC.

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What is Heritage Filmmaking?

“We are also described as ‘public archaeologists’. As filmmakers in documentaries we are in contact with living culture, with living heritage and approach the facts, the situations, with a camera, with an audio recorder, and that has been characterised as public archeology since the 80s.”

Irina and her colleagues didn’t start out as heritage filmmakers. From the very beginning, the whole point was to educate and elevate talent. But in the process of taking their cameras out to the field with their students and making short films of five to seven minutes, they started capturing parts of the everyday traditions of the region that are now in danger of or have already disappeared.

“To rescue heritage through film has been something we never proposed to ourselves as a project. We started to give and share what we had with new filmmakers that wanted to make cinema, to access the knowledge.”

By elevating local and regional talent with local and regional interests, the filmmakers have inadvertently been safeguarding culture, traditions and activities that are at risk of disappearing from a myriad of menaces; youth brain drain, changing tides of economics, or a lack of government programmes for cultural promotion or protection. Suddenly, Irina and her colleagues found themselves sitting on a gold mine; an archive of films, records of traditions that have already been lost.

A celebration in La Villa, filmed by ACAMPADOC’s students

But why is a small team of creative practitioners spearheading a programme of cultural recovery, of living tradition safeguarding? The answer, like often is the case in Panama, is of weak institutions and a lack of decisive action. This vacuum creates risks. “If you’re not being sharp with a cultural policy of safeguarding, probably in another ten years you would lose what you were considering living culture, living heritage.”

And then what would be left to define a place, or a people?

“El olvido,” Irina says, “is the most dangerous thing. There is no way to revive tradition. And when you lose that tradition, you lose the identity. Forever.”

When I asked Irina about how ACAMPADOC is able to use film, an often-passive medium, to not just capture life as it is but also encourage community reflection, she said that it is all about making it relatable. An important part of their work is in their role as content producers. By showing real characters in real situations from La Villa, they can appeal to students and the local community by showing  “specific issue[s] that they recognise”. Every year, the ACAMPADOC festival gives the community an opportunity to be reflected on the screen, something that helps them the chance to reflect on “that which is being or has been lost.”

And that is the power of cultural production, isn’t it? To see ourselves reflected in art To reflect ourselves in our own art and content and media. One could argue that this is all the more relevant in a Latin American context, where so much of our cultural heritage has been defined externally: through a white European colonial, and later white North American colonial, post-Monroe Doctrine filter. Someone else has defined us, even within our own countries.

“If you as a community do not value yourself, no one else is going to value what you have.”

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Log-term Radical Community Building

Part of my reason for interviewing Irina and for bringing a story like hers to different audiences is to showcase the so-called “alternatives” to community organising that you often hear people speak of in high esteem. But what is alternative to some, is the way of life to others. Austerity may just over a decade old in most of Europe, but communities working together in the face of great economical, governmental and institutional challenges has been the rule for Panamanian groups for a long, long, long time. Irina and ACAMPADOC’s work is an example of what is possible, and perhaps can serve as a blueprint for others. Any such project, of course, takes time.

In the beginning, ACAMPADOC members, who came out of the Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV de Cuba, travelled to La Villa to teach children who didn’t have the same opportunities as they did - children not just from La Villa, but from other underrepresented places and regions. They have empowered indigenous filmmakers who want to create as a way to express themselves - to tell their own stories and their own histories. These are narratives that would never have been told otherwise; narratives that can help fight against oppression, bring environmental issues to the forefront of the cultural conversation, or preserve ways of life that Western conformity seeks to grind into commodities in the market.

“Remember that for Central America, there are no ways to learn how to do filmmaking, even though we have a very important filmmaking school in Cuba. But in Central America there’s no way to travel, no resources to travel, there are no funds in Central America. Countries have no Ministries of Culture. Panama is the only country that has a ‘fund for filmmaking’.” Irina brings out the air quotations when she says the last bit, suggesting a lot of unspoken relationships and faulty wiring at an institutional level.

This type of slow-burn community building is not something you can plan for, not entirely, and it is not something that you do within a year and then leave. A project like this has to be thought of on the scale of five or more years, Irina says.

Ten years ago, the first students arrived in La Villa from Nicaragua, Guatemala, Colombia, and Honduras, to receive training at ACAMPADOC. “They literally showed up covered in dust after hours and days of travel. They were heroes. These people were coming like mochileros – backpackers – by themselves. Kids with no credit card.”

Ten years later, those first students are now leaders in their respective countries, holding small film festivals, teaching, and making “amazing films” about contemporary issues. They oversee their own organisations, community projects, film studios and projects rescuing their communities’ collective knowledge. They are fulfilling one of ACAMPADOC’s objectives - that their model of heritage filmmaking can be applied in any place, any community. And those connections started in a small vilalge you can cycle across in less than 30 minutes.

“We call this the La Buena Semilla – the good seed – that we plant here at ACAMPADOC. We help those young people to make those projects and promote them with the communities.

“And this is the best thing about being in ACAMPADOC – we’re making cinema, teaching cinema, but also benefiting the community in a very strong way. Some years I think that the programme or ACAMPADOC can stop because we’ve done a lot - but it is the community that asks me to keep going, and comes to my door asking me to rescue this or rescue that.”

La Villa de Los Santos is an infinite quarry of stories.

I was planning to ask her about how she measures the impact of the films, but the fact that the community has cried out “come back, we need you” is evidence enough.

In the spirit of collaboration, I ask Irina a final question. What would she like our readers and listeners to do? She invites you to write to them, reach out, collaborate. Follow them on the socials or send them an email. And if you can, maybe visit the ceramic-roofed houses of La Villa and make your own documentaries alongside this team of dedicated artists.

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Visit ACAMPADOC’s website: https://www.acampadoc.com/

Follow them on Twitter.

Instagram

And watch their work on Vimeo and Youtube.

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Considering how ubiquitous Zoom has become, both as a communication and a collaboration tool, understanding and highlighting how individuals and groups have been using it to make artistic output and, most importantly, build human connection, is of the utmost importance. Rosas Re:Thrown presents a great example of best practice for online collaboration projects.

It started with two movement practitioners walking around Roath Lake. Zosia Jo is a self-described dance artist, and Lee Tinnion is a circus performer and juggler.

Two have been working together for nine years, yet this has been an organic face-to-face process that happens in studios and stages. A joint collaboration project had yet to happen. So, when the first pandemic lockdowns closed-up Wales, and the two artists decided to move in together, there was a natural progression towards really making something together

After a couple of walks, they realized they kept coming back to the theme of gravity. Lee with the motion of objects, Zosia with the motion of the body. But they didn’t get funding for that idea; the scope of the project they had come up with just didn’t work for the times. Maybe it will still happen, at a different when and in a different where.

“So, we looked at what is possible to do. Just to do it. To keep us creative, to keep us going.”

Walking around Roath Lake led to precious moments of co-ideation; one of them would present an idea, and the other would respond to it. What if we did this… what if we added that... Idle thoughts that would soon bloom.

Rosas danst Rosas is a legendary performance by Anne Theresa de Keersmaeker, itself a collaboration between de Keersmaeker and Thierry De Mey. Since 1983, the performance has been inspiring the world and waoing audiences since 1983 and later became the foundational work of the dance company Rosas. In 2013, de Keersmaeker opened up the process of Rosas danst Rosas to the public domain and encouraged others to work through, respond, and play with the framework.

A colleague of Zosia’s did a project with students over Zoom using the Rosas danst Rosas choreography. After watching it, Lee got curious about the choreography itself. “What would happen if you put juggling into this?” he asked.

Soon, a consensus for a project started to emerge.

Zosia and Lee proceeded to remix the language of the Rosas choreography through the language of juggling. “The fun part was to figure out how the ball would fit. And how to make a lot of balls fit.” Bringing something new while keeping the essence and movement was one of the many exciting parts of the process. 

They came up with a lockdown friendly project – Rosas danst Rosas is itself a seated dance performance; no need for a big space to work in! – that definitely should have more than just the two of them on camera. So, they invited people from their existing communities to participate in the project. Their tool of choice: Zoom.

As we continue to chat, Zosia and Lee point out that they made sure that the remixed choreography they created had a common language that could be performed by anyone, regardless of skill level. “The baseline choreography would be achievable, but you will also be left lots of avenues,” by which Zosia means that people could run away with the base choreography, mate it their own; jugglers could add balls and make it more complex; dancers could explore different movements.

The remixed choreography was shared through three Zoom workshop sessions, one for movers, one for jugglers, and a session for older people. “And that session was predominantly our mothers,” Zosia adds with a smile. All participants had the option to watch video tutorial versions of the remixed choreography if they couldn’t attend. Whichever option participants chose, Zosia and Lee invited them to film their performance of the remixed dance-juggling and submit the videos, which Lee later edited together into a cohesive whole.

“A Zoom room is a space that is created by intention.” Zosia says. “There’s ways of being in it. You can, you do not feel the same level of connection. If you think about it, the space is created by the desire to be together. It is not a space in and of itself until we’re all here. And then it is thought about as a space. And then everyone is together.”

During our conversation, the pair shared some techniques they employed during the project. Talking to them it is obvious to me that their previous experience as dance and circus educators really helped them streamline the Zoom workshop process and see new approaches the technology allowed them.

Lee said something that struck me as a stroke of genius, and I haven’t experienced in any Zoom workshop or vocalized by anyone else. He would leave the Zoom room open after a workshop, and participants could use it however they wanted. Some would even start making plans for things to do outside of the workshops. Allowing Zoom to replicate those moments in time, in between, before, during, and after an activity do help transform the tool from a conference call into a space with specific intent. I wish more Zoom meetings would do this.

“If you see it for what it is, and what it really has to offer, then it becomes a tool in and of itself that you could celebrate.” Zosia said. 

The way it is used, defines the outcome.

“There’s elements of teaching and delivering with a community within Zoom that aren’t a compromise at all.” Lee says. “I really made use of the ability of using the camera to show very detailed.” Like having closeups of the hands, at the same time that people could see him talking.

One of the biggest positives of Zoom that folks expound is how it has helped to shrink distances, and how it can make experiences available to more people. Zosia and Lee mention that this project would not have been a free, open-for-everyone programme if they had had to run it in a physical space. Not only having to deal with the disappointment of hiring a space and no one showing up, but rental costs alone would have created barriers. The digital aspect helped make the project more accessible.

“We had several different communities. We ran sessions with different focus.” But that wasn’t a barrier – dancers came to juggler sessions, and viceversa. Seeing the leaking between those communities. Everyone was connected. Some would have never met because they wouldn’t have gone to the sessions. And that was because we helped bring them together onto a same space, working on a singular project.” Lee says

Teaching through the platform came with a learning curve, of course. “I had to learn to be really articulate first, and then allow a lot of freedom. A compromise or shift in the structure of how I teach.” Zosia said.

And anyone who’s had to deliver a presentation to a conference call and manage a chat understands that, really, you need more than two sets of eyes to do that.

When I asked the pair if they think that the project created a lasting community, they looked at each other and agreed that the same rules as real life apply to Zoom. It takes long-term investment to build a sustainable, connected group. The people who most easily kept connections going after the project had already come from existing groups, like Lee’s online juggling course as part of NoKitState. “The regularity, the consistency, of building a group and a community is a very different thing to coming together to make something. And that is a challenge and a dichotomy I work with a lot, because I work with communities.” Zosia adds. Besides, there’s many ways to measure or even understand the legacy of a project. Zosia mentions that while some participants didn’t create any connections outside of the project, others took what they learned from the project and brought it into other projects.

We of course talked into other subjects and ideas regarding creative work, community, education and making art in this new decade.

I asked Zosia and Lee about the nature of Rosas Re:Thrown as a piece of digital content. I originally encountered it as a YouTube video, divorced from its community project core, thus, to me, the encounter with the media is fundamentally different.

Chasing the content monster, as Zosia called it, would have led to a completely different project. They could have made short clips out of the final film to help promote the premiere event, have more people come and see the show. But that would have fundamentally changed the essence of the project. While making a viral project may bring one form of value, perhaps that would be at the expense of the intimate community-building that took place. This is something we must consider, as forces beyond our control increasingly push us towards a commercial, or commercially-inspired model for funding arts and creative enterprises. One has to be careful chasing the content monster. It has claws.

From what Zosia shares of her experience of working in the arts sector of Wales, I have the feeling that there is an informal division in the way people work or are made to work. Some projects are very goal-oriented, all about the outcome, the butts on the seats. Others are about building communities, or about working with communities, but the very limitations in time and resources some funding pots place make it difficult to work in a truly transformative way in the first place.

“Engaging people in something new and creative and scary is a long-term process. Otherwise, you’re just skimming off the people who are most keen, who are doing these things all the time, who more easily hear about this.”

When I ask Zosia and Lee what would be an ideal way to work in the arts, they say that such an ecology has several different people doing several forms of work. Some are doing that long-term engagement where there is that baseline practice that is always happening, always building upon itself. Then there’s practitioners who are more project focused with short, sharp, powerful creations. And then there’s the partnerships who can move around and work in conjunction and go beyond.

Of course, there is much more in this conversation that would be a crime if I try to write it all down. If you can, do listen to the whole thing. All at once, or in little bits. There’s a wealth of knowledge these two movement practitioners share.

While I personally think that there is not one right approach to making art, both in the community, individually, digitally or physically, we all have a lot to learn from each other. Regardless of how folks in the future encounter Rosas Re:Thrown, as a piece of content or re-contextualized, the project created a space for dialogue and collaboration.

For the premiere of the film, participants brought their families to the Zoom room. There were silly games, there were drinks. It was like a real Christmas party where, for a moment, everyone shared in on something.

The OnlyFans content ban is yet another attack on independent creative workers

No creative worker or content creator is safe as long as we depend on tech companies and platforms to make our livelihoods.

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It has been proven time and time again that we cannot trust digital platforms of any shape, form or size with our commitment, communities, and livelihoods.

You may have heard about the decision by OnlyFans, a platform that has built its brand name and considerable revenue on being the home for independent erotic and pornographic content, has caved in to payment processor pressure and has banned all the content that made it an attractive space to make a livelihood in the first place. To me, this is yet another form of capitulation from a tech company that is unwilling, rather than incapable, of going over the massive amounts of content and getting rid of damaging and dubious stuff. The vast sums of money OnlyFans and its owner, Tim Stokely, have made during the pandemic could have been spent on moderating. And if they can’t manage to moderate right now, aren’t these companies supposed to be bastions of innovation, challengers to the way things are done, disruptors of the present?

The ban comes, as far as I can tell, from two places. One is the very nature of the “tech giant” system, or rather Platform Capitalism itself. OnlyFans real goal, in the long term, is to soak up venture investment; to perpetually inflate the share price, thus bringing in “infinite growth”, or for the owners to cash out and essentially laugh their way to the bank after selling the billionaire equivalent of a gold-wrapped chocolate coin. The other factor is that payment processors, and a number of lobbyists, are increasingly cracking down on erotic and pornographic content; it was revealed that Mastercard has put untold amounts of pressure for platforms and other businesses to follow its executives’ ways.

“People say ‘I have a Discord Server’ when they really mean ‘I have made a communication channel with software I don't own that runs on infrastructure I don't control’”

This is not a new development, however. OnlyFans doing a Tumblr is like a spot of black mould that, like clockwork, appears on that rotting wall to the left that your landlord refuses to fix. You could even make a new calendar system based on these bouts of tech media bumbling. Lest we forget, in 2018 Tumblr, a platform that was has also been known for hosting erotic content, shot itself in the foot by enacting a blanket ban on said content. I remember a time in the late 2000s when Tumblr was synonymous with a place where female-led internet culture could thrive. And I am not alone - Roisin Agnew,  writing about this very issue in 2018 said that Tumblr was a space that “evolved over the years into a sanctuary for non-normative and female-centric sexuality“. The company had tripped over its own shoes to enact the ban, something that depressed a social media’s main value creator, a user base whose attention executives sell to advertisers for revenue, abandoned the sinking ship. And yet, with a new algorithm that was causing chaos across the platform, the website still reported the same issues with pornbots, scambots, child pornography, racialized hate content, and a slew of other problems users had been asking Tumblr to fix for years! 

All of this prompted the company’s monetary value to collapse from a Yahoo purchase of $1.1billion, to a sale of $3million. A story that, to me, just serves to exemplify my point that these tech companies exist only to be bought and sold like paintings at an auction house for rich folks who can easily afford to pay a 90% effective wealth tax.

Blanket censorship comes too easy to tech companies. It is the path of least resistance. Cheaper to introduce an algorithm, a robot, than to hire moderators to ensure your website is safe and not peddling violent content. But that would cut into profit! We wouldn’t want to have one or two million dollars less, right? Can’t keep the lights in the mansion on when that happens. Half-assed jobs are half-assed jobs -  Tumblr’s new banned content-detecting algorithms were hilariously bad at their job, easy to circumvent, and failed at what it set out to do. Nowadays, the very content Tumblr banned in 2018 is still available on the website as if the ban never happened. And I have the feeling that they reversed the decision quietly, behind the scenes, so that users would come back to the platform on their own.

What the new bout of censorship on OnlyFans displays is not an issue about the place of ethically made pornography and erotica on the internet, but a conversation about precarious labour. The role tech giants play in our relationship to work and the unspoken power banks and payment processors have on free speech and the content that we make and engage with is getting ridiculous - Captain Planet villain type of ridiculous. What’s worse, we have basically no rights, agency or control over the very means we, workers in the content-making industry or whatever you want to call it, need to make money. To quote Reddit user TickleMeElmo, talking about the Discord platform specifically, but it applies to all digital middlemen: “People say ‘I have a Discord Server’ when they really mean ‘I have made a communication channel with software I don't own that runs on infrastructure I don't control’”.

Any question about the type of content is a distraction. OnlyFans has built its market value on the labour of sex workers, the grand majority women. Many saw OnlyFans as way out of poverty or precarity. A safer (but definitely not perfect) bet than other forms of sex work, and it allowed them to have make a decent living and retain a certain level of control over the content they created. Creative freedom, the ability to make a living out of what you love, being able to work from anywhere… you know, the digital nomad dream. The mantra of tech monopolies and the foundational marketing lie of what Sebastian Olma dubbed Platform Capitalism. But the reality is that these platforms, from Uber to Ocado, from Tumblr to OnlyFans, from YouTube to Patreon, extract wealth from both users and workers (for a content creator is a worker, is labour) even as they shift mountains, legislation and use the very platforms to peddle propaganda that erodes away worker’s rights and protections.

Even though we do not yet know the full details of what this ban will entail and how many people will lose their work from this action - at a time when we’re undergoing increasing economic and social uncertainty, we must add - a point still stands: creators live in fear of losing it all in a process they have no control over. With a snap, the rules of the game can change. Creators then have to scramble to find alternatives, censor their work to fit the new rules, beg for support, or any other form of coping and resilience systems. It becomes a race towards a bottom, and the closer we get to that bottom the more it looks like one of those spike-filled pits in an adventure movie. Imagine having to constantly wonder if your boss says that you will not get paid next month unless you learn a new language or completely change the way you work - but, hey, the costs for that are on you - and you have no say in the matter. That is a lot of stress and worry to put on people, and who knows what long-term detrimental effects such a relationship to work will do to people.

Years ago, I left Instagram because I realised the algorithm was working against me. I was spending so much time, energy, and effort to work for a boss that isn’t even human. I saw no results; my labour was creating attention for ad revenue I saw no benefit from. Abandoning the marketing platform that is Instagram was a release. I felt like I now could do what I wanted, what is truly important and transformative, rather than what got me clicks and likes. Twitter is not a new public square; it is an attention-based advertisement service. On Facebook you’re the product.

As these companies keep growing in influence and keep changing their systems to better fit the narrative of established and moneyed power, we the workers will suffer. Our livelihoods are never safe as long as we depend on these platforms to connect with customers, fans, communities and each other. The great paradox is that, without these platforms, we would not be able to make a livelihood in the first place. Some would say that we should be thankful and move on. But that is wrong. Demanding better rights, better protections, and an end to precarity is never wrong.

I do not know what the answer to this is. Creators I look up to like Ross Scott saw the writing on the wall years ago, just as I was first learning about the overblown power and influence social media companies have on the way we can make a living. Ross Scott decided to not rely on their systems and talk directly to his fans. The Patreon model but, you know, without the middleman - the platform. Did it work? Well, Ross still makes videos and constantly complains about having to deal with the stress of working towards an ever-changing algorithm, lack of reliability from YouTube, and not having any time off. Is it a model we can build upon, democratize, collectivize and maybe figure out? You know, a People’s Uber. Who knows! But at least I know that we have to start talking about the wars that such platforms are enacting – against labour, against ownership, against dialogue, against the environment.

Fair does, torch and prosecute child pornographers, crack down on revenge porn and hate content. But do not just decide to pull the rug from under thousands of people who depend on the platform for their livelihoods. We creative workers, no matter what kind of content we make, are all fishes in the same evaporating pond. 

Thank you for your time.

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Confidence, Art as Healing, Language and Working with Others: CoLab 001

In which we talk with Mylo Elliott about what he thinks working with other people is all about, how his disability colours his perception of language, about art as healing, and many other things.

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I’ve known Mylo Eilliott, who also goes by Enlit Theory, for a few years. Towards the end of our here chat, he reminded me of the first time we met; back when Cardiff School of Art and Design was still based  at Howard Gardens. That building had this paint-dripped, ceramic-dusted, ink-stained quality to it that only happens after generation upon generation of artists walk its halls. A building now demolished, now overpriced student flats.

That first year of our higher education adventure, we had a module that I describe as “enforced collaboration”. Centered around the theme of “The City”, that two-week-long experiment had four degree courses paired up: a maker, a graphic designer, a fine artist and an illustrator. One of us dropped out, the three others went on different tangents, and the only thing that held that idea together was that we at least kept to our promise of “walking in meandering lines around Howard Gardens”.

It went nowhere. But this experiment did help establish a relationship that made it easier to engage with Mylo over the years. Someone I may have never actually talked to in other circumstances. And I can honestly say my life would be poorer for it.

“Most about what I’ve done since leaving university three years ago, most of it has been in collaboration.”

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Working with Others

When I asked Mylo what he thought collaboration brings to him, personally and professionally, he opened by a line I must quote:

“A good place to start is asking what makes things unique to an artist? Everyone has these offerings, personal, it’s about things that make sense to you.”

For him, it is music and art that go together.

I’ve heard Mylo describe himself as a hip-hop and street artist. An aesthetic, or, rather, tradition, he seems to embody. He is an artist that’s lifted, taken, moved, recontextualized the visual language of graffiti, from street walls into the fine art gallery and, most recently, onto skateboards. He’s made murals in Morocco, walked snowy Berlin, and his work brightens up secret parts of Cardiff – The Andrew Buchan pub on Albany Road and nearby Cardiff MADE both house his oeuvre. Seven Oaks Park, The Boardwalk, and perhaps even this one nameless spot are open air galleries displaying his work. Mylo music-maker of great talent, and instead of doing his work a disservice by trying to describe it, I’ll instead let you go and listen to it when you have the time.

Mylo has been working with other people since leaving university three years ago. These collaborations are “about finding space for yourself working with other people”. When people come together, they bring these offerings, as Mylo says, their unique voices and ways of working. Their process becomes part of your process when you are working together. And to some, collaborating with other people is an intrinsic motivato, what gets them out of the bed in the morning. Collaboration leads to more collaboration, in Mylo’s words. And it enrichens not just an artist’s professional practice, but their lives. Brings value in many shapes and forms.

© Mylo Elliott

Mylo here corroborates an experience I have also encountered: the limitations on one’s perspective. We can be, individually, aware of so much. Can pay attention to just so many things. It is only be working with other people, organizations and groups that we can become “aware of possibilities” that go beyond our own interests. And in working alongside these people and organizations, we also become aware of their own “creative offerings” and can, together, help them realise it.

But the outcome – the painting, music composition, mural, skateboard – are not as important as the valuable relationships that come through the work.

“Maintaining friendship’s and people’s good health, for a lot of people would come first. But I think, the way you work the conditions that you work under, allow us to look at those other, you know, just to gain a broader understanding of how things work. I would try both. Kind of slow in coming. You kinda have to put yourself in a good position.”

But what is a “good position” to collaborate? What conditions make it easier to work with other people?

Talking to Mylo, now and before, it is obvious that to him space is key. Not just the physical space of the studio, but also the mental space to be creative, to think freely, and to “build confidence.”

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Spaces to Build Confidence

Mylo once described his studio space as a “working and listening room”.

Which makes me think about the importance of having the space, mental and physical, to help people be able to communicate, develop, grow, think, and connect as people.

For a long while we’ve been hearing about an epidemic of loneliness that is tied to the fraught system of living space allocation. In an increasingly precarious state, all of us require different spaces for different things to help us reach that optimum state of wellbeing. In the case of artists, there’s a reason that we’ve historically tried to separate our working environments from our living quarters – and it is not always about the possibility of having paint thinner too close to the bed.

“Having a space allow you a little bit of creative time every day. Be listening or writing. If I didn’t have the space, I would probably be less confident in my ability to keep the practice going. Have more of a creative state in mind where you are confident in the steps you’re taking.”

Sometimes space is not just about being in a place. Sometimes it is about what state of mind you can get into. Some detractors would say “but you can draw on the floor same as everywhere”, and that, to me, is an unwillingness to engage with a point that Mylo brings up that we can all relate to. The space we live in is important in allowing us to feel, think, behave in certain ways that are conducive to our wellbeing.

For Mylo, having a studio space is about spending time working on the process of art-making and becoming confident that the steps taken towards the creation of an art piece feel right. About building confidence in the process. And this becomes a positive feedback loop. The more you create, the better you get at it, the more “naturally” it comes to you to create and the more confident you become.

“If you can work out a loose structure in a painting and go by that structure, you’re halfway there.”

Two skateboards © Mylo Elliott

And I could share my own experience about the concept of inspiration happening during the process of making. But I think something Mylo said may be a lot better in this case: “Because you are self-directed in what you are doing. The task makes sense. I’d really like to help people gain from my experience, in the way… The way we take opportunities, learn and grow. Barriers are there to be understood, I guess. And help to sign post.”

I’d like to point out to this idea of Barriers that Mylo mentions, because I actually asked him about barriers that he has encountered working as an artist in Wales. At first, I believe, we were on the same page;  he mentioned “being experienced” as a barrier to engaging with the sector. But then his understanding of what Barriers mean to him started trickling into the conversation and I found myself fascinated by his take.

“They cut as you go, as you make progress. Start identifying, maybe you can work without funding. Being efficient in yourself. Creating a model other people can follow and sharing.“

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Barriers: How one word can mean many things

Mylo describes barriers not in the way we would often use them. But barriers against the bad habit of doing too many things at once. “Barriers are there to break things down and make them more manageable,” he says, referring to his painting process. Using a limited colour palette, a set of graffiti writing he’s already developed, among other techniques I believe he has but didn’t go detail.

“A big world to walk into. Aware of so many things. Like notes in a piano – we don’t play all the notes at one time.”

As our conversation went on, I realised that Mylo was describing barriers in the same way I had heard spoken of composer Igor Stravinsky’s creative process, in which he would limit the amount of material he could work with, thus becoming freer to explore within the limitations. More creative in a way.

This misunderstanding in terminology ended up making me understand the world through a different perspective and made me aware of the blinders I had accidentally put on, narrowing my view of things. Barriers not as things that stop people from engaging and participating, but barriers that help you focus and stay on track. Are we all horses wearing blinders? Personally, I want to take this as a learning opportunity: we are often not talking about the same things, even if we use the same words. We strive towards finding that common ground, as we listen from other people’s way of thinking.

“There’s always notes and ideas flying around. Settle one thing that makes you content”

A black and white photo of Mylo Eliott painting on site. Photo © Tobias Z

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Art as Healing

Mylo later on goes to describe the moment people find his work. A moment of “connection between myself, my art and people who are seeing my art”. That connectivity between people, to Mylo, makes “art much more interesting – makes it a current thing”.

And I think that what he means is that it makes art alive and active. The best way I could describe this idea he sparked in me is that while a book sits in a bookcase it is but an object made from tree-pulp, taking up space and collecting dust. But when someone picks it up and starts reading through it, the words come alive and neurons spark and images are created and lives can be changed.

Mylo talks about connectivity, and space, and letting things take as much time as they need, “letting things develop”. And isn’t that all too right in the context of collaboration? Relationships are the basis for collaboration, and those take time and successes and failures.

These words of his lead us in a meandering yet connected way to thoughts about art as a healing instrument. And that is something I love about listening to Mylo speak and write, there’s a fugue state cadence to his thoughts and the words that he uses that may be a little hard to fully tune in at times – like trying to find a radio station through static – but that just makes you want to pay more attention and listen more intently. He makes me think about how healing from trauma can sometime only happen through communities, through art scenes even. Connecting with other people and engaging in non-verbal, yet all too-human ways, ways of communication.

Just developing identity and using what I’ve got, my personal skills. Letting things develop, like this relationship between art and the exchange with other artists.”

And as our conversation closed and we meandered into things I left out for want of time, I am left feeling like Mylo fulfilled this quote I am going to leave you with.

“Being an artist has always been a form that can be like a guide. Like an accompaniment to life.”

Who is at the table?

In which we must ask: where is the power held in the creative, cultural and arts sectors of Wales and, indeed, all over the world. A conversation starter, for deeper conversations.

Floris van Dyck’s “Laid Table”

Hello, y’all!

Six months ago, I moved into a refurbished “cottage”-style house that, I am told, was once unintentional nature reserve, with voles (Voles! I didn’t even know you could find them in cities!) and the occasional hawk coming for a feast that hid under thick bush of brambles. The new landlord “fixed” all of that, and now I live in a house with a barbecue-pretty lawn. The sort of space you would see on glossy leaflets for plastic grass gardening services come through your post as of late. And yet, throughout the Spring, shoots of bluebells came through this monoculture grass in defiance to the landlord’s vision. Some are growing in close clumps, others grow like inselbergs, alone, and right in the middle of the path I use in my mission of urban gardening.

Is it plastic? Is it real? Is it a corporate way to create fake Grassroots support for their interests?

The thought occurred to me that we in the cultural, creative and heritage sectors are very much like these bluebells; we are all defying the aesthetic, economic and social astroturfing of our ecosystems – our local contexts – by those with a lot of power and a lot to gain from the current system of inequality. I look out on this seemingly “Green” plot of land, rain droplets glistening on blades of grass under an iron-cast sky, and I know which of those plants will not survive to flower, alone and separated from the others. They are in the way of more “important things”, as defined by the person who steers the lawnmower.

The Covid-19 pandemic was like pouring liquid aluminium into an anthill: like the molten metal, the virus travels through the unseen tunnels and cracks, revealing what was once ignored. The social, cultural, economic, medical, and environmental repercussions of Covid-19 can be correlated to the existing inequalities in our society. More than a year on, a consensus is coalescing around the reasons why this terrible virus has also triggered this, our, what, fourth “crisis of capitalism” in twenty years? Shush for a moment and listen: we can already hear the chronic denialism of culpability, even as the human cost of designed poverty mounts.

We’ve accomplished a lot over the last year, and we’re starting to enact some positive change in our frustratingly beloved industry!

Cwm Taf Morgannwg Health Board, the local health board in the county borough of Rhondda Cynon Taf, in South Wales, even admitted that the County’s high deathrate was “predictable”, and that if an exercises predicting a pandemic had been run a year ago they would’ve almost predicted the current picture with “a reasonable degree of accuracy”. Oh, wait, that’s exactly what happened! Lest we not forget, the central UK Government ran something called Exercise Cygnus, a 2016 simulated outbreak of a fictitious swan flu, in which it was revealed that the UK Government’s ability to respond “is currently not sufficient to cope” with the demands on nationwide structures. Resources were spent, instead, on keeping the official report hidden.

I mean, really, who would’ve thought that health outcomes can be directly linked to decades of austerity, underdevelopment, and a deliberate de-investment in society in favour of speculative markets like Bitcoin and Financial Services? Something that can only become worse when our so-called representatives are unwilling, or perhaps ideologically incapable, of recognizing the role socioeconomic government policy has on facilitating citizens to have healthy lives.

It is in this whole complex and messy context that the Wales Culture Alliance/ Cynghrair Diwylliant Cymru and our allies in other networks like What Next? Cymru started to investigate what specific structural inequalities in the creative, cultural and heritage sectors of Wales. Asking ourselves deep questions about everything, from a fair wage to cocreation.

We’ve accomplished a lot over the last year, and we’re starting to enact some positive change in our frustratingly beloved industry! Let me point to you the work done to bring the Cultural Contract to life, as well as opening up conversations about an increasingly digital future and what that could mean for our communities.  But even with all these wonderful discussions and actions taking place, there is one question that I feel is at the core of several issues in our sectors, as well as perhaps the biggest barrier to creating a culture of true collaboration. I hope that this comes around as an honest inquiry, and not naïve scepticism. But, answer me this: Where is power concentrated in Wales? But more salient to the Alliance’s interests: Where is power concentrated in the creative, cultural and heritage sectors?

I ask this because I am starting to realise that it is too easy to be given performative victories, and that these can easily be weaponized against the work we do in a way that zaps us of the long reserves of energy required of such enterprises. While it is amazing that mass movements have started reviews into Britain’s complex history with empire and race, I can’t help but look at any promises by corporations and economic interests as performative window-dressing. Until entrenched power that benefits from such structures is challenged and removed, I expect poison inside the meagre table scraps they throw our way as appeasement. As American commentator Kyle Kulinski says: “they [the establishment] will always cave in on the symbolism”. Changing the wallpaper is easier than fixing the foundations. And makes your brand look woke or whatever! Which is just good for business.

When it comes to changing a system, there are many levers we as citizens can pull. Best time to change things is in the aftermath of a crisis. But if we do not understand who’s managed to get into the kitchen to decide what is an “acceptable” menu of reforms, then we will forever be cursed to have no voice at the table. If we’re truly seeking to reform the system, we must, question our systems central premises of “private control and private profit”, a system that is, if not foundational, at least sharing a very aggressive ecosystem with one that pitches people against each other in a competitive model of organization that is, simply contrary to prosperity and to human nature, as Rupert Bregman argues.

So, I ask again:

Where, in the creative and cultural and heritage sectors of Wales, where is power entrenched?

Consider these questions a conversation starter. Collectively we have more information, more experience, and a better understanding of the whole ecosystem we not just work in, but live in.

I’ll be collecting your comments, replies, rebuttals, corrections and other conversations towards a future article, or perhaps as part of a video conversation! Who knows, we might have our own podcast in a years’ time!

Thank you for reading!

• ian cooke-tapia

• Started April 2021, Finished July 2021