I spent the last 4 days at an intensive workshop with https://www.guillermogomezpena.com/la-pocha-nostra/

at Live Art Ireland Headquarters, Millford House, Tipperary.

There were I think about 14 of us in total, not including our instructor team, Guillermo and Balitronica. I took some notes during the 4 days, as I know I will forget a lot of what went on. I am unsure at present if we are allowed to post photos of the workshop.

OK a few days later and I know what I can and cannot post.

 

Thinking about what I learned, what was good about the 4 days, what was not good about them, what I can take from it and move on with.

I was nervous at the beginning, and the usual feelings of ‘you are too old/too busy/too everything else’ were sloshing around. The workshop was 4 days and it seemed from the website that participants we being invited to stay for the duration. Now there was no way I could stay away this long, so I asked if it could be done by attending on. daily basis and not staying over. Yes I was told.

I soon realised this was not idea as people were eating together and hanging out together and talking, in other words a lot of the workshop was unofficially kind of happening before and after the official times. This meant I was missing a lot of this and one of the main reasons I had signed up for it apart from to push myself creatively was to connect and meet more performance artists. It was disappointing. I decided quickly that I would need to stay at least one night for the reasons above, but the night that I did was ironically a quiet night in the house as a lot of the participants went to the pub. (Inwardly socially reclusive me did not want to go, the thought of having to try and hear people, albeit really nice people,  I didn’t know very well talking in a noisy shouty pub was not ideal, especially after a tiring and challenging day of working, and an even more challenging one promised for the following day. It was too much lack of control for controlling me.)

The last night seemed to be the pinnacle of the celebrations and I had to leave and drive home straight after the workshop hours were finished at 8pm. Apart from this issue it was a very interesting, explorative, quite magical 4 days of creativity. To work with such fervent and intensive artists who believe deeply in their work was very inspiring and deeply comforting to me who works mostly by myself and who has to motivate myself most of the time.

I took pictures of the pages of the notes I took as sometimes these evoke the spirit of the event better than my interpretations afterwards.