today is nearly 4 weeks since the schools closed, due to the corona virus pandemic. At least I think it was 4 weeks ago, time has blurred. Any entries here are sparse and brief and disjointed due to them being started and unfinished or hurriedly recored. As there is pretty much no work going on and this is supposed to be a record of my creative path, therein lies another reason why there havn’t been many entries.
what HAVE I been doing, around minding the kids and trying to keep them happy and entertained and nourished and exercised?
I got notification that my application for a visual arts bursary was unsuccessful. 141 applied, in the end 31 got money I think. They emailed me with feedback infairness. There’s a covid 19 payment from the arts council, it’s basically another bursary under a different label. You needed to do a little less writing to apply. I did apply and finished it yesterday, despite feeling a little illicit as many art world people were saying it wasn’t good enough, that it was a tepid olive branch being thrown out to artists, etc etc. christ I wish I knew how to spell check in word press. ok I just googled it and think I have enabled it.. wow this is big news! I the burren trip art performance I called ‘I need to be ready’ as the basis for my proposal. This turned out well, unsurprisingly as there was a lot of pre-performance work gone into conceptualising the idea and many proposals were written around the concept. So I knew exactly how it should do, and luckily that day the various elements came together.
I started a kids art competition about 3 weeks ago too, just for kids in county clare. I have about 52 entries so far. I made a facebook competition page and watching the entries coming in, some by post and some by email, has been very interesting, and a nice mini distraction for the kids. It’s like getting a little glimpse intot the minds of the primary school ages kids here in this area. Prizes wise I don’t have much- a some book tokens from a local bookshop and some art supplies from the local art shop. and portraits of the winners from me. I started it as my kid Hector, age 5, was upset he was too young to enter a writing competition the other 2 were entering. So I thought I’d start one he could enter. So that takes up a good bit of time each day, processing the entries and emailing the parents asking if we can publish the work to facebook.
This whole situation, as in schools off, shops shut, 2k travel only from your house, is due to continue till early May. Like the rest of the nation I darent think about whether it will end then. I doubt it as reasonably how could things return straight away to normal, if everything reopened and people started mingling again wed likely have a resurgence of covid cases etc etc. but a couple of days a week of school for the kids, it would make such a difference to them psychologcally.
Work wise I emailed a nice man called Ben about an opportunity I saw in artsadmin, an online arts newsletter I subscribe to. It’s an open call to make a piece of work around aging, loneliness. Thinking about how I could manage to do this, idea being to recite a poem , but 2 people in different places reciting it back and forward from 2 different places. Want to involve Eleanor but whether this can be done, whether she could video it her end, and would be into it, I don’t know. Maybe someone from OCA, possibly the great austria group?
My time now is up, kids are stirring so this entry has to finish. But I got it written, not so bad!
