Do Your Own Thing E-Book

Richard Phoenix

• Herausgeber: Rough Trade Books
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 203

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Do Your Own Thing is a full-length work of non-fiction from artist and musician Richard Phoenix detailing his experiences of the best underground arts scene you've never heard of——Do Your Own Thing, a project run by learning disability arts organisation Heart n Soul. Looking at the transformative potential of working to support creative young people make the music and art they want to, this book contributes essential new voices, reflections and considerations to the established ideas of 'Do It Yourself' culture. Phoenix's book, written with a disarming and idiosyncratic voice, asks what our often reductive understanding of DIY aesthetics might mean in light of questions about access, support and who gives permission to whom to make art, guiding us through the kind of project only spoken about in funding reports and transforming it into a polyphonic, collaborative and joyful work of art.

Leseprobe

HELLO AND WELCOME

What is Do Your Own Thing?

To answer this question I’m going to give three answers, three different dimensions and aspects through which to view this ‘thing’ I’m going to spend the rest of the book talking about.

The first is looking at Do Your Own Thing from a distance, looking around it, at the context of it. I can tell you that it is a young people’s project run by an organisation called Heart n Soul, who believe in the power and talents of people with learning disabilities.

Heart n Soul has existed since 1986 in Deptford, South East London, offering opportunities for people to take part in creative activities, train in a new skill or develop their artistic talents. Do Your Own Thing has grown out of the unique way Heart n Soul operates, in the way trust, time and space are offered generously to all that come into contact with it, no matter who you are.

This book documents some of what can happen when given this freedom to get on with things and not worry about where it might lead. I now can’t not work like this, which can be difficult when working elsewhere if I’m honest, as it’s rare that you find other places that don’t want to know what will happen before you’ve even started.

Do Your Own Thing is an example of being trusted, being encouraged to embrace unknowns and being a part of a different way of doing things. However, it is just a part of the huge impact Heart n Soul has made over the years on disability arts, learning disability culture and disability rights in the UK and beyond (I hope one day the book about that will be written).

The second way I’m going to answer the question is to shine a bright light on it and look at it directly.

Do Your Own Thing is for young people with learning disabilities and young autistic people aged 10 to 25 years old. It happens once a month on a Saturday from 1pm - 4pm at the Albany in Deptford. There are a range of creative sessions to take part in.

The sessions are—Art, where you can draw, paint, photograph and sculpt whatever you can think of—Music, where you can play instruments, jam together, make your own songs and use the studio to record them— Radio, where you can play your favourite songs, learn to use the mixers and microphones and chat about anything you want—Video, where you can make music videos, dancing videos, parodies, drama, acting, interviews, whatever you’d like—DJing, where you can learn how to use the DJ equipment by using the music that’s already there or bring your own music and put it in the mix to make people dance.

It’s all free and people can choose what they do and how they do it.

The third way I’m going to answer the question of what Do Your Own Thing is, is to look away from it, just keeping it in the periphery of vision and feeling what is happening. I have spent 12 years and hundreds, maybe thousands of hours being a part of Do Your Own Thing and so much of my experience there has been felt. Moments that flash across my memory like dust appearing as it catches the light. Where my mind can’t recall the specifics of what happened but rather the energy in the room.

The materials and techniques of making a work of art can be understood. The image, object or moment can be seen, described and explained. You can see documentation or reproductions of it, but the way it resonates with you when you’re with it is entirely your own experience. It’s not just my life that Do Your Own Thing has had an impact on—too many people also own a story that weaves throughout mine. My observation of it here in these pages, and the impact it has had on my life, shows my perspective but it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll know what Do Your Own Thing is, to truly know that, it needs to be felt.

Start At The Start, It’s A Work Of Art

I had recently moved back to London, after living in Brighton for five years, having left what I had thought at the time was my dream job. I was trying to figure out what I could do to make things work in London. I had started my first job in retail to be able to get a place to live and pay rent, and was trying to piece together that ‘portfolio career’ that musicians and artists these days come to rely on.

This involves having multiple flexible jobs, often freelance, so you can also carve out some time for yourself to make your own art or music. To create this situation for myself I had been reaching out to people and organisations I knew before I moved up. One of them I considered to be the best organisation in London, and the UK, that did what I was interested in. (My elevator pitch for this on-going interest, and perhaps obsession, goes like this—facilitation and creative support for people with learning disabilities to make and share art and music.)

That organisation was Heart n Soul and I had been to a couple of their events, where I was blown away with the environments I had encountered, the music, the performances and the atmosphere had me fascinated with how they approached the work.

I met with Mark Williams, the Artistic Director, and told him what I had done up to that point and what I wanted to do. In this line of work it’s rare that jobs come up or are advertised; for better or for worse, it’s about getting to know people, developing relationships and finding or creating space for yourself in that. Off the back of that conversation I got invited to support at a couple of events, just helping out the people running them, doing whatever was needed on the day. I was getting to know others in the organisation too, including someone called Holly, who eventually sent me an email…

“Hello Richard, We are looking for a musician to step in for Chris on Saturday 8 October, 1pm-4pm to work with Ned and our music group. All the groups at Do Your Own Thing are working towards performing on a double-decker bus at the Lord Mayor’s Show in November.”

Holly was running Do Your Own Thing at the time, organising everything that was needed to make it happen, including the artists and musicians that ran the sessions. This invitation was a foot in the door and an opportunity to be a part of something at Heart n Soul. I was excited but at the same time I became quite apprehensive about my abilities and musicianship.

The person I was filling in for, Chris, was a violinist and someone I would consider an actual musician, whereas I was a drummer in punk bands and could just about play “Yellow Submarine” on the guitar. When I got to Do Your Own Thing and was in the room with the music group this sense of imposter syndrome was heightened dramatically when at one point a 13-year-old called Isaac was absolutely shredding on the drums. I was completely floored, but also realised my one musical card had been out-played already.

You might wonder why, if I didn’t have confidence in my abilities, I’d put myself in this position in the first place, which is fair enough. How can you support people to do things that you can’t do yourself? So to come to my own defence, I had created a bit of a niche for myself up to this point in the way I approached facilitating music-making. In retrospect what I was focused on was less the music and someone’s musical ability but rather the environments that help produce the music, and then what you did with the music that has been created. My background was in punk and my experience was that musical ability didn’t always translate into something that my friends and I enjoyed or gravitated towards. I had spent about six years supporting bands with musicians with learning disabilities to form, write songs and perform. I was using my experience of being in punk bands to enact the Do It Yourself (D.I.Y.) mantra from Sniffin’ Glue zine… Here’s three chords, now form a band—however sometimes we only needed one chord. I was fascinated by things that challenged my assumptions towards music, the act of creation, performance and the kind of experiences and community that can be formed through that approach.

I realised during my first session at Do Your Own Thing that a lot of the things I did best involved working over a long time period with people. My concerns and lack of confidence came down to only having these few hours to try and prove myself of worth to what was going on. I had worked in similar, but different, environments before but I needed time to get to know people better, the young people and the other people working there. Finishing up my first session at Do Your Own Thing, despite my apprehension, I did see a space in all of it for me, I knew there were things I could bring to the table, just about… however I was just filling in.

This was until the next time I filled in, and then the next time and then when Chris never came back I got to stick around.

Working for and with Do Your Own Thing has also become a part of my artistic practice, which involves painting, drawing, writing and making music. It informs and guides it and I inform and guide it in return, but it is not mine, I only own my memories of it. The strange thing is that I’ve written about this before but somewhere hidden away.

I can think back to the thousands of words I’ve already written about it up to this point, in funding applications, reports, emails to potential partners, that will never be seen. These things always feel like a chore to begin with but I always end up appreciating an opportunity to talk about Do Your Own Thing, what happens there, the people, the art, the music and why I think it’s all so important. However, these texts typically end up getting edited down to fit into a word count, to get to the point, to say what various people want to hear. They might only end up getting read by a couple of people to check we are doing what we said we would, to agree to fund the things we want to do or agree to work with us. When we get it all down, to us inside the organisation, it always feels like a small celebration of what is happening. To see it all written out makes what it is we’re doing and why we’re doing it, that little bit more understandable.

The language I have to use in those documents is one I’ve spent years trying to learn, to translate what happens in a room with those young people to be understood somewhere that’s very unlike that space. Here, I’m going to try and resist that language but I still have the job of translating something intangible so you, the reader, can try and understand what I’m on about.

AN ASIDEI was talking to some artist friends last night about the necessity of art and essentially if we thought it was necessary. None of us could pin it down, the only thing I could think of is that the question might only exist because we’re made to feel like it’s an extravagance, like it isn’t essential. What if the environment we existed in understood its necessity without questioning it and just perpetually encouraged it and celebrated creativity in all its forms?END OF ASIDE

There has been this realisation in recent years that I like talking about Do Your Own Thing as a work of art, a masterpiece. The beauty and complication of it as a work of art is that it has few, if any, defined borders, it has no one author and some of the people involved would laugh at me if I even suggested it was a work of art. However, I think of art as the closest word to explaining something understood but ultimately indescribable.

On the surface Do Your Own Thing is a straightforward project and club, involving young people making art, music, radio, videos and DJing in a community setting. It is a quietly radical space though, one that nonchalantly encompasses a whole spectrum of difference and identity. The environment that is created is at all times both highly individualised but also collaborative, collective and group focused.

It is in the name, Do Your Own Thing, you can’t get away from needing to create a space for people to be themselves but at the same time it can only exist on a group level.

There are multiple and varied descriptions of Do Your Own Thing from the people that make it, Ono, who has worked there from the very first session says, “it is a place where a young person can be themselves and find something that they might be interested in.”

And Stephen, who only recently started taking part, says, “it is about doing whatever you like really, no matter your disability there are opportunities, you can thrive in the real world and society of art and music, so if you are all thinking of coming to this club you’re all invited. This place is really going to tear the roof off, really.”

These descriptions always have a bit missing, there’s always another part of the puzzle that’s absent. Most people when they talk about it talk about the possibilities there, what it allows people to do, not always what is made there. The physical objects or pieces of music that are made become very ephemeral—Do Your Own Thing is the work itself. It is an instruction and a guide for those within it, the terms of the performance, the umbrella for the work to sit under. It is the sum of its parts, the people that come to it, the people that run it, the people that get to experience what it produces. I don’t want to talk too much about the public moments, what might be thought of as the ‘finished work’ but rather moments that have been lodged in my brain for years that I want to present, to try and understand why they’re still there. They might be minuscule, imperceptible changes or things that are constant and affecting everyone involved. This book is a process of documenting but I want it to fold into the artwork, not define it. As I write all of this I feel the impossibility of trying to document a work of art that has no one creator. Do Your Own Thing is inclusive in its nature but I know I’m going to exclude people, moments, and work that people have created. I have a quantum dilemma. I want to communicate this thing and for you to look at it but by doing that I’m fixing it in place. All the other things it is might collapse.

At the same time I don’t want it to get lost, I want you to know about this space of constant learning, reflection and joy.

Welcome Desk

Written in conversation with Ono Dafedjaiye

When you come into Do Your Own Thing in whatever building it has taken place in, or has been held at, at whatever point in history Ono Dafedjaiye would have been sitting at the front desk welcoming you in. She has been there from the very first session, and is typically the first person people meet. She’s there if a young person comes and they feel shy, they will see her and the next time they come they won’t feel so shy. Ono has seen people grow up, and also wishes they would stop growing up so they could just stay at Do Your Own Thing. She’s always there, at the very beginning of anyone’s journey through it.

Ono is the first person I spoke to when I started writing this, which wasn’t deliberate but now thinking about it, was obviously meant to be. Ono was visiting me where I live and we were having a celebration dinner after she was officially named a ‘Legend of Lewisham’. A title which she couldn’t deserve more, and she knows it. I think our working relationship is one of the best and most unprofessional I’ve ever had. Like many relationships at Do Your Own Thing, it blurs between work, friendship and family. We chat, bicker and tease each other relentlessly and she’s as good as me at derailing meetings so it’s practically impossible to keep things on topic when we’re in one together.

AN ASIDEOno and I were meeting because we were helping run a music session for young people at the London Symphony Orchestra’s venue, LSO St Luke’s, in North London. When she arrived I was admiring her new T-shirt under her jacket, from one of her favourite artists Lizzo. She then enthusiastically turned around so I could check out the back, which loudly proclaimed ‘100% That Bitch’. We found another T-shirt she could wear for the session. END OF ASIDE

I mainly love working with Ono however because she is sharp, incisive, speaks her mind and always has the best interests of the young people at heart. She told me about when Do Your Own Thing started and how she has seen the changes over the years. She said at the beginning it was mainly “theatre stuff”—dance and drama where people devised their own pieces, there wasn’t as much variety as there is now. Since it has changed there’s lots of different things so people can pick what they want to do, which is important as, “not everyone wants to do one thing.”

When Ono was younger, there was nothing like Do Your Own Thing but she wishes there was, “there should be more things like Do Your Own Thing for young people that have a disability as there’s not much out there for them. It makes me feel happy, because there’s something for young people to do and to inspire them to do.” She also tells me how important it is for it to be her sitting there at the front greeting everyone that comes into the space, “I do feel like I’m a part of it because when a young person comes to Do Your Own Thing and sees someone like them it shows that they could do something.”

When I asked what Ono’s favourite part of Do Your Own Thing is, she said “snack time.” I also love snack time, everyone loves snack time.

Structure

Written in conversation with Lizzie Middleton

Sometimes the more important you are to something, the more invisible you become. A lot of the people that can disappear into the background at Heart n Soul come under the banner of ‘staff’—the small team that keeps the whole thing together, managing the day to day and dealing with all the things that us freelancers don’t have to. The people I work mostly with at Heart n Soul from the staff team, and who are on equal footing within my personal story of Do Your Own Thing are Lizzie and Jenny.

Lizzie and Jenny are examples of more of these relationships, like the one I have with Ono, that blur and shift. These relationships start with work but become so much more. They have all been Project Managers, Taking Part Assistants, Taking Part Officers and other job titles that essentially let you know that they are the people that get stuff done and make things happen.

Some of my friends work, or have worked, in advertising and the idea of creative partners is embedded into the culture of the way they work, even down to applying for jobs together. I think this is one of the few things I’d happily take from that world and use elsewhere. I feel like the relationships I’ve had with Lizzie and Jenny over the years are surprisingly unique within a not-for-profit arts organisation.

I think at this point it’s worth talking about what I actually do, and have done since 2015, at Do Your Own Thing. I started as a music facilitator, which I did for many years and still do occasionally. It’s worth noting that what I do and what others do at Heart n Soul is not art therapy, or music therapy. For a start no-one there is qualified as a therapist but more importantly the people we work with don’t need ‘help’, they need support to be artists and musicians, which is what we provide.

In 2015 a role came up for a Creative Associate at Heart n Soul. This role was to work alongside the project manager for the young people’s work, overseeing the creative direction of it, as well as a load of other stuff including supporting budgets, working with the Artistic Director, feeding into funding bids, reporting on those bids, representing the organisation, artist support, working with partners, creating new projects, doing bits ’n’ bobs, etc. Long story short I applied for it, wore a suit to the interview, and got the job.

AN ASIDEIn the pub once after Do Your Own Thing a lot of us had stayed quite late and the topic of the Creative Associate job had come up. I was umming and ahhing about it, especially as I felt like one of the newer members of the team, even after 3-4 years, but everyone was enthusiastically encouraging me to go for it. The enthusiasm that was offered, both verbally and in drinks meant I missed my last train home. It took me about two hours to get back and whilst winding my way back slowly from south to north through the depths of central London I managed to both fall and break my ribs, and, stop and eat an entire curry. END OF ASIDE

One of my freelance colleagues, Helen, describes a big part of my job as being paid to think, often gently teasing me with, “have you done some good thinking today?” before talking about whether I had or I hadn’t.

It’s an important part of what I do though, needing to know everything that is going on, with the young people’s work but also across the whole organisation. Seeing how things could work, tying disparate threads together, seeing opportunities for things to happen, helping to communicate and share all of it. I had the role name changed a few years ago to Associate Artist. I had come round to seeing everything I did inside and outside of work as one overarching practice, which finally gave me the confidence to call myself an artist. I know that in the context of this book it’s a ridiculous thing to admit that for all the time I would spend encouraging people to see themselves as artists and musicians, that it took me so long to allow myself the same grace. I was still doing the same stuff but people seemed to find it easier to understand as it was more familiar to them.

I ended up speaking to Lizzie about all of this, our respective roles, the creative bits, the experiences—good and bad—that we’ve had together and also what she would repeatedly call ‘the boring stuff’. Lizzie had, for many good reasons, stepped away from her role at Heart n Soul and Jenny, who was a big part of the organisation already and had covered Lizzie’s job over a couple of periods of maternity leave, stepped in. At Do Your Own Thing especially we were all very sad about Lizzie leaving as she had only ever missed two sessions in the ten years of being a part of it. One, when she got married, and another when her best friend got married. So we obviously made a very big deal about it. The outpouring of emotion became diluted somewhat when she was back the next month covering for someone else as a freelancer. We always joke that you can never really leave.

She has been back on and off over the past year, filling in different roles and recently covering for me. It felt like a good conversation to have, with the distance she had from her previous ten years of managing Do Your Own Thing and the intimate knowledge she has of the whole project.

I couldn’t resist my first question to Lizzie being, “what do I do?” Apparently “being Richard” wasn’t clear at the beginning of Lizzie’s time but what it was that I did, slowly unfolded for her over the course of the day (thankfully)…