Director’s Blog – Lisa Charlotte Davis
Badly Drawn Boy was performing his Bewilderbeast album in full and getting frustrated that he couldn’t feel the music and what struck me was the vulnerability inherent in his performance.
It got me thinking about the bravery of artists of all kinds – musicians, writers, visual artists, comedians – who capture something that is truly personal about their own experience – how a break-up felt, what it’s like to watch your children become independent decision-making adults, a relationship with a mentor, how they see the world…
They take this experience, shape it through whichever medium of creative expression they use, offer it up to the world to respond to as we see fit, and in so doing, create the possibility for human connection – the relief and resonance that someone has articulated something you’ve also felt, the insight into someone’s experience that is different to our own that enables us to empathise and connect.
There’s something so vulnerable about this process. It feels like communication at it’s purest: this is me; what do you think?
I loved Damon Gough’s appreciation for the way smaller venues create the possibility for connection between the artist and the audience.
And it made me think of social media too (my brain is a very jumpy dot-joiny sort of place!) – of what we’re all doing here, if not engaging in this process of putting ourselves out there and hoping for some resonance.
Of course not all communication in this sphere – or indeed the culture sector – is unclouded by other intentions.
People need to make money. They might be trying to satisfy the requirements of a funder or commissioner, persuading us to take a view, wanting to impress us, aggrandize themselves or exert power over others…
So much of our energy is spent sifting through all of the communication we are bombarded with in the digital age, working out how to read the messages coming our way.
But for me, the bravest communication is the one that is stripped of any other intent, the pure act of saying, here I am, here is how I experience the world…
And that’s why I love working in the culture sector, surrounded by people who feel to their core the importance of artistic expression as a way to create connection.
Image credit: Hope Caitlin.
