Moving Art Management X Creative Central NCL
Producing company Moving Art Management expanded its support for cultural and creative freelancers through a multi-faceted project backed by Creative Central NCL.
Moving Art Management, which supports artists with projects and events with a core focus of dance, ran a multi-strand programme to help freelancers to develop their craft, access expertise and access new opportunities.
The programme, which consisted of three main elements: Open Inbox, Micro Commissions & the Choreview Dance Writing Programme, was developed specifically to empower local creative freelancers to learn, grow and boost their visibility within the industry.
Rachel Jean Birch, Moving Art Management Director and experienced dance producer, shares how this collaboration with CCN has strengthened both the organisation and the sector as a whole.
A multi-strand solution for complex challenges
The three-strand approach taken by Rachel and the team at Moving Art Management was designed to tackle a wide range of challenges freelancers in creative industries face, both in the North East and beyond.
Open Inbox was created as a sustainable way for the organisation to share its expertise and advice with the wider freelance creative community.
“We get so many artists who go ‘I just need to pick your brain about this particular thing or that. I don’t need to pay a full day for a producer…but I just need a couple of hours’,” Rachel explains.
“We’ve got a lot of experience, we’ve got a lot of tools that can help people – I don’t ever want to be a gatekeeper – but at the end of the day, we’ve got bills to pay. We’re a business as well.
“Open Inbox was a way we could have some money to cover our time. Basically, that meant we weren’t working for free, and it meant the artists and independents got the information they needed.”
The launch of Micro Commissions – comprising three £500 commissions for local artists – aimed to tackle the issue of reducing availability of commissions and match funding opportunities, while respecting the value of artists’ time.
“All of the artists we work with need matchfunding support to leverage further funding,” says Rachel, “Basically all of those mechanisms that matchfund have either gone or been massively reduced…there’s just fewer commissions.”
“We were really clear that for that £500 we were not expecting the earth,” she adds, “Because another bug bear of ours is where you see this £500 or £1000 commission, but they expect the moon and the stars – that’s unrealistic.”
Choreview was developed in response to what Rachel sees as a significant regional skills gap: writing about and reviewing creative projects – particularly dance.
“We always find, with all the artists we’re working with that are trying to tour their work, the venues turn around to us and go ‘Okay, so have we got any reviews?’ and we go ‘there are very few dance writers in the region’,” she says.
“We don’t have a lot of people who know how to write about dance well – there’s the skill of writing about a performance, and there’s a skill of understanding dance work as well.”
To tackle this, a series of paid workshops were delivered to upskill emerging writers while ensuring they could earn while they learned, with Moving Art Management collaborating with experts such as New Writing North, co-founder of Alnwick Story Fest Suzy Walker and Lyndsey Winship from The Guardian.
Supporting creative freelance parents and carers
While all three strands of the programme tackled different issues in the sector, there was a clear thread of support running through them – supporting freelance creatives who are parents and carers.
According to Rachel, freelancers with caring responsibilities are often limited when it comes to investing in their professional development – not only from a financial perspective, but a practical one too.
“The people who have caring responsibilities for small children are paying to learn,” she explains, “They’re having to spend £60 or £70 a day to put their kid in childcare so that they can come out…which is a bit more of a disadvantage to those who don’t have little [ones].”
To address this, the programme included childcare stipends supported by Creative Central NCL – a progressive move that was game-changing for participants.
The feedback was absolutely outstanding… and we have tried to keep that as something that we're putting in all of our projects. Not all funders are amenable to it, but it's a step in the direction that we're trying to go."
Freelance creatives and the future
Overall, the programme supported 22 participants, with 15 from North of Tyne and a further seven from further afield.
The programme was hugely successful, and resulted in the organisation being able to leverage additional funding from Arts Council England that would have otherwise not been available.
Open Inbox encouraged participants to network with each other and with Moving Art Management. It also introduced new creatives to Moving Art Management and helped form connections.
Out of the 12 artists who applied for Micro Commissions, three were successful, and went on to achieve other commissions and grants as a result of the experience.
Choreview was well received by participants and resulted in one freelancer, Pagan Hunt, establishing themselves as a professional dance writer.
For Rachel, the programme has also helped Moving Art Management to streamline operations, widen its remit and range of initiatives beyond its dance origins, and plan for the future.
“[The programmes] have been responsive and reactive to what the sector needs. They have also been a way for us to test them, in terms of which ones we take forward, or if we take them forward in a different way – just kind of shaking things up a bit.
“A lot of the services and the skills that we have are transferable to theatre or other art forms. Our expertise can be of value.”
The organisation has taken the learnings from the programme to build a new initiative to support the local producer talent pipeline – giving back to the region’s creative economy for years to come.
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Words by Jane Imrie, images by Luke Waddington