Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can
Director of Firstsite, Sally Shaw, talks through some of the projects produced during 2020 and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can
I can’t remember where I first came across this quote from the 1970s tennis player, Arthur Ashe but it’s been a continual comfort, liberation and inspiration for me for quite a while. Especially during the last 15 months when dynamism (or shall we just say creativity?) has been very much in demand.
Each sentence is both a provocation and also a reality check, helping me ground myself, push myself forward to just try, and see what happens. Often, that can be the hardest part – just giving something a go, taking a punt.
Start where you are
Like many organisations, the pandemic has thrust Firstsite into having to tackle challenges creatively and without much prior knowledge. At the start of the first lockdown, I felt it was critical that we kept a small team – especially senior management – in place.
I also immediately loaned a large chunk of the gallery to another charity, Community 360, who were distributing welfare packs to shielding communities. It felt psychologically very important that the art gallery remained open in some capacity and continued to be useful.
Both of these decisions proved as creative as some of the artistic activities we undertook during lockdown, in terms of the good will they generated, the stories we could use to continue to talk about the gallery.
It’s also forced me to slow down and give everyone and everything more time and space to think and be creative. Possibly the most valuable lesson I’ve learned in lockdown.
After having worked with the team to batten down the Firstsite hatches, both practically and emotionally, I was at home, literally clutching my laptop, like a small life-raft in the face of a giant storm and thinking ‘what on earth are we going to do?’
Use what you have
I’d had an idea to do some sort of colouring book rattling around in my head since first being at Firstsite. The idea had popped up as a result of chatting with families who take part in our Holiday Fun programme. I’d been curious about commissioning an artist to draw a set of drawings, which could then be filled in or scribbled over at home.
At Firstsite, the whole team has a bank of ideas like this just waiting for the right time.
We enable these ideas to ‘drop’ by having an advanced programme which is only about 50% planned long-term. This sounds like chaos and was born out of the very difficult place Firstsite was in when I started, but has proved a successful way of thinking and programming.
Within the hour, they both came back to me, not only saying yes, but with ideas. Artists are amazing
It’s important to keep the balance between having enough structure to create stability and security, but not so much that we lock out the excitement and learning that experimentation and reactive thinking can bring. We talk a lot about being fast and slow simultaneously. It’s a fine balance. We don’t always get it right. But having both speeds seems to meet the various personality types in the team and allows for different approaches to problem solving.
The colouring book was the idea that ‘dropped’ as I sat there staring at my laptop. Before I could talk myself out of it, I emailed two very trusted and wonderful artists to sound them out – Jeremy Deller and Sir Antony Gormley.
I asked them if they could come up with a very simple idea that could be explained on one side of A4, with an easy visual and could be included in a PDF of lots of ideas by other artists. All black and white, all very basic, downloadable and ultra-accessible. Within the hour, they both came back to me, not only saying yes, but with ideas. Artists are amazing.
And so, the first ‘Art Is Where the Home Is’ activity pack got going. It completely snowballed from there. Within 2-3 days we had about 20 artists who’d said yes, and some of the first ideas coming through. Over the summer of 2020 we produced four packs in total with more than 50 artists included. These have now been downloaded by about 92,000 households world-wide, which we estimate means that 3-400,000 people will have enjoyed the packs and made stuff during the various lockdowns.
The main cost, financially speaking, has been people’s time and effort, and willingness to just put something out there. The main risk has been the potential embarrassment of no-one being interested, which was very quickly squashed.
I didn’t ask permission from my Board and I definitely didn’t write a business case. I just gave it a go, and then folded people in, as the idea grew, and different people showed they wanted to be involved.
Do what you can
The packs and how they developed have now generated a new working group made of Board and executive team members who are actively working with me to create new small-scale ideas in a similar vein that can be tried and tested. I can see this group eventually becoming a whole new business ‘wing’ of Firstsite – taking the notion of creativity and entrepreneurialism as far as it can go, stretching the definition of what an art gallery is, what it can do, and with whom.
The impact on Firstsite has been immense. Our newsletter subscribers (one of the key things we measure to understand our reach and ‘value’) jumped from 11,000 to 42,000 almost overnight. It had taken us three years to get from 8,000 to 11,000 previously. Importantly, these new friends have stayed with us. We have done other things in the past, where there has been a massive spike (our Andy Warhol exhibition, or free cinema tickets, for example), only for the numbers to drop off a cliff again immediately afterwards.
I am very fortunate to have a Board and a team, who have become good at doing new things
The other important impact the activity packs have had for us as an organisation, is that they have shown us how to experiment – they’ve given us license to be creative. I find this relatively easy as an individual, having started off life as an artist. But it’s a different kettle of fish to work like this as a whole organisation. I am very fortunate to have a Board and a team, who have become good at doing new things.
Doing projects that may not initially have a clear purpose or a sound business case behind them, but just ‘feel’ right is important. Following those ‘hunches’ can be extremely valuable to an organisation – especially when there’s not much ‘real information’ to go on, like in the early part of last year. New things generally don’t have much evidence behind them. That’s the nature of the beast.
Yes, that’s all happened during one of the most extraordinary times we have all experienced. But the essential ingredients of this project – mostly the motivation and willingness to try and possibly fail, are very much transferrable and scalable. You might say that’s dynamism, but I prefer to call it creativity.
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Listen to an audio version of this blog read by Sally Shaw >
