Iris Professional Practice Blog

INDEPENDENT WOMAN

There are plenty of benefits to being an independent artist. You choose your own hours of work, your creative time and you have the freedom of choosing your own areas of development and focus. This will mean that most times you need to develop your intuition, network with other artists, learn from experience and create your own opportunities.

After leaving dance college, if that was your path, you are thrown into auditions and teaching work with often not much more than a reference on how you were taught yourself.
With the advent of internet, there are more tools available to navigate the world of independent artistic practice of course and this has been a positive welcome to those who start their career with fewer resources and/or mentorship.

I consider myself lucky in the sense that I've always loved teaching dance. It helped me learn so much about myself but also plenty about the business side of being an artist. Having to integrate the business aspect of dance made me realise what aspects I enjoy and what aspects have led me to make great mistakes and consequently experience tough learning curves.

I was teaching yesterday and had a post class discussion.The aspect of socialising with students is akin to attending a networking event to me. I used to freeze socially as I din't feel I was equipped with the right conversational skills to meet new people and talk to artists and cultural leaders who could potential support my development.
I soon learnt that confidence was a key word, not only in doing well in a networking event but in almost anything. At the end of a dance class once, a teacher told me that my confidence was very low despite my potential. How would I be able to develop confidence though?...There weren't any counselling or mental health subjects at Dance college...outside of it people didn't care so much and carried on with their own challenges...it took me time but it was only after various interactions with other artists and practitioners that I understood that true confidence came from believing in myself first. Once I fully believed in myself, others would naturally be attracted to my work and my artistic expression. It does make me think though...Discussing with my students after class and teaching adult classes I reflected on how much artistic expression is left forgotten and hidden simply because society doesn't recognise creative thought in the same level as science and literature.

As an independent artist you are "forced" to work outside of any defined framework and this experience, with all its pros and cons certainly supports our own ability to listen to our intuition, to create our own path and discover through experience. Is it the "fight or flight" feeling that pushes our own development?...Could we develop the same skills under a more defined framework?...

Having to teach independent classes I realised, for example, I loathe social media. I learnt how to use it but feel that its a big distraction to my creative process. Interacting with technology is something unavoidable of course. How will this affect the artistic process?...oh, that's the theme for my next blog pre - Re:Generations conference this weekend in Manchester!