It’s been a really busy and creative few weeks, and that’s always a good thing and worth sharing
It started when I heard that the wonderful Bettakultcha ( www.bettakultcha.com )was coming all the way over from Leeds to sunny, Manchester. Bettakultcha is a evening were people get together and give talks about something they are passionate about. Each person submits 20 slides and each slide is on the screen for 15 seconds. It’s a really good way of ensuring that the talks keep moving and stay interesting. When I managed to get tickets I slightly misread the set-up and thought is was a fight club like situation where if it was your first time you had to give a talk, so I volunteered, an offer which was immediately accepted. That then left me the task of coming up with a talk and delivering it. I knew I wanted to talk about the importance of creativity but also of getting out there and being creative, not just keeping it all to yourself. I was really pleased with what I came up with in the end, although I broke the bettakultcha rules by having bullet points ( to my etenernal shame). This for me was another example of getting out there and being the artist, meeting other creative types and engaging within the wider artistic/creative community. Although I suppose it wasn’t technically breaking the rules I used this “organisational diagram” to illustrate my point .

 Video of my talk here

There was a real variety of talks on the night, the future of television, conflict, bananas and aliens, but not aliens, but humans. My descriptions are a bit weak so the best thing to do is go and watch all the videos on their site.  Great night, can’t wait for the next one and thanks to all the gang and the people @thecastlehotel who made it happen

Also it gave me an idea: the lovely folk from Leeds have put something together that they wanted to share with us Manchester lot…there should be more of that. Got me thinking of all the fantastic small studio spaces/ galleries/ art shops that you know about in your own city but wouldn’t know if you were visiting. And vice versa. What you need is some local artists to take you round and show you. It gives you a chance to meet some new artists in your own city and then get a trip out to somewhere new. Cross pennine cultural exchange is the catchy title ( I am working on it although CPCE does have a vaguely pleasing communist aesthetic ) for this plan. Hopefully it will bring artists, crafters, curators and more from across the region to work on future projects together. Interested in either the Leeds or Manchester leg or both, drop me a line

 (Thanks to @martinsfp for using the aces paper app to do his talk, an idea which I borrowed to do the sketch above, lovely app)

I also attended the wonderful Arts Council( http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/ )funding for the arts session at Castlefield gallery ( www.castelfieldgallery.co.uk)   Which was a fantastic introduction to the whole funding for the arts process. I think I , like many others, found it useful as it demystified the whole process. I would quite happily put in a funding bid now and be confident it would be judged on its merits.

Jeepers. That is a lot of information. I didnt even get to the lolcats exhibition…I’ll save that for the next post