Cha-Ching

Starting again means looking back at where things went wrong last time and trying to avoid making the same mistakes.

Some mistakes are easy to make again, because they are part of an alluring vicious cycle, and you find yourself, all to easily, falling back into those comfortable, friendly old habits. We need to truly recognise how and why we made these mistakes first time round to break the cycle. Intervene and create a new virtuous one. 

Money is a bitch. Not having money is also a bitch, and let's be honest, pretty essential to every business. How can you make anything without it? How can your business grow? 

I hate thinking about our company as a business, it makes it seem so serious and urgent. I don't think our work should be made in a rush. I'm not altogether sure I agree that all practicing artists have to think of themselves as a business. When we made work without thinking about money, it was more truthful, exciting and ambitious. We have been repeatedly persuaded, throughout the companies existence, that money should be a driving factor of our work, in order to create a sustainable company with longevity.

Six Lips Theatre was founded through a Creative Business incubation program. The idea was to assist young artists in creating sustainable business models. We told the program mentors and supervisors what we wanted to do, and they told us what else we might need to do to ensure there was a steady ongoing income. 

We hated all of the ideas. All of them. We were sure we could find a way to gradually make money doing the projects we wanted to. People would invest in us and our work, because it was truthful, exciting and ambitious and so were we! 

And this is how we made work for years. Glorious years. We made enough to cover our costs and support the next project. There was steady growth, and plenty of ideas in the barrel to have a scrape around. 

So what happened? An organisation stunted our momentum, growth and creativity, by advising us that our current mode of business was

"Over ambitious"
"Unrealistic"
"Unsustainable"

We should stop what we were doing and focus on one project, and rely on Arts Council funding to make that achievable. Yes! We were told to stop our independent, successful and growing strategy, to instead strip back and put all our eggs in a lottery basket. 

At the time we were young and so excited to be taken on by a big producing company, we were wowed by them. They promised 100% success rate in their bid writing, and had some rather exciting names on their books, however £2000 of our money and one failed bid submission later they dropped us. We had given them all the money we had, and we had stopped making work to focus on a project we could no longer do.

Looking back we never really recovered from that experience. We felt naive for thinking it was that easy, and embarrassed that we'd been picked up as a new burgeoning company, to only be dropped at the first hurdle. Like a band getting signed and dropped by a record label before they even got into the studio to make some music.

We thought 'fuck them' we'll find a way to scrape this project off the floor. We are doers. Well we did develop that project and we took it on tour, £2000 less (which would have come in handy).

Since we had that experience, we have had some good years, creatively and financially. We've worked on some incredible projects with some amazing people - particular highlights have been Young Roots with York Mind and our Fairy Tale Library Tours with the hilarious and talented Miss Trout. We have had some good times, we have made some powerful work, work I have passionately enjoyed and we are very proud of. 

But that momentum has never returned. Every project feels like an uphill struggle before you've even jumped on your metaphorical creative bike. We expect obstacles and we dread looking for the money. Not another bloody bid/ application/ fundraiser.

We fell into a money rut. It's easy to see how it happens. With every passing year, it becomes a little more disheartening when you have to do a job for free. You've been doing this a long time, and you're good at it, it's time you got paid for your time. 
You have to take on work which is (hopefully) linked to some of your interests (creatively or thematically) because of the fees attached. I think everyone has done this from time to time in their professional life. The outcome can be very pleasing in terms of the work produced but nothing gives you the sense of fulfilment you get from satisfying our own creative itch. 

It got to the point where no one wanted to apply for anything to fund the ideas, and no one was excited by the ideas because they'd been bent out of shape to fit clearly into this formula. No money and no work.

So, our simple mistake over the years was to assume that we were naive and unrealistic at the beginning. We thought we'd got it all wrong and we'd look back years later and laugh at our approach to work and money:

"Do you remember when we were young and fresh and we just made the work we wanted to, that was important to us, and we didn't try and hard sell it, or get anyone on board, or look for funders, we just put it out there. How ridiculous and funny"

But actually, what's not funny is that those were the happiest times, and the most satisfying creatively.

We're starting over, we're not going to make the same mistakes twice, we're breaking the cycle. We are going to make work naively, just put it out there.

There is nothing like seeing your own truth, the work you passionately want to make, through to fruition...even if you don't get paid.