Suport Women (Artists) Harder!

I've been having an ongoing discussion with a new friend about women.  Women in art, women on stage, promoting women. She noticed the lack of women on poetry stages. As someone who both goes on stage and gives artists stages, I have been engaged with this issue for a long time.  My goal as a promoter is always to achieve 50/50 in my events.  If I do an all-women's event one month, then I generally do an all men's the next.

Women (artists) need our support more.  

Creating equity in my own shows doesn't actually help.  Many promoters ignore female acts all together.  Some put up one female in a line-up of 4-5 male acts and think they should get a special commendation.  My friends who are promoters hear it from me when they program like this consistently.  Female promoters do tend to program shows more equally, but again, we are not making up for the overall lack of opportunity for women at best we're getting a 75%/25% ratio.

Some female promoter friends and I have realized that this lack of opportunity actually creates a gap between the capabilities of men and women artists.  Women perform less, so they practice less, so they slowly become not as good as the male counterparts they started out with (the same is true for filmmaking, plastic arts - fewer deadlines and goals to meet means less actual time spent working toward presentation - skills do not get finely honed and women start to fall back).  This is not every woman.  Some women hustle and get gigs and practice and get there.  But in general, we have to do better in supporting women artists - as women, as promoters, as audience members and as fellow artists.

Women (artists) need our money more.

Forget the confidence issues when you keep putting yourself out there and no one seems to be picking anything up.  There is the real life issue of how to support yourself and your art.  When no one is waiting for your art, or paying for it, the time/money equation can become almost debilitating.

Asking for money is anathema to many women artists.  They might be able to do it on a personal level, but almost none of them are willing to negotiate decent deals for themselves, ask for payment for gigs, or get investment capital for a project.  Even when they go the extra length to crowdfund, they tend to be polite and quiet about it.  (Sure, there's a handful who err in the other direction, but that, too, is just an example of having no idea how to ask for what you need.)

Our money is more than just money.

Even if you are going to pledge a dollar or a pound, it isn't just the money!  Women, artists, women artists need financial support, but there is something else that comes into this process.  A boost of confidence, a spur onward when you feel like giving up, a feeling that your community wants you to succeed, an accountability to the people who are supporting you.  No amount is too little.  Every person who donates is sending a big YES to the project and the artists they are supporting!


Here are some projects I personally support by women whose work I support.  Most of them have given tirelessly to other artists and the community - as promoters, presenters, youth workers, facilitators.  In one case, the fundraising is not for a project, but for medical costs.  Lara's case brings it home to me more than any of them.  The fact is, we will exhaust ourselves for others, to the point of illness, and the point of a complete lack of personal safety and protection.  If you have a minute, please check out the campaigns below and give if you can, share and support if you're interested in the projects!

Jumoke Fashola's Debut CD!

Noni Limar and Stained!

Lara Lyon's Surgery!

Thea Monyee's first book - Murmurs of a MadWoman!

Saria Idana's Homeless in Homeland!

The Amanda Palmer Factor

By now you've no doubt heard about, if not seen, Amanda Palmer's TED Talk.  (She gives good TED Talk - you should see it if you haven't.  It's a nice little performance art piece in and of itself.)

And now, to add to that, we have the Veronica Mars $2 million dollar campaign - now having raised almost $4 million!

The blogosphere, the creative community and even Hollywood is buzzing about all this.

So.  What does it all mean?

It means that I sometimes can't get to sleep for thinking about the awful intersection of being a full-time creative and self promotion, self involvement, and possibly, over-ridingly, vanity.

It means that I have an urgent need to write this blog so that I can get more sleep and get back to what I need to do - self promoting my new book and funding a show I'm producing for The Brighton Fringe.

Yup.

And let me tell you, it's mighty hard to want to do any of that when the poster children for all this are up in your face raising more money than they need for projects that would have been funded by the industries they represent so that their fans can pay not once, but twice, for the privilege of their creativity.  (Yes - you can give to the Veronica Mars crowd funding campaign AND pay for your ticket to see the movie when it maybe comes out in 2015.)

That sounded sooo Hater.  I'm not hating...them...I liked Veronica Mars.  And I've got nothing against Amanda Palmer.  It's the whole concept of using social media as a commercial for individual ego that gives me a kind of low-lying, daily Sartrean nausea.

If Amanda Palmer thinks she crowd-surfed and trusted her audience, well, pretty sure I'd be dead without my community.  Certainly I'd never have stayed in a surprising squat - a green oasis half a block from a tube station - slept in a hostel, barbecued with 2 houses of South African ex-pats or been Batgirl on a canal boat. Sure - bad things have happened, too.  Some really bad things.  But the truth is, trusting in that way - being honest about what you're asking for and what you can and cannot give in return - has led to experiences and insights I never could have had any other way.  It has made me a person who carries the experiences of others in a heartfelt way.  It has given me a confidence in the power of my art and words to create deeper feeling - to connect others more deeply to themselves.  That kind of trust creates love.  It's also the place where art emerges consistently and the elusive inspiration is a fact of daily living.

I'd like to think that if one of the people who've put Amanda Palmer up while she was on tour tweeted her that they needed a place to crash, she'd oblige.  But I have a needling inside me that says there's a secret equation underneath all of this, and that's not part of it.

No one owns crowd funding.  It's an open source medium.  Like the internet, which started as a way to connect people to information and information to people, then quickly became a gateway for the delivery of pornography, or Craig's List which started as a way to buy, sell, recycle, and re-use resources and is now, well, a place where you really don't want to be, in rather short order, crowd funding has been redefined as a way to make celebrities more famous and make them seem vulnerable, which makes us like them more, which makes them more famous.

What we are seeing in this moment is a shift in the public perception of crowd funding - away from community, from shared values and things that promote global progress and toward yet another (yawn) area of the exploration of entertainment, fame, and fans.  There's no reason that these projects need crowd funding. These artists want validation to be sure, and that elusive idea of control.  (The fact that the 2 biggest stars of this new show are women is probably not coincidental.  Routinely marginalized by the entertainment industry, female-driven projects often get 2nd tier treatment - even when you're an established recording and performance artist, or a TV star.  Flexing a little muscle, defining your footprint - these have to be important to both Palmer and Bell.  Everybody puts Baby in a corner until she breaks out and takes stage.)

When crowd funding began, it embodied the idea of having your six-degrees community lift you up to do something positive and rewarding for everyone within your reach.  What it is now, not even five years later, is a way to measure your fan base, increase project exposure and bolster your vanity.  It's no longer crowd funding; it's fan funding.

I'm not sure if I'm resentful of this shift, though I know a lot of artists are.  It's a little sad and a little disappointing. What worries me is that a technology that was developed in order to circumvent a type of greed has fallen prey to exactly that type of greed.

We can't reclaim what never belonged to us.  Open source is just that - available to all; adaptable to current needs.  What we can do is build another sandbox.  And then another.  And another.

(So, this turned out to be two blogs - stay tuned for part 2...)

Practivist of the Week - You Helping Kcymaerxthaere Art Project!

Some of the best things in the world come without a why attached to them.  Life.  Love.  Flowers.  Kcymaerxthaere.  Don't trouble yourself with the why of it - just bask in the wonder of it as an entity.  Be glad it exists.

I met Eames about 4 years ago in Edinburgh.  We actually lived about 20 minutes apart from each other for about a decade before, but didn't meet until the Fringe.  I went to his show and was seduced by the genius of his alternate reality.  A parallel but equal universe to our own, with its own history, its own languages, music, art, mythology - all channeled through his vision - reading our world back to us in code, and then concretizing that code into being.  That takes a particular kind of brilliance and an unwavering commitment to art as a concept.  Imagine if Tolkien had actually gone around creating Middle Earth wherever he went, turning all the stories into a new kind of reality, and you'll have some concept of what Eames is accomplishing with Kcymerxthere.

In the last few years, he has taken his project next level - traveling the world to place plaques at significant sites in the Kcymaerxthaere and lately, partnering with local artisans to create art that both supports the local community and tells the stories of the Kcymaerxthaere.

There are only 4 days left to help raise the $4000 dollars it will take to fund a local project in Abilene, TX. You can help make it happen by going to Indiegogo and giving whatever you can.   Actually go even if you don't think want to give - there's a great video and more information on Eames and the project.  I can't believe that you won't be hooked once you learn a bit more.

If it sound a bit out there, a bit confusing - well, it is.  And it isn't.  And I'm not the storyteller.  Eames is - and he's the best person to tell it to you.  So CLICK!

Practivist of the Week - Update!!!!

In 9 hours, the goal of $10,000 was reached.  Donations will continue to be accepted for further health care costs.

There aren't words for how amazing this is.

Practivist of the Week - YOU helping Tara Hardy

I saw this woman on stage once.  Once.  And she wrung out every drop of salt and water inside me.  We couldn't even stay for the rest of the readers -- we were exhausted and exhilarated from seeing her.  She is at once fierce and elegant, a writer who spares her audience nothing, yet refines each turn of phrase to release maximum meaning.

She is a no holds barred as a writer and a performer.  She is a veteran of the grind that is writing, stages, touring, and our particular kind of freelance lifestyle where money comes when it comes and health insurance is a rare commodity.

She is in trouble.  You can help.  The goal is $10,000 and they are more than halfway there.  Please donate.  CLICK HERE.  Thank you.

I'll let you see for yourself:

Practivist of the Week - YOU! Helping Kevin Sandbloom!

So here we go...

I know of some great projects you can get involved in just by clicking and donating.  Easy.  As much or as little as you are moved to give.

Tireless troubadour Kevin Sandbloom has been pounding the pavements of our souls for some time now.  He's more than put in his 10,000 hours and perfected his craft as a singer, songwriter, and interpreter of songs closest to our hearts.  Besides massively moving songs like "Sweetness" off his new album Under Pink and Bourbon Skies, he is known for killer covers of songs from Sade's "Is It A Crime," to Al Green and Marvin Gaye.

When I heard he planned to record Joni Mitchell's album Blue in its entirety, I couldn't have been more thrilled.  The pairing of Sandbloom's vocals and guitars with Joni's lyrics and melodies, the idea of reclaiming this still dangerous and raw material and giving it out to another cultural generation and crossing it over to new audiences captivated me.


Says Sandbloom:

The idea of covering a whole album has been germinating with me for a long time. Joni Mitchell's Blue is one of those special records that hold a lot memories and feelings for so many and it's probably her most soulful work. In the end it seemed like the perfect choice. The fact that it's starting to unfold into reality is really exciting and I think it will be a landmark project for me.

Where do you fit in?

You can check out Sandbloom and Joni, for sure, and you can wait for the album to surface, but you can also help make it a reality.

Sandbloom has started an IndieGoGo campaign to raise money to complete the project.  IndieGoGo specializes in micro-funding of projects - people have a project and they put it out there, and hope that all the $5, $10 and occasional $100 donation will add up to them getting their project out in the world.  Donations go to a non-profit, and the artist or producer receives the money once the project is fully funded.  Based on the microfinancing models so successful in helping families out of poverty with small business loans across the world, it is empowering artists to take their careers in their own hands, and enabling them to bring you their true visions.

I think it does have potential to be his biggest project yet, and is certainly worth doing well.  Click this link to DONATE!

And if you know Joni, I'm thinking she should paint the cover...just saying.  ; )