Rebels of Extinction Collaboration for MIF Festival in My House and Yours 2021

Sustainability is something very close to my heart in all things, from helping to set up a group for sustainable productions in my time at LIPA where we encouraged fellow students to consider both the material choices and make more from what they could recycle on productions. Through to my own personal life with clothing and fashion, from my earliest days back in Birmingham, where I would visit Birmingham Rag Market which then was full of vintage and second-hand clothes and more to create my individual look as a New Romantic.

Most years I would invest in a few key pieces and mix up with my charity shop finds, to the point now when I treasure my treasures discovered in my favourite secret outlets! From the very warm as new jacket, I wear most days on my walks through to the most amazing Alexander McQueen shoes I tried to make fit lol some results of the hunting trips are better than others.I hadn’t really had much experience or using fast fashion until I went to Uni and began to see the daily parcels being delivered to the reception from all of the known brands and seeing students scrolling through their screens did I begin to grasp the size of this market. Order for the weekend, wear once, bin! The culture and price points offered made it hard for them to refuse as budgets tight, the overt marketing to create this ethos is immense and hard to resist.

Fast forwards to lockdowns, no theatre I have been attending the rather wonderful Artist Drop-Ins hosted by the Manchester International Festival team, a real tonic in dark times. A place to meet and just share where we all are, offer support to each other and share practices. They have developed over the year (can’t quite believe I am typing that statement) to now hosting some great zooms with local, national and international artists and a brilliant concept Matchmakers. A kind of creative speed dating affair, bringing possible collaborators together and forging new working partnerships. Check them out here

https://mif.co.uk/whats-on/mif-matchmakers-february/

From there Rebels of Extinction formed, collaborating with Actor Devisor Simone French, Actor Devisor Visual man Tom Halls and Director/Producer/Writer and brilliant Voiceover artist Rebecca Taylor Sharman.

With our bid sucessful the time to create content was here, so as a newbie to be sure with filming and so far only creating work for projection I hadn’t really given sound and eek editing footage with words in sync! much thought! Big Big learning curve and at times I may have thrown my toys out of the pram had it not been for the calm more experienced Tom stepping in to help re-edit sections .But that is what a creative growth life is about right? going in with naivety perhaps but then also allowing yourself to be helped and supported.

This is one of the big takeaway moments for me on this project, how a team working remotely and under time pressure can come together and make something happen.

I really enjoyed getting my head into After Effects once more and to a more advanced level than I had attempted before, with lights,cameras and action, there is that wonderful moment when you are self learning software when the basics become second nature and free up some more heaspace to push on to learn more.Since entering the doors of LIPA in 2016 I seem to be on a continual route of new software learning and folks it doesn’t get any easier trust me.

With the additional footage from an oustanding documentary about just how destructive the production of clothing around the world is having on our planet from ‘Riverblue the Movie’ a huge boost, and the fabulous images of Salford Mills from my old neighbour and local historian Tony Flynn we had our story. A story crafted by Simone and Tom with their unique satirical approach, the catchiest earworm so far of 2021 all underpinned by Rebecca’s scripting and direction.

A huge big thank you to the team from MIF who looked after us in the production process, we streamed as the second of this years Festival in My House and Yours on January 28th . It is still online and available to view here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH9yiWP3HYw&ab_channel=ManchesterInternationalFestival

Simone and Tom’s theatre of TomYumSim here

https://www.simonefrench.com/tomyumsim.html

http://www.tomhalls.com.au/welcome

River Blue http://riverbluethemovie.eco/

Cherish your clothes,make considered choices,change one thing

Reinvention a term to embrace in strange times

So finally a new blog post! during the last six months on this ride with my fellows in the creative industries, I have swung by my blog and website thinking yep must update that, redo this. All with no result as reading the headline of my last one just felt like mockery, an emerging practitioner stopped in my tracks along with many of my cohort both last year and this year’s graduates struggling to figure out how to survive.

Truth is I didn’t learn a new language, become the fittest in my life, or indeed learn how to bake sourdough bread. I crashed as becoming a member of the excluded group opened up old wounds and anxiety became my everyday companion leaving me incapable of creative thinking or creation. Luckily for me, I have a very generous amazing therapist who continued to see me virtually and not letting me pay, she raised the red flag. I was not in a good place, lets just say that.

Walking became my thing, heading out every morning at around 7 am and just walking, no destination no plan. I began to discover parts of my local Salford that in 20 odd years of living here I had no idea were there, the secret meadow and my thinking oak brought peace and solace, this and some of the most incredible zooms given and hosted by amazing people began to have a healing effect on my mind and creativity and to being brave.

I began to apply for arising opportunities and was lucky to be accepted on one that was and is ultimately the trigger to opening Tracey up to her creativity once more and a path now on for reinvention, the term action learning was new to me and my fellow members of our superset meeting every two weeks until November, we are both exploring and learning who to facilitate our own though the rather brilliant The Hub co-organized by another amazing crisis group The Creative Industries Federation. It is true talking does help and can lead to action, I became braver and applied for a Creative England initiative ‘Ideate Manchester’ with StoryFutures Academy and was accepted onto a two-day intensive Bootcamp in new emerging digital technologies VR/MR/AR WOW! a head and heart-opening two weeks with my oculus headset discovering some of the most beautiful and creative works.

With this and my renewed interest in all things visual I made a little movie in my thinking tree a little share of my passion for Shinrin Yoko the Japanese method of relieving stress by tree bathing, just sit observe and open all your senses to space and sounds that these majestic alive places give us.

And now? working on a project and my first ever Arts Council application, a tad daunting but the people I am meeting and discussing the possibilities of HOYO (more next time ) is making every creative muscle in my body tingle. So why right this today? it is World Mental Health Day and it is ok to not be ok and also not, if you struggle at any time there are people and places out there. Pick up the phone, as this continues the fatigue is real and the mind is an organ like all our others and at times needs to be looked after.

A big shout out to the team of the MIF who stepped in instantly with initially daily drop in’s for artists and freelancers, giving space to just talk, check-in and now a new community of attendees and collaborations have sprung forth. Now weekly you can find details and massive amounts of resources on their website.

So more from Tracey version 4 soon, be gentle, be safe.

Here are some links to some of the best resources for us creative theatre folk and my little film

https://thehubuk.com/

https://www.creativeindustriesfederation.com

https://mindapples.org/

https://www.gm-artisthub.co.uk/

https://mif.co.uk/mif-drop-in-artists-freelance-creatives/

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