Luminate - What Went Wrong?

 

Back in October 2017, I remember becoming aware of a Scottish Festival of Creative Ageing, organised under the umbrella of an organisation called Luminate. You can still have a look at the brochure online. I went to one of the 2017 events: a Creative Ageing Day in Ayr Town Hall. 

It was described as 'A fun, explorative event which aims to generate some genuinely creative thinking through a range of hands-on workshops, performances, talks and screenings of short films. There will also be a marketplace to promote local opportunities for creative learning, arts and cultural activities.' 

It certainly was a fun day, most notably because it seemed to involve mostly older people doing their own creative thing. By themselves, for themselves, with plenty of enthusiasm and skill.

A glance through the brochure for the whole festival shows a variety of excellent events run by all kinds of groups throughout Scotland. There was Irvine Community Art Club, 'a group of retired people who share a passion for art.' There was traditional jazz, a life affirming drama about a son accompanying his elderly father on a trip back to India, and an inter-generational photography project. There was an event called Celebrate National Grandparents Day by taking part (with your grandchildren) in a workshop run by an experienced traditional carpenter. This included 'A chance to use axes, draw knives and chisels in an appropriate and safe manner to make a small piece to take home.' There were tapestry and other craft workshops for adults and children or grandchildren, a workshop on Muriel Spark, something called Thrawn Craws, a Murder of Writers aged between 40 and 80, committed to writing for older actors. ('We invite you to join us as we present important stories about the many facets of love in contemporary Scotland.') There were dance classes for the over 60s and Prime, an over-60s semi-professional company presented a series of bespoke two minute solos, created by top Scottish choreographers for individual company members. 

The whole programme was full of interesting, exciting, entertaining events with the aim of showing that older people are already wise and creative, and that when you provide opportunities and mix up the generations, without patronising, something wonderful can happen. 

Then have a look at this. 

Do you spot the difference? The way in which the whole venture has become didactic (Creativity for carers, anyone?) rather than exciting and inspirational. 

What went wrong? How, in five short years, could something that was so vibrant, so interesting, and so positive become a project almost wholly aimed at facilitating (they're very fond of that word) younger creatives to teach us poor oldies how to be creative in our dotage. The creative practitioner as a sort of cut price social worker promoting our 'wellbeing' (another buzz word) whether we want it or not.

Why and how did this happen? Was it a political decision? If so, it was a bad one. The creative arts are always worth engaging with, in and for themselves, not as some kind of short cut to 'mental health'. 

All I know is that something that started out full of life and vibrancy, seems to have become stodgy, pedestrian and faintly patronizing. 'Let's find something for the poor old folks to do' and 'let's train our young creatives to facilitate them.'

Am I alone in finding this profoundly depressing? Especially compared with how it all began? 

The Opposite of Retreat

From the Hotel Mariano Cubi in Barcelona

'Every writer needs peace, quiet and space in order to be creative' says the blurb for one organisation offering various admittedly beautiful habitations in which we are going to be inspired: sheds, yurts, cabins. They're all there. 

I don't think I had realised, till I came to post this blog, just how much of a bandwagon writing retreats had become. Look them up and you'll find everything from fully tutored and catered courses to self directed retreats where you just take your current work and go somewhere remote, without distractions. The courses are popular everywhere. Most of them are already booked up for this year and there are waiting lists. 

I've taught on courses like this myself - notably at beautiful Moniack Mhor in the Highlands - and I can see the attraction. They're certainly enjoyable for the tutors involved and I'd like to think that the students find them useful as well. 

Then there are the 'residencies' that also tend to be in rural areas where peace and quiet is a prerequisite. In fact 'peace' is a much repeated word on most of the websites. 

I'm lucky enough to live in an old house in a rather beautiful rural area. I've lived here for many years and I love it. But maybe this is why, whenever I see ads for writing retreats, I feel a sense of despondency creeping over me. Back when I was working and child rearing and looking after ill parents and very, very busy, the notion of a peaceful retreat, just me and the laptop, seemed enticing. 

But not now. 

Now I realise that, from time to time, I want whatever is the opposite. Buzz? People, noise, life? Advance rather than retreat. I want to be inspired, but not by peace and quiet.

Sagrada Familia from a busy Parc Guell

Last week, we finally managed to go to Barcelona. Long story short, this trip was planned pre Covid, and then had to be postponed. Our son worked there for two years, but about a year ago, moved to Stockholm. When he told us that he would again be working from Barcelona for a little while, we booked our flights to cover a weekend so that we could spend some time with him and Catalan friends. This was our first holiday that hadn't involved work of one kind or another for years. It has also been a most inspirational holiday in terms of my own writing.

I got what I wanted: heat, sunshine, noise, people, scooters and bikes, music, chat, good food and drink, activity, life. So much life. In spite of the fact that my husband has serious mobility problems, we managed to get out and about every day, and did plenty of sightseeing. A Catalan friend lent us his granny's wheelchair. Barcelona and its people came up trumps with access and generally being kind and obliging. Son, assuming the parental role, messaged us from time to time to make sure that we were managing. 

We used to be well travelled - both of us have lived and worked extensively outside the UK - but you get out of the habit and Covid has made us afraid, overly cautious. Age, or our focus on it, is inhibiting. Much worse, is the subtle and not-so-subtle psychological pressure applied by all those TV adverts for funeral planning and mobility aids and equity release. How fragile you are, they all seem to say. Better watch out. Better be careful. Better take no risks. 

I switch them off.  You can't stop the process of ageing, but you sure as hell don't have to wallow in it. 

I have also taken to switching myself off mentally whenever people of my age start to go on about health matters. Sometimes now I literally excuse myself and come back when they've finished. At other times, I just mentally go to another place. It isn't that we don't have health concerns, because we certainly do. Significant concerns in my family. We just don't need to talk about them all the time. At so much length and in so much detail. And so constantly. In such doom laden tones. 

Even so, before this trip, I was aware of a persistent knot of anxiety inside me.  On our first day in Barcelona, sitting in the Munoz Ramonet gardens, just along the road from our hotel, I realised that it had disappeared. It simply couldn't compete with the city. No doubt it will come back, but now I know that I can make it go away again. 

Beautiful, brilliant Barcelona was the complete opposite of a retreat. It was full to bursting with life, and colour and movement and people and inspiration. Isn't this what writers need?  

Our hotel was in a narrow street that was quiet by night but loud by day. Wonderfully loud. Scooters buzzed past. Doors slammed. Trolleys trundled. The sun streamed down between buildings. Our room had a tiny balcony with a table and two chairs. I spent hours out there in between all our adventures, with wine or water or coffee, depending on the time of day, watching the life of the street below or gazing at the balconies with their plants and flags and washing, or marvelling at the roof gardens, while overhead, noisy swallows soared high into the blue. Late in the afternoon, an old lady came out onto her balcony, and stood among her plants, watching the activity of the street below. And it struck me that she too probably complains about her health to anyone who will listen. 

It was wonderful. It made me want to look and look and go on looking outside myself, to write and keep writing as nothing over the past few horrible Covid haunted years has. Retreating is the last thing I want to do. And I want to go back to Barcelona as soon as possible. 

Vamos. 

Celebrating Creative Change and Transition, Whatever Your Age.

Wordsworth's couch. Doesn't look too comfy, does it?

From time to time, I meet up with a good friend, an artist, and we set the world - and ourselves - to rights over coffee and scones. (Wordsworth liked to lie on his couch, in vacant or in pensive mood, but we like to chat.) A few things strike us about these meetings: how nice it is to meet up with a like minded person, and how helpful it can be to talk about work and motivation, why and how we do what we do, and what we feel about it. It helps that we're both creative but work in different areas of creativity. It's amazing how often insights emerge from these conversations as we explore the differences and similarities between our respective practices. My friend has been doing serious research into ageing and creativity and as we grow older, but still remain creative, we inevitably find ourselves thinking and talking about the challenges the years bring.

It's all useful, but just occasionally, a vital insight seems to emerge.

Ageing, when you're working in the so called 'creative industries' can be a demoralising business. Especially, I suspect, when you're female, although men don't have it easy either. At a time when you might be reaping the rewards of a lifetime of creative practice you can suddenly find that professionally, you've disappeared. Women, especially find this.  You feel more confident, wiser and, in many ways, at the peak of your game. And yet, that's not how the world sees you, not even the world in which you may have lived and worked hard for years.

Read this long and intensely interesting interview with Anjelica Houston for example. She's of an age when she can say exactly what she thinks. I love it when she says 'I’m looking for movies that ... aren’t apologetically humble or humiliating like, “Band of cheerleaders gets back together for one last hurrah,” you know.'

Only this week I found myself facing the realisation that a decent amount of successful work in a particular field - not, fortunately, the one which means most to me right now - counted for absolutely nothing. I had become invisible. But this isn't a rant. Not this week, anyway! And all it did was confirm for me that I'm heading in the right direction. That I don't have to be apologetically humble. That I don't even have to try to go back to a part of my creativity that no longer serves me well.

Throughout my creative career, I've encountered periods of quite radical change and development, periods of transition, where the kind of work I once did, the work that once satisfied me, no longer suited me. So I moved on. Sometimes that was a slow process, and sometimes it happened almost overnight. Occasionally, I looked back to themes or ways of working that had once excited me and picked them up again with the benefit of experience. In fact that's what happened with my latest book, A Proper Person To Be Detained, the true story of a murder in my own Leeds Irish family, in 1881. I had often thought of writing about it, but it was only a couple of years ago that the time suddenly seemed right, that I felt myself capable of undertaking the project.

When I was young, or even middle aged, these periods of change and transition didn't feel wrong. They may have been challenging but they were exciting. And one of the reasons why they were exciting was that they always felt like a part of some kind of creative cycle. One way of working no longer suited, but another one did. So I took what I needed from the old, shrugged off the rest, and moved on. There was work to be done, and wasn't that good?

As older writers or artists or musicians, though, we have to contend with the almost constant brainwashing about ageing, failure and diminishing powers that surrounds us. Our media, whether it's television, radio, social media or newspapers, constantly bombard us with negativity about ageing. It could be 'Parsnip Man' and June, rabbiting on about funeral plans, or those hideous headless pictures of very old people trudging along with their walkers: you know, the ones that they always show over headlines about bed blockers or elderly abuse. See enough of them, and you do start to wonder whether it wouldn't be better to head off into the wilderness now, before they get to you.

The other thing that happens to you is that if and when you find yourself in one of these inevitable and hitherto quite exciting transitional periods, you may put it all down to ageing. When for most of us, it's nothing of the kind.

Think about it. Much more likely is that it's just one more phase of a long career in creativity. Change is inevitable, but often it can be wonderfully empowering. And that should be welcomed and celebrated. Shouldn't it?

However young or old you are.