I’m heading to Woodbrook to check out the Gathering, my sister Joan has been a volunteer and crowds beginning to build as we speak, click on image for more info

Some of you may know that my full-time job is helping people in the arts in the south east of Ireland. I’m co-ordinating a regional arts programme across five counties for all types of creative people and groups. One of the main strands of the programme was to introduce a website to connect, support and profile artmakers 18 years and above and their work. You might be thinking how this influences my own work, but read on.

As you can imagine overseeing the development of such a website for such a diverse audience was both daunting and exciting (it still is) but you can hear about my efforts in a podcast interview here, where Krishna De ( a leading Irish based social media strategist) and Ken McGuire (an IT expert heavily involved in the arts in Kilkenny), asked me about my strategies and implementation of social media and ideas. They were both involved in setting up the first Podcamp in Ireland, an open forum on all aspects of social media to facilitate the development of vibrant online communities and I was lucky enough to attend. An introduction to such ideas and people actively intent on sharing their knowledge was a godsend in many ways but yes I can admit I was initially daunted – the informal but very professionally ‘unconference’ (where the emphasis is on active sharing) was ‘streamed‘ live to connect with online audiences who couldn’t attend, people were ‘twittering‘ (posting short comments live to followers) during talks and other sessions were being ‘podcast‘ (for online radio listeners). There was talks by ‘bloggers‘ too but what was also fascinating was the mix of people from business and the creative industries who were attending.

I initially took away some practical ideas to better connect with my audience, Dave Maybury from Poetry Ireland told us about an online e-newsletter format,  that I now use to great effect in sharing information about the arts inthe south east and in my own way I had started to blog but I hadn’t known it. Before I started this job I had set my mum up with a template website as on a visit home I realised all her family history work, lying in notebooks could all be so easily lost. Little did I realise it but I set her up on the most popular blogging template WordPress -she’s as surprised as me that she’s now a regular blogger and most exciting for her at her age is the new friends and distant relatives that the blog has now connected her with, it has literally opened up a whole new world for her (she’e at the moment seriously considering attending a family reunion in the state, an inivation from a distant relative who found her blog).

Much later I set up a blog for my own art and while I haven’t had much time for it, it has brought me information and contacts, new audiences for my work and I recognised its also a mechanism for me to log ideas that would otherwise be lost. I’ve since set up numerous blogs for people, both in the arts and for others I recognise have niche knowledge that could be shared with new audiences. Some of this also resulted in courses I developed for my work and in fact with Ken McGuire I believe we started the first ‘how to blog for the arts’ course in the country (you can see more about these new art bloggers here). I’ve also participated in uploading my work to social media such as youtube – which I’ve described in earlier posts – a short film I made was picked up from youtube within hours by curators who asked me to exhibit my work in London!

A lot of this knowledge has occurred slowly and I’ve made mistakes but couldn’t recommend anything better than joining up and perhaps better still, attending the 2nd Podcamp Ireland, here again in Kilkenny, on the 27 Sept. If you are interested but can’t attend, do subscribe to info updates on the Podcamp website but also to updates from new blogging support site that Ken set up profreelanceblogger.com

I’m often juggling many projects at the same time and can all too often see my art goals slipping away. My full-time job is also challenging but I know for my sanity’s sake I need to keep my art alive. In the last while I seem to have been on the lookout for new methods to keep my goals in front of me; I’ve used the back of envelopes, bought loads of notebooks but with rushing around and changing deadlines, its often ‘now where did I put that list?’

I’ve been reading recently an aptly named book called Focus -the power of targetted thinking, and one suggestion was to try goal-setter software . Well, with nothing to lose, I downloaded goalEnforcer.com. It looked very basic but it’s higly visual – its a drag and drop system of entering your goals into ball shapes. I’m always putting things in circles of things to do and this is like that but you can also put in due dates- the circles turn red when overdue and you can edit on the fly – goodbye scribbled goals or worse, goals on lost envelopes!

The program looks very basic but I was suprised to see that my hometown university in NZ was using it as well as Oxford Uni. I’ve starting using it for my work goals and will be trying it out on my art goals soon – only wish it was hooked up to my google diary. Its fun too and sometime just getting your goals down is the first step to starting them

From the editor of Apocalypse Now, Walter Murch, I discovered this small gem of a book on film editing. Can you imagine there was 4 tonnes of material to edit in that film!

What I found striking about this book is that it gives a view in how in our everyday lives, we all ‘edit’ reality continually. If you don’t believe me, read his chapter on ‘blinking’ and watch people when they blink (it’s a sure fire way to see if they have taken in what you have been saying).

So from someone who has worked on the biggies in Hollywood, I found loads of practical ideas for my small film attempts – printing out images and sticking on walls in rows to introduce new ‘cut’ options thereby allowing you mind to creatively mix and match new options. Basically It means you can communicate more strikingly… Printing out stills; it’s on my ‘to do’ list for my recent footage and it brings to mind what I learnt at a recent film masterclass about letting the visuals be more random and poetic. I’ve also found recently to work on the audio first and then add the visuals as I get too precious with the images, too soon.

He shares generously, so that even though its a complex subject, you come away inspired. I’ve recommended it to a few, including some writing friends – ideal if you want to make better projects for youtube!

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Hard to believe what a simple animation can achieve, but Annie’s youtube movie, thestoryofstuff.com, manages to bring a complex subject on the ecological and social effect of western style economics to millions on the net. Her simple drawings and personal story, formatted into a small web-ready animation, shows how an idea, simply packaged and easily available, can be so effective. The personal element of Annie’s story I believe is an important, it scores highly on 10 PINK Rules of effective environmental communication which I’ve talked about before).

Enjoy the movie, there is just a teaser below, and the full movie link is below that ( I saw it first courtesy of Brian and Paul, from FutureProofKilkenny at one of their excellent Global Lunchbox events, thanks guys!)

then signup to Annie’s updates!