Jobs discussed in this article:

1. Canoe Instructor/Camp Counsellor
2. Flower Shop Attendant
3. Ice Cream Scooper
4. Baker
5. WORN Fashion Journal

Inheriting a long standing organisation and expecting to good by it is a daunting position to be in. But I somewhat unexpectedly found myself in that exact spot when I started working at Document. To say my position at the festival has snowballed over the past two and a half years would be something of an understatement. Coordinating means putting out a lot of fires, multi-tasking and collaborating to your hearts content. When people ask me what it’s like I’m often inclined to tell them: “I herd cats for a living.”

Looking back on my twelve odd years in the workforce is a strange activity. My past jobs feel like past lives – and the path to Document is much more like a process of elimination than a coherent career path. Growing up, friends lay the groundwork of fruitful careers while I pinged from childcare to the service industry to a smattering of arts jobs.

Before university I was a film obsessed, theatre nerd who pined for a job in journalism. Rather than volunteering or trying to gain work experience I nurtured a short attention span for part time jobs. Spending a number of summers working at camps as a glorified babysitter and canoe instructor. At 17 I worked in a flower-shop where I wasn’t allowed to touch the flowers – instead I was sequestered in the basement where I washed pots and vases and was kept company by Seabiscuit … the store cat. Then there was the ice-cream scooping where I and a staff of teenagers made thousands of waffle cones and slung ice-cream in a badly ventilated but very popular shop in Toronto’s east end.

While friends made smooth transitions from unpaid internships to salaried jobs in advertising, journalism, and politics – I was left floundering. There was this abstract career in my mind. It involved the arts and outreach but I had no idea how to make it happen. Instead I spent hours at the cinema, trolling bookstores and trying to undo the circumscribed ways of thinking that four years of liberal arts can do to a person. Throughout that process I went to a lot of events that challenged my notion of creativity and success. Most memorably Trampoline Hall which was a “bar room lecture series” in Toronto’s west end. Founded by Misha Globerman and Sheila Heti, I became enamoured by their grassroots and idiosyncratic approach to programming. It was a salon of sorts and every time I left there was a little voice in my head saying … “that is what I want to do, but how?!”

I came out of of undergrad with an Honours in English, exasperated by abstract thought, and craving practical work. Seeing a final product come out of hours of toil that wasn’t just an essay but rather something tactile was incredibly attractive. So in my post-graduation ennui I wound up baking. I’ve got the scars to prove it. The hours spent in hot kitchens and early mornings served their therapeutic purpose but it was hardly what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Although it was tempting seeing as I was good at it – and it was delicious.

In 2011 I got the opportunity to intern at WORN Fashion Journal. Whilst there I worked on the publishing team and I got to see first hand how you develop a marketable brand within a strict budget. It was a brilliant publication and one I greatly admired. It was feminist, intersectional and intellectual but always accessible – WORN, however, did not make money but they had conviction. My time at the publication was spent entirely in a learning capacity – it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to say I was expendable. One time my editor turned to me and said: “Cayley you know so much about everything we just need to figure out how to apply it?” I took it as a compliment at the time.

By 2012 it was pretty obvious Toronto wasn’t working for me. I was so aware of what other people were doing and how they were doing it better I couldn’t focus. So I put an ocean between myself and my home town. Which may have been one of the best things I have ever done. It gave me the perspective and ability to apply all of the curiosity and passion I had for film and outreach without second guessing and comparing myself to my peers. It’s also a testament to cities like Glasgow. Where your ambition isn’t drowned out by the cacophony of competition you get in bigger towns.

Despite what I consider very separate stages in my eclectic CV, have somehow coalesced to be the perfect background to running an independent film festival. The years of running around hot kitchens, getting through a never-ending todo list, and hours of customer service drudgery have made me surprisingly adept for coordination.

There is a hell of lot more I need to learn but my time with Document has been the best education I could have gotten in confirming what it is I want to do. Which is work with communities, remain fiercely independent, and inspire conversation and change through the arts.

Document 2015 is running from October 16, 17, and 18 at Glasgow’s CCA.

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We’ve asked professionals in creative industries what jobs they have had in the past to get their foot through the door (or at least pay the rent). For more in the “My First 5 Jobs” series look here.

So hello, we are SHIFT/, seven of Scotland’s most dynamic, provocative and lyrical spoken word artists (but by no stretch of the imagination, the only ones). Formed by Rachel McCrum and Bram E Geiben, we have joined forces – like some super-powered comic book phalanx – as an artist-led collective to create a platform for poetic performance in the Edinburgh Fringe that works for us.

As well as Rachel and Bram, SHIFT/ is powered by Rachel Amey, Harry Giles, Jenny Lindsay, Ali Maloney and Sam Small. Between us we have a wealth and diverse range of experience. Collectively, we have won slams, shattered boundaries, toured the world, won awards and broken hearts; promoted, wrought and slogged.

As the Scottish poetry scene is running on full, breath taking, power, SHIFT/ exists to take seven unique and exciting shows to Summerhall – crossing bridges between performance poetry and physical theatre, stand-up and live art, spoken word and music, solemn introspection and punk spit – a different show for each night of the week.

Right now, we are writing, devising, crafting our shows, which could touch upon anything including, but not limited to: cyberpunk dystopian opera, political analysis, BSL, love, clowning, messing around in boats, love on drugs, nihilism, optimism, Dadaism, borders and colonialism and Lovecratian tentacle apocalypses.

We’ll be in the Cairns Lecture theatre in Summerhall every night of the Fringe at 9:30. For full line-ups and updates, get SHIFT/ed at www.shiftword.com.

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See more art & design collectives we’ve featured on the site. Think we should feature your collective? Get in touch.

The third annual Tramway Artists’ Moving Image Festival will run from 15 to 16 November at Tramway. Steven Cairns who is Associate Curator of Artists’ Film and Moving Image at the ICA in London will be the guest programmer.

The festival includes programming from the ICA Artists’ Moving Image Network featuring work from Steven Claydon, Keren Cytter, Loretta Fahrenholz, Anja Kirschner & David Panos, Agnieszka Polska, Hito Steyerl, and Ryan Trecartin.

In addition to screenings, there will be live events and discussions around two themes: Sound and Music in Artists’ Moving Image and Contemporary and Historical References in Artists’ Moving Image.

For more about the programme and festival passes, see The Tramway website.

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Find more events in our weekly bulletin here.

I recently spent two and a half days in Lyon, France exploring the Nuits Sonores Festival where my film, Cinema City was showing as part of a Glasgow based film programme. Below, are some of my observations.

Since the 1990s, the Confluence quarter of Lyon has undergone a massive redevelopment from its heavily industrial past. Located on a peninsula where the Rhône and Saône meet, what was once a base for the wholesale markets of the city is now an area full of architecturally unique offices, flats and an upscale mall. However quick the change, there are still traces of the old Confluence. It is here that Nuits Sonores began.

Confluence Quarter

Hôtel de Région

For the past ten years, the Confluence quarter has played host to this festival, billing itself as dedicated to “electronic, independent music and digital culture where music, design, graphic arts and architecture are closely related”. Within the last four years, the festival has also added a daytime programme of conferences, workshops, meetings, screenings and showcases geared towards industry professionals called the European Lab.

The European Lab finds itself in the highly-modern Hôtel de Région, a gargantuan building of wood and glass with a stunningly beautiful atrium. Suspended above is an installation created for the festival by Vincent Leroy entitled Auréole Boréale which oscillates gently.

Auréole Boréale by Vincent Leroy

Ultra-modern conference rooms play host to four days of events focusing on cultural policies, social change, culture and the city of tomorrow, media entrepreneurship and new cultural practice, music practice and innovation. It’s a whirlwind of highly-organised and exceedingly well-structured events in different formats featuring speakers from around Europe. Helpfully, there’s simultaneous interpretation for non-French speakers.

I spent day three of the conference learning about cultural incubators, new media and cultural change. The highlight was the talk about cultural European incubators which featured a panel of speakers from France, Serbia, Sweden, Slovakia, and the UK. Learning about how to create opportunities for cultural entrepreneurs and what challenges needed to be faced was exciting. For me, it really reinforced the idea behind the European Lab, “connecting cultural change-makers.”

With guest of the day speakers such as Agnès B., Bruce Sterling, Alain Damasio and Michel Gondry, placed next to industry heavyweights like Nicolas Demorand of Libération and television journalist, John-Paul Lepers, it really felt like these cultural discussions could be a catalyst for something larger.

Conference: Culture within a changing media landscape

I found myself in Lyon as part of another strand that’s become a part of the festival over the past years, the Carte Blanche programme. Nuits Sonores selects a city and creates a programme of music, urban history and art which feature prominently in the festival. Having featured London in 2009 and Manchester in 2005, this year it was Glasgow’s turn.

Halle aux Fleurs

The festival created a cinema in the Halle aux Fleurs, an old flower market which still bears the electric signage required for bidding on lots of flowers in francs. It’s a Brutalist structure from the 1960s brightened up with colourful pops of wallpaper and the sort of furniture that can only be described as granny chic. With a promotional lighting display from Philips, it was a strange mishmash of new and old with a hipster coffee cart thrown in the mix.

Ciné Glasgow in the Halle aux Fleurs

In the slightly more spartan cinema, wireless headsets allowed for free movement throughout the space, giving viewers the chance to clamber up into the former bidding seats, or to remain below and gaze up at the suspended screen.

Ciné Glasgow

The cinema, Ciné Glasgow, featured a continuous screening of different programmes of films about Glasgow including: Charles Rennie Mackintosh (Louise Ann and William Thomson,1965), a Vox Pop from Arte about cultural regeneration, a selection of work from the Glasgow Short Film Festival (curated by Matt Lloyd) and many more (including my own film).

Maison de la Confluence

Across the way from the cinema in La Halle, is the Maison de la Confluence, an outdoor space with a laid-back vibe that played host to many of the music events in the Glasgow programme. In addition to live sets from Optimo, Golden Teacher, Kode9, and Martyn Flyn, there were food trucks, drinks, and loads of pallets for a relaxing lounge in the sun before the evening programmes got underway.

There’s a reason Lyon’s symbol is that of a lion. As I climbed aboard a packed tram full of raucous festival goers heading to the Confluence quarter on the first night of the festival, it became clear that Lyon is a city of lions who roar loudly. It’s not unlike throbbing bass of the main events of Nuits Sonores, which start after ten and stop just before five in the morning.

These events take place at the Ancien Marché de Gros, an old wholesale market and the original base of the festival. The venue is home to three stages and some of the biggest events of Nuits Sonores. Featuring music by Jackmaster, Four Tet, Kraftwerk and more, these night performances are highly in demand with massive crowds of discerning music lovers turning out in full force for several evenings of all-night partying.

Just a few hours from Paris by high-speed train, both Lyon and Nuits Sonores have a lot to offer. With glorious summer weather in May, and a diverse range of events, this festival is certainly one to watch. For more information about Nuits Sonores, check out the festival website.

For more from Madeleine, check out her My Creative Scene about Paris.

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The Tectonics festival returns to Glasgow this May, exploring what happens when different musical genres rub up against each other. Embracing experimental, rock and orchestral music, this year’s festival has expanded to three days.

The line-up sees Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore share the spotlight with contemporary classical music pioneers such as Christian Wolff and Takehisa Kosugi, vocal ensemble EXAUDI, Icelandic composer collective S.L.Á.T.U.R., Scottish jazz iconoclast Bill Wells, and a mixture of local and international performers. There’s a visual art element too as Sarah Kenchington will install ‘mechanical instruments’ in the City Halls Recital Room which can be played by members of the public throughout the weekend.

Taking place at the City Halls and Old Fruitmarket, Tectonics Glasgow opens with an evening of short performances at St Andrew’s in the Square, celebrated for its intimate space and unique acoustics. Co–curator Alasdair Campbell, who also brought you the Counterflows festival, describes the Friday opener as being “like the festival in microcosm, with lots of local acts mixing with some international names. The performances are short – but will explore as broad a series of sound-worlds that you’re likely to hear anywhere.”

Here’s some highlights that you shouldn’t miss:

Richard Youngs

‘Past Fragments of Distant Confrontation’:
Richard Youngs and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
11 May | Old Fruitmarket
Commissioned by the BBC SSO, Richard Youngs’s world premiere brings punk sub genre D-beat into the orchestral sphere. Written specifically for the Old Fruitmarket, it features Youngs on electric guitar as the audience is surrounded on all sides by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra on the venue’s balcony. Youngs also sings solo on Tectonics Glasgow’s opening night.

Takehisa Kosugi

Thurston Moore and Takehisa Kosugi
9 May | St Andrew’s in the Square
This concert sees former Sonic Youth frontman re-team with Japanese experimental pioneer Takehisa Kosugi, a partnership first heard on Sonic Youth’s album SYR4: Goodbye 20th Century. Moore also collaborates with noise-maker Dylan Noukis as part of the Saturday night Old Fruitmarket gig and Kosugi performs solo on the Sunday night.

EXAUDI by Daniel Pufe

EXAUDI
11 May | City Halls
The UK’s leading vocal ensemble will redefine any preconceptions you have about choral music. Vocal performances are big this year at Tectonics and this concert features a variety of works by American and UK composers, from the delicate, to the gutsy, to the non-verbal, and Christian Wolff’s beautiful settings of the poet John Ashberry.

Wolff/Behrman
10 May | City Halls
Christian Wolff is one of the great pioneers of American music, who took many of John Cage’s ideas of indeterminacy and experimentalism and made them his own. For this concert he’s performing one of his most famous early pieces For One, Two or Three People with Kosugi (see above) and another great US pioneer David Behrman, whose new work How We Got Here opens Day 2 of Tectonics

Tectonics Glasgow runs 9 – 11 May. Visit the Tectonics website for more details.

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Now let us make clear that to identify with history does not necessarily refer to the past. It can refer equally to the newest and extreme developments in art. We were concerned with sound itself. And sound does not know its history. -Morton Feldman.

Now in its third year, Counterflows is a contemporary music festival produced by Alasdair Campbell of AC Projects in partnership with Hamish Dunbar of Cafe Oto. It has been devised as a collaboration between two organisations committed to promoting challenging and thought provoking work in the context of what might be called the experimental music scene, looking at marginal music practice within an extensive list of music genres: Free Jazz, electronica, psychedelic pop, drone, hypno-psych voodoo groove, industrial, installation, anachronistic-field recordings, song, non-systematic classical, folk and more. We caught up with Alasdair who told us what to expect from this year’s programme…

The festival is about exploration and collaboration and brings together networks of artists, audiences and producers internationally and locally who share an adventurous outlook to the arts and are willing to participate and examine different practices and methods with the goal of creating new experiences within music and the arts.

A first glance at this year’s festival line-up may incur a confused reaction to the panoply of disparate artists performing. But of course this is anything but confusion. The intention to bringing the different styles and forms together under the banner of Counterflows is to really explore the vast expression of sound that is out there. As critics invent ever more genres and sub genres to classify theses musical endeavours Counterflows’ concerns are with the music itself. Juxtaposing artists whose practices may seem miles apart in the programme is exciting to me and may reveal to us something new that we had never thought of.

This leads nicely on to Joe McPhee, featured artist of this year’s festival. Joe ostensibly comes from the Jazz tradition from the line of Davis, Coltrane, Dolphy and so forth and on through his near contemporaries, Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Threadgill and Anthony Braxton who all share Joe’s multi-instrumentalist approach. But Joe, like all these musicians, creates music that refuses to be pinned down. Throughout the festival Joe will be collaborating in various contexts beginning with a solo set on Friday night before the new free funksters Whilst. Joe playing with Whilst could be a wonderful spontaneous happening.

There are threads that link performances throughout the festival. This is the intention and notion behind Counterflows. Maya Dunietz and Ghedalia Tazartes bring their intriguing exploration of voice to Saturday evening at CCA with Maya also performing the sublime music of Ethiopian born Emahoy Maryam Guebrou. The influences in Emahoy’s music are ancient and modern, African, European and everything else between. This links neatly with John Butcher’s new project Tarab Cuts which he’ll perform at the CCA with Mark Sanders. Tarab Cuts uses digitally transferred music from the Sufi Tarab tradition sourced from 78’s with Mark and John improvising themes and new music with and on top of these sounds. Again a clash of the ancient and modern.

Of course another theme to Counterflows is the commissioning of new projects. And this year is no exception with new work from Cara Tolmie & Paul Abbott, Luke Fowler, Mika Vainio & Lee Patterson and the beginnings of a new collaboration between Ela Orleans and film maker Maja Borg. The Counterflows residency will also explore new things this year developed by Rob Kennedy, Pete Dowling and Karena Nomi. There will be opportunities to find out what they are up to in the CCA’s Creative Lab from 4 – 7pm each evening from the 31 March to 5 April.

What to expect from these new ventures cannot be disclosed, that is the excitement of the process. -Alasdair Campbell

In music, when you do something new, something original, you’re an amateur. Your imitators – these are the professionals. -Morton Feldman

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Counterflows runs from 4-6 April at various venues throughout Glasgow. For more information see the Counterflows website.

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This week Aberdeen city centre will be dazzled by a spectacular array of light installations, exhibitions and events for all to enjoy.

Aberdeen City Centre will be illuminated by a trail of light works and projections – Reclaim The Night promenade, led by Aberdeen City Council’s Creative Learning Team, will bring a touch of technicolour to the City’s backstreets and alleyways and The Light Garden will see a thousand sparkling flowers planted in Union Terrace Gardens.

Peacock Visual Arts will also present new interior light works by one of the festival artists, Adam Barker-Mill, in just-noticeable differences Part 2 between 7 February and 22 March 2014. The exhibition will open on Thursday 6 February, 7 – 9pm.

SPECTRA, Aberdeen’s first ever Festival of Light, is set to dazzle the city with a spectacular array of light installations, exhibitions and events.

SPECTRA artists:
Adam Barker-Mill
Chris Bird
Jim Buckley
Jim Ewen
Torsten Lauschmann
Eilidh McCormick
Jitka Zabkova
Chevalvert
2Roqs
Polygraphic
Splank

For more information about The Light Garden, Reclaim The Night, light projections and installations, click here.

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Edinburgh Art Festival has announced its open call for submissions for the 11th edition of the festival, which will run from 31 July – 31 August 2014. Apply with a project that you’d like to bring to the UK’s largest annual festival of visual art. Successful applicants will benefit from inclusion in EAF’s print marketing, website and social media activity, and from its PR strategy.

Selection criteria and details of fees and bursaries are available in our application pack. EAF welcomes all applications, and would be delighted to receive proposals that:

• Bring existing exhibitions to Edinburgh, whether from Scotland, the rest of the UK or further afield
• Feature artists, venues and organisations working together collaboratively
• Feature curatorial projects or art work that have been specifically conceived for the festival
• Focus on one-off events, talks or activities

Submissions will be reviewed by a selection panel which this year includes Sorcha Carey (Director, Edinburgh Art Festival), Pat Fisher (Director, Talbot Rice Gallery), Richard Ingleby (Director, Ingleby Gallery) and Janine Matheson (Director, Creative Edinburgh).

For more details and to apply, visit www.edinburghartfestival.com.

Deadline: 10 February

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The Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival is back this October, bringing hundreds of arts events to venues all around Scotland, all with the aim of raising awareness of mental health and tackling stigma against mental illness—and (of course) presenting some awesome film, theatre, visual art, literature and much more to brighten up your October.

Of course, with nearly 300 events (did you hear that? 300!) it could be a smidge difficult to make it along to everything. Luckily, the hard-working SMHAFF festival team are here with some of their favourites to help you make up your mind.

Vanessa Coffey’s Mirror Mirror

(Gail Aldam, Festival Manager):
“Having worked on the festival for a few years now, it’s always great when we can form a brand-new partnership and bring our audiences something totally new. This year I’m really excited for our first literature weekend, created in partnership with Aye Write! Glasgow’s book festival.  For one weekend in October we’re teaming up to host discussions with some great literary names, including Alasdair Gray, Denise Mina and Sophie Hannah, around ideas of reading, writing and mental health.”

(Alex Queneau, Marketing Manager):
“The event I’m most looking forward to is definitely our screenings of Alan Berliner’s First Cousin Once Removed at GFT and Edinburgh’s Filmhouse, accompanied by Q+As with the man himself. I’m a real film person, and I love going along to Q+As where directors and filmmakers talk with such a passion and love for film—not just their own movie, but the genre. First Cousin is a deeply personal film for Berliner too, created over a period of five years as he filmed his great friend and cousin, Poet Edwin Honig, succumbing to the grip of Alzheimer’s disease. I think the film and the post-show discussion will be a great event for anyone interested in exploring mental health through film.”

(Christine Irvine,  Communications Officer):
“The SMHAFF theatre programme is really strong this year and I’m looking forward to it kicking off with a double-bill of shows at one of my favourite Glasgow venues, the Tramway, on 3 Oct. The double-bill is two shows (not surprising!): one called Mirror/Mirror, exploring eating disorders; and the other, Mental, looking at the intertwining of depression and artistic expression. I love theatre that gets right up in your face and makes you think about things, so this intimate show for an audience of just 50 is right up my street!”

Barrowland Ballet’s Tiger

(Melanie Bavajee, Festival Assistant):
“So hard to pick! At the moment I’m really looking forward to seeing Barrowland Ballet’s Tiger again—we went to the preview night at Platform, and although I had very little idea what to expect when I went in, the show just blew me away with its inventiveness, beauty and emotion. Tiger uses contemporary dance to introduce us to a family who have grown totally dysfunctional; their lives fully caged in. It takes the arrival of a tiger to remind them of how much they love each other.  The talent and stamina of the three dancers was just amazing! A definite must-see of the Festival.”

The Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film festival runs from 1-26 October, all across Scotland. For more information on what’s going on near you, visit www.mhfestival.com.

The 2013 programme can be viewed and downloaded online here.

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Browse through our event bulletin to find more events.

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Robert Montgomery’s Edinburgh Fire Poem was burnt on The Mound on 1 August. This work will remain on The Mound until 1 September as part of Edinburgh Art Festival.

RATHER THE RAIN ON THE WINDOW
OF THE CASTLE THAN THE CASTLE
ITSELF, RATHER THE FLIGHT OF
THE BIRD, RATHER BURNED
THAN CAPTURED

- Robert Montgomery

Read more at www.edinburghartfestival.com.

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