Thursday Thoughts: “A Star Is Born” And Supportive Creative Communities
Recently I saw the movie A Star Is Born – the new one, starring Lady Gaga, though now I’m very interested in seeing its previous versions.
I enjoyed it a lot overall, even though I prefer stories with happier plots and endings. What made it so enjoyable for me was the way that everyone in the film acts around Ally, the rising star portrayed by Gaga. Her best friend, her father, Jackson Maine, the drag queens in the bar, her manager, Jackson’s brother and friends, and everyone who performs onstage with Ally – all of these people are incredibly supportive of Ally and her dreams of being an artist. Most of these people have a personal stake in their own creative careers, but this never manifests as jealousy (except when Jackson is drunk). Instead it manifests as support for their fellow artist.
In this way, A Star Is Born portrays an essential part of an artist’s life and career: the creative community.
We love to talk about artists as “lone wolfs,” as “the genius at his typewriter,” as someone locked away in a room somewhere churning out miracles, as an individual star. But that is neither the best route to artistic success nor the most common. In order to thrive, an artist needs the support of the people around her. She needs a network to open up opportunities, and moral support to push her towards those opportunities. She needs other artists to set aside their egos and devote some of their time and energy to lifting up another person.
It is not easy to be a supportive member of a creative community. In our individualistic society, this role is far from instinctive. It is very easy to look at other creators, both successful and new, the people who are vying for the same kind of spotlight that you long for, and see them as competition, someone to defeat, someone you have to step on or over in order to grab some success for yourself.
But art is not a sport. There are no opposing teams in art; there are no winners or losers.
Instead, art is a community. The way to “win” at art is to create a world with as much good art in it as possible. That cannot be achieved by crushing the dreams of other artists. It requires that artists support each other. It requires that artists trust that there is enough success to go around. Art demands that you believe that another person’s gain is not your loss.
This is something that took me a long time to learn, and I’m still working on it. It’s taken me all the years of my life so far to look at the envious burn I feel when I see another writer gain acclaim and instead see it as a sign of how much I love my craft. I have to consciously remind myself to replace my “I’m jealous of you”s with “I’m so happy for you”s. I need to remember that I’ve gotten this far because of the artists around me who devoted time and energy to teaching, critiquing, and encouraging me, who did not fear that my potential success would infringe upon their life, who cheer me on when I do well and urge me to keep going when I experience rejection.
And I strive to be a member of other people’s supportive creative communities, to pay forward what I have received, and to help make sure that there is more good art in the world than I could ever create on my own. A Star Is Born is both an example of good art and a demonstration of how that art comes to be – not merely from the individual star, but from the constellations that she is a part of.
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No Dumpire — A Junktopian Chill Haven in Second Life
What do a raccoon, a dumpster, and a dream have in common?If you’ve ever wandered around Second Life, you know the most magical places often bloom where you least expect them. That’s how I stumbled upon No Dumpire. A junktopian hangout in Second Life curated by Zed (Zee Malus), raccoon extraordinaire and self-proclaimed No Dumperor.
This isn’t just another club in Second Life. It’s an empire…
Creative communities only exist as such if the people in them treat them that way. If you treat places where people post their creative work as free art galleries for you to browse silently at your leisure and then leave when you get bored, you should expect people to redirect their time and energy into something other than sharing with The Likes Of You. It IS an exchange where people share their work, and others provide feedback, encouragement and acknowledgment that allows for such spaces to flourish. In Meat Space, artists are paid when their work is put in galleries and museums, governments provide grants for artists to pursue their work, and patrons pay artists MONEY for them to produce things. Galleries exist not just to display the work of artists, but for the dual function of being a sales floor for art collectors as well.
If you imagine that social media is or can be a place where people put up writing, art, and media that they spent hours and hours laboriously crafting with the expectation of dead silence from an audience, you don’t understand the concept of motivation or reward very well at all. Training creatives to associate the action of sharing their work with the sinking disappointment of the realization nobody cares is not an action I would suggest if you enjoy consuming the creative projects of others. Like, share and reblog things to tell the people that made them that you like them and would like to see more of it. Comment on things to say that you saw something in particular of value, and encourage them to continue doing that. Provide constructive critique to make interacting with you something that helps creatives grow in their craft, and thus makes producing work they are not paid for into something that has tangible benefit for them as a creative. Or do none of these things and expect these things to all be locked behind pay walls or abandoned.
Barrow teenagers to share their lockdown experiences and gain new life-long creative digital skills A new project in Barrow is asking 11 to 13-year-olds to get involved so they can develop new skills in digital technologies and creativity. The Reporting the Storm project, led by Cumbria Development Education Centre Full story: https://www.cumbriacrack.com/2020/10/22/barrow-teenagers-to-share-their-lockdown-experiences-and-gain-new-life-long-creative-digital-skills/
The Creative Communities Scheme supports and encourages local communities to create and present diverse opportunities for accessing and participating in arts activities within their specific geographical area and for defined communities of interest.
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