Anna B Sexton – Open To Arts

Create Direction Coaching – I’ve made this short 4-week online coaching in response to hearing over and over again the challenges artists & creatives are facing in these current times…

Even though as artists, makers and producers or any type of creative we are used to stepping up to the plate these last few years have given us each very different curve balls, on top of being part of an industry which consistently can pull amazing, life changing experiences out of the bag for little or low budgets…

BUT really… something has to give and it’s generally our health, wellbeing and ability to show up to the page, canvas or screen and connect to our imaginations…

So here’s where Create Direction Coaching comes in…

A 4-week online package is designed specifically to support

creatives with their money & partnership goals.

HOW?

• You will receive an initial 1-hour-long consultation

to get a bird’s eye view of all your creative projects,

visions and any barriers to success so far.

• From there, we will drill down into your main

‘direction goal’ & set a plan for success in further

2 x 60 minutes follow-up calls for the following

2 weeks to really get momentum going.

• Plus email or What’s app contact daily during the 4-week period for check-ins on your progress.

WHY?

Invest in yourself & your practice today to gain

clearer practical direction, confidence, & momentum

towards your money & partnership goals, at your

own pace, your way & to fit with your budget.

HOW MUCH?

£200

Sign up for Creative Direction Coaching with Anna B. Sexton

to re-activate your manifesting power for the creative

successes you deserve today

M. +44 (0)7484 184 292 / E. [email protected]

Better Conversation week 21st-27th Nov 2011

Thanks to the wonder that is Twitter I know its ‘Better Conversation’ week this week 21st-27th November 2011.

And I got to thinking about what does it take for me to converse better? And I stumbled upon something I wrote a while ago to try to simply explain why I benefit so much from the coaching I do.

Coaching is a way of being and leading that offers me the opportunity to be ‘for’ the person I am conversing and holding a space for, so that person explores being their own expert. I believe the simple, yet effective, reflection and clarification techniques allow for coaches to fully hear their coachees, all the way down. My biggest breakthrough has been to actually live out the giving and receiving of permission, which once requested allows the coachee the space to give consent – yes or no. Such a simple request seems to holds so much em-powerment within it.

I have started to see how this can be used in all areas of life, particularly day to day conversations, conflict resolution and this has enabled me to feel what a privilege being a coach is on a deeper level.

So many human interactions I have myself or witness on buses or at work tend to end in a stalemate with both parties mishearing then misunderstanding each other. The combination of seeing the other person as having their own answers, of being able to listen to that person – while still having an ability to share my own agenda, at the appropriate time seems nothing short of revolutionary.

As someone who can struggle to gauge what other’s are really saying, how to be within that context and to stay true to myself and my wants I am beginning to see how these simple conversation growing tools are tools for life. And ones that over time have evolved and deepen the quality of my own personal and professional interpersonal relationships. Imagine though if we all could have access to such simple tools…it may just radically change how all humans interact.

The possibilities opened up by coaching as a way of being link into potential for real conflict resolution in a world with more loving connections;

“Non-violent communication raises the bar for communication skills by allowing everyone to achieve their own needs on their own terms, without coercion, fear of retribution, or loss of self esteem.”
Marshall Rosenberg

How you will you give yourself permission in the remaining few days of Better Conversation week to engage more deeply with those you interact with?

I am all ears.

Anna

Grow your arts business and the rest will follow?

What does it take to grow your own arts business?

And what follows once you start that process?

And who else benefits or doesn’t as you grow yourself and your arts business grows?

Growing your own arts and creative businesses starts having a seed of a vision to do something only you can bring into the world, mixed together with your own particular view of the world, built up over the years and a culmination of all your experiences to date.

These questions become particularly pertinent when you allow yourselves to re-remember you don’t and your businesses don’t just exist within the space between your ears i.e. your heads.
These thoughts need to become actions to grow your dream into a reality.

So where then do your businesses live once they are out of your heads and in the world?

They live in the communities we live and work in. Be they local, regional, nationally and more increasingly globally spaces thanks to social media etc.

So even if you stay sitting behind the door of your office, beavering away in your head and on your laptops simply stating ‘I don’t do community.’

The truth is you do and we do community, whether we like or not. But what does this mean when you are growing yourselves and your business? How do you/we do this in a way which sustains us and others?

Definitions of community are personal, public and variously wide ranging – the Oxford Dictionary’s version is;

“The people that live in one locality; a group of people having cultural, religious, ethnic,
or other characteristics in common; the public in general; society. Ecology – a group of interdependent animals & plants inhabiting the same region and interacting with each
other through food & relationship.”

Every community has its own unique set of ingredients which gives the flavour to experiences we have when we live, work or visit there.

Communities have a big place in my heart given over the last 20 years I have lived and worked in over 8 deprived inner London boroughs, regenerating Liverpool & Manchester with a stop off in rural Wiltshire to give me another angle on what living in community might mean. I have worked to get myself into the different mindsets and space of the people, organisations and businesses that make up these individual villages, market towns, London Boroughs and re-blossoming regional cities.

I am currently growing my 3rd creative business and this has really got me into the process of deeply questioning what I want to grow, how and why.

Like gardening people, business and places grow organically with that certain mixture of elements required for them to bloom.

I am more and more drawn to metaphor of how we grow the people, businesses and places in our communities being similar to that of gardening. The essential ingredients in the mix

Plenty of light – both our own ability to be light and let our lights shine. And access to sustainable forms of energy to light our offices etc.
Plenty of water – fresh, clean and available to all
Plenty of non-polluted air i.e. the right mixture to grow healthy people
Plenty of healthy earth upon and within which to grow healthy roots/foundations
Plenty of plant food without use of chemicals, pesticides and other pollutants (see air)
Plenty of time to nurture, enjoy the fruits of your labour and share the harvest
Plenty of attention to cut away the dead wood, weed away any sources of potential threat

Seeing it written down makes is seem obvious, and of course it is. Yet how we do & be this on a day to day basis is another thing.

And in the context of setting up and running your business – how you will grow the seeds of your mission is more imperative day by day.

“When we place our own individual needs ahead of the broader community we lose our perspective and become ethnocentric. The result is the Three Musketeers mantra in reserve: “All for one and none for all.”
Bob Doppelt, The Power of Sustainable Thinking

Some inspiring examples I have either been part of co-creating or discovering of late are listed below;

www.welovemarlborough.co.uk
http://greeningbrownfield.blogspot.com/
www.londonsartistsquarter.org
www.bowarts.org

Well well well

Here is a turn up for the books – I have been project managing a project called 'Get In the Gallery' a concept similar to RCA Secret devised by Jo Del Mar. I have been working on behalf of Kennet Valley Arts Trust, Morgan Boyce, We Love Marlborough and GWR FM Kids to promote throughout the Marlborough area the chance for 4-18yr olds to get in the gallery.

As with many local arts projects we often struggle to get a share of the local paper's coverage

This week, as luck would have it, we have a celebrity entry which is sure to case a stir

Pete Doherty from Babyshambles has joined in with the project – see attached image

And you know what – not wanting to be a misry guts something about it just doesn't fit with our youth angle

Especially all the media attention we are bound to get – which no doubt will detract from the young people's efforts

I wonder what others think about this??

Answers on a postcard please…

Enford Village Hall consultation

This a project I am blessed to be being able to deliver in partnership with James Aldridge an artist with the ecology and community very much at the heart of what he helps to create

We have begun a series of open meetings/consultation opportunities to ask the villagers of Enford what activities they wish to see take place in the new hall due to be built April 2009

So far we have been building up a network of how to reach people which in a village of 657 population is more tricky than I had ever imagined.

We have run 2 meetings so far one where 3 people attended and last Weds 25.06.08 9 people attended including 2 young people which really added depth to the meeting.

Check out James' sites for more background into the work he creates both in his own practice and in communities

www.creative-ecology.co.uk