craven artists’ network can suck it

Negative post alert.

I want to talk about C.A.N. I have never mentioned C.A.N on this blog that I can remember, and that is a little telling. (I did find a draft post that I never completed on the 11th August 2010). This is a little ‘creative’ group that began meeting 10th August 2010, at the request of the infamous Bella. She put up posters in various locations around Skipton, beckoning people that had any interest in anything creative to meet in the pub on a Tuesday night in August.

Various creatives were suitably intrigued, myself and Bri included, and dutifully turned up on the said day.

The main aims of the group are to meet and talk about creative things once every two weeks, discuss making and exhibiting work together, and ultimately set up some kind of ‘Arts Centre’ in Skipton, as it is a bit of a backwater creatively.

These aims are all very laudable. However, as they say, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. What actually happens is, around eight people go to the pub, drink a bit, have a cursory chat about how boring Skipton is, how there are too many sheep, how slow old people walk, how it is SUCH a shame there isn’t more going on creatively, ...and then go home.

The only thing that has changed in a year is – we now meet on Wednesdays. Quite a long time ago I took the initiative and set up a blog for the group (because I know how and it’s free) and ever since all that has been said about it is could the colour scheme be changed, how good an idea it is and we really must put some work on it, and can you make the middle bit a bit wider.

The idea of the group is a good one – a network of creative people working together, but all that happens is we go to the pub!!! I have stopped going to the meetings, because to be honest I find them boring and useless! I haven’t made friends with anyone, again they have all made friends around me. It’s like there’s so much potential just bubbling under the surface but it never comes out. It’s like it’s all held back, rained in.

C.A.N had it’s anniversary the other day, and we were supposed to all meet and celebrate. I was all geared up to go, but in the end I thought – what’s the point?

As a kind and creative gesture, I made everyone keyrings which I still have. The slogan on them is a working of the groups motto “inspiring and promoting our creative community for a whole year”. What I really wanted to put was “doing sod all for a whole year” but it didn’t have the same ring to it.

I feel like I’m missing something. It feels like everyone else always just settles for second best, and I’m not willing to. I don’t want to be in a half arsed group – I want to be excited about it, to meet up and the ideas be flowing, to talk into the night and make plans for the future, to really think that there is something we are working towards.

In some ways it feels like I’m trapped in C.A.N, as if I don’t like it but can’t get away. I want to just leave, have Bella never contact me again, but they keep on clawing their way back at me. I suppose what it really is - I do genuinely want it to work! In the past I have likened my feelings towards the group as being in a relationship when you know it is coming to its end. You still have feelings, but you know there is no future.

After the meetings we get email updates about what happened, and every time I read them I am disappointed, and/or angry at the content. It’s always “so and so brought in a painting, it was very nice thanks” (with no pictures), and “well we want to have an exhibition, but that will just happen as and when”. It’s not proactive, taking the initiative, it’s always the attitude of ‘something will turn up’, or ‘someone else will do it’.

I’ve been trying to wean myself away, distancing myself. I have done so so far by not going to meetings regularly. I still manage the blog though, but I have linked it to the C.A.N email address rather than my personal one, so anyone could take over (if ANY of them actually knew how to bastard work it).

I don’t like to rant, because it’s really not that important in the scheme of things. What really gets me is that we are all supposed to be terribly grateful to Bella for setting this thing up (yeah none of us did it did we), and yet all she really did was put up a couple of posters, and then sends us emails after the meetings. People hold her up as some kind of saviour of the creatives, but she does nothing! It’d be fine if she worked hard, did something to promote the group or set up this fabled ‘Arts Centre’, but she hasn’t even put up subsequent posters now that we have a name and logo to attract new people.

The whole thing is in a word – Pathetic.