Sitting on the Editorial Board

Theatre Director Teunkie van der Slujis has been an active member of IdeasTap for nearly a year. We want our members to be involved in all aspects of the site, so every year we invite two people to join our Editorial Board and help us make decisions about the direction of the site. Along with Chantelle Osili, Tuenkie responded to the brief and took up the role. Here he tells us what it involved, and how he's seen the site change since those early days.

IdeasTap was at a very early stage when they asked for the first set of members to sit on the Editorial Board. It was good to be part of the site at that point because it was young and still developing.

I've seen IdeasTap change massively in the last year, both the site itself and the opinion people have of it. When I joined very few people knew about it. Now people are becoming aware of it as a web magazine and they understand that it's much more than an online subscription service.

Being on the Editorial Board is about having a say in the content of the site. We spent a lot of time deciding on the monthly themes and there was a lot of conversation about new partners. Most of all we were making sure that the content was useful and interesting to young creative people. I definitely got to put my opinions across and I hope I've had an influence on the way the site has grown.

I come from a theatre background so one of the most interesting things was thinking about how to open the site up across creative disciplines so it's not limited to theatre people. We talked about the needs of musicians, graphic designers and film makers, and how the different disciplines cross fertilize each other.

It was really interesting to find out about the schemes that other disciplines run for young people. I arrived with a lot of knowledge of schemes for young directors, but I didn't know anything about how people like young musicians or graphic designers get started. Finding out how things work in other fields gave me ideas I can apply to my own discipline.

I came from a background of government subsidised arts. IdeasTap has come out of The Peter De Haan Charitable Trust and has absolutely no government money behind it. It was great to see the commitment of the people working on the board, they're not doing it to please constituents. That was a real eye opener.

If you're thinking of applying to sit on the Editorial Board I'd say do it. It's a great experience and it's helpful to know a little bit about how boards work. You'll find that as a creative person you have to deal with boards and panels a lot. It's good to get a little bit of insight into what goes on behind the scenes.