Sky Arts Futures Fund has been renamed Sky Academy Arts Scholarships. To find out more, visit the Sky Academy website.
Tell us about your project.
My project is poetry; writing it, performing it, making it, taking it all over. Not just my own work but the poetry of many amazing UK artists as well. The aim is to have a company that commissions, supports and encourages performance poets to get their work out to as wide an audience as possible, and to challenge how they might usually create work. I hope it will enable venues and companies interested in working with performance poets to approach them more easily and vice versa. Also, by creating poetry for paying customers, I hope that we'll be able to create poetry for free for charitable causes and campaigns.
So what will you be getting up to in the coming year?
To make the above happen in the most creatively, chaotically-organised way possible, I've set up a company called P.O.P (Poetry On Production). Over the coming year we will work with poets to create poetry content for different purposes in all sorts of forms - theatre shows, artworks, films, installations. I will also be working on my own new poetry show and be spending a good chunk of time writing some new material.
What difference do you think the funding and mentoring will make to the project?
The funding has made the project possible: without it I would never be able to dedicate the time that is needed to make something like this happen. It has enabled me to commission exciting new work from other artists and I can't wait to see what happens with their pieces. It has really made all the difference - so big ups to Sky Arts and IdeasTap for supporting UK poetry!
The mentoring will be priceless when it comes to marketing, business planning and taking things to the next level, the mentors are like Marvel versions of these things.
What have you learned so far?
That people are massively excited about spoken word and performance poetry doing bigger and bigger things. That words change lives. That when you’re set on an idea and work to make it happen, people are ridiculously generous and giving with their time and energy. That I want to run a company as well as be an artist. That this is hard, but worth it!
What advice would you give to someone applying to the next round of the fund?
Lots of people use the application processes to clarify their idea in their own head - I always do. But once your own head has got it, make sure it is very clear to everyone else as well. Test it out on people who don't know your work - do they get what you're trying to do? If not, what bits are you missing? The interview process is X-Factor scary – even though the judges are very nice, they're not going to mess about when there’s 30k at stake! So make sure you know exactly what you want to get across and try to use really solid examples of what you have done/will do and how.
Sabrina’s poetry collective Point Blank Poets will be performing at the Southbank Centre on Saturday 1 June as part of London Literature festival. To find out more, visit the website.
