marginendeavour feature on Group Show Series 2 @ The NewBridge Project

Group Show is an art podcast series curated by Caitlin Merrett King covering topics like work, collaboration and criticism.

Series One was conceived of as part of 12o's S/S17 curatorial residency as an exploration into expanded curatorial practice. Each episode includes a mixture of interviews, sound commissions and regular features covering artist-led activity around the UK.

Series Two was produced at The NewBridge Project, Newcastle for the Practice Makes Practice residency in March 2019, and features music, sound pieces and interviews from studio and associate NBP members.

Series 2 episode 1 features an interview with Rebecca Huggan, the Director of NBP, sound pieces by Gobscure and marginendeavour and a chat between Tamara Micner and Yael Roberts who is currently on Collective Studio based at NBP.

David Foggo and Helen Shaddock work collaboratively as marginendeavour to explore our affinities with text and design. Our contribution to the podcast is a reflection on our collaborative process and explores the potential of the spoken word; emphasising the rhythmic, layered and repetitive qualities within the narrative.

Group Show Image by Eva Duerden (12o)

LAUNCH - Friday 26th April

The first episode can be listened on

iTunes

Spotify

and http://www.caitlinmerrettking.co.uk/

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Basic Income is coming to Scotland – Margaret Gilmour

The current exhibition at The NewBridge Project:Gateshead is 'Between Eating and Sleeping', by Toby Phips Lloyd. As part of his interactive exhibition, which explores public attitudes towards work (paid and unpaid labour), how free-time is valued, and potential futures of work, including policies like Universal Basic Income, Lloyd has programmed a number of related events. The first of these events was a screening of 'Basic Income is coming to Scotland' by Margaret Gilmour which I attended last night.

'Phillippe Van Parijs, describes Basic Income as “… an income paid unconditionally to individuals regardless of their family or household relationships, regardless of other incomes, and regardless of their past, present, or future employment status.” [1]

This concept has been presented as a possible solution to many of the problems that society faces today, and has gained support from both sides of the political spectrum.

The Scottish government announced in 2017 that it will commit to funding the first Basic Income trials in the UK. Four thousand people will be selected across four council areas to take part in the trials. These will be Glasgow, Edinburgh, Fife and North Ayrshire. The trials are expected to begin within the next 18 months.

Margaret Gilmour, Broadcast Journalist and Mum to two girls, travelled to Finland to find out how the recipients of basic income's lives have changed since receiving the payment, and to see if they had any advice for Scotland's pilot. Her resulting documentary outlines the arguments for Basic Income and interviews participants taking part in the current trials in Finland.

The screening was followed by a discussion about the potential benefits or pitfalls if Basic Income was implemented in the North East of England, and which other policies such as social housing reforms would need to the put in place for it to be successful.

- Would this be a way to achieve ecological justice?

- Is giving money to the already wealthy morally right?

- Would it improve working conditions?

- Would it encourage a move to a more balanced lifestyle?

- Would it foster a more community-led society?

- Is it a way of valuing unpaid labour such as childcare?

- Would it encourage a change in attitudes towards voluntary work?

You're Doing It Wrong - Work - BBC Radio 4

In this series "Adam Buxton takes a sideways look at some of our confusing modern ideas." The first episode is about work. 

"Is the idea of a 'dream job' - one that inspires and fulfills us and makes our lives worth living - really possible? Or idealistic nonsense designed to make you feel guiltier, work harder, and complain less? Can we really be happy at work and should we be?

These days it's not enough just to turn up, work hard and bring home a wage; we should all be following our passions, chasing that dream job, and waking up every morning raring to get to the office. If your job is tedious, you hate your boss, and Monday mornings make you want to cry, it's probably YOUR FAULT for not being ambitious enough."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09snrb7

Buxton reveals that people working from home are said to be happier than those who go elsewhere to work. This is linked to having more control when working at home. But it does not necessarily mean that less work is done or that workers are less productive. In fact, research shows that people who work at home are more likely to work earlier, work later and overwork.

I can see that this is certainly a tendency of mine, but wonder how much of that is due to the type of work that I do. I enjoy being an artist and it is an important part of me. Would I be so driven and have the urge to reply to that last email late at night if I was not so passionate about what I do?

He discusses the problems of creative work and says that there are two ways to go about it

1. Have a non-creative job that pays the bills and then do the creative work in the evening

2. Get a job that pays you to be creative

I think there is an alternative, and that is the method that I choose. I have a part time job at a Library that helps pay the bills and provides me with some of the things I need from a job e.g. security, a routine, colleagues to be friends, a means of escape from my creative work. This part time job allows me to spend the rest of my time being a self employed artist. So I get the benefit of both worlds. I'm not saying that it is the perfect balance, but what is? One always needs more time, a pay rise and so on, but to be honest, I am pretty happy with the situation at the moment and long may that continue.

Beware of the 'Effort Trap'

As the January deadline for my dissertation looms, I find myself feeling guilty and worried because over the festive period I won't be spending lots of time working on my paper. Despite the many rational reasons for making family and friends my priority, I feel pressure, both from myself and society at large, to be productive. 

The following article has helped me realise that there is a difference between being productive and spending lots of time working, and provides some useful tips to become more productive without tiring yourself out.

All the more reason for some quality time off!

Nobody Cares How Hard You Work

by Oliver Burkeman

http://99u.com/articles/51908/nobody-cares-how-hard-you-work?utm_source=99U&utm_campaign=849727a0f8-Weekly_12_21_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_bdabfaef00-849727a0f8-155119005

"As you sink into the couch, or slide onto the barstool, at the end of an exhausting workday, it’s hard not to experience the warm glow of self-congratulation. After all, you put in the hours, cranked through the to-do list; you invested the effort, and got things done. Surely you’re entitled to a little smugness?

Sorry, but at the risk of ruining that martini: maybe not. We chronically confuse the feeling of effort with the reality of results—and for anyone working in a creative field, that means the constant risk of frittering time and energy on busywork, instead of the work that counts.

Psychologists have long noticed what’s sometimes been called the “labor illusion:” when it comes to judging other people’s work, we might say we’re focused only on whether they did the job quickly and well—but really we want to feel they wore themselves out for us.

The behavioral economist Dan Ariely tells the story of a locksmith, who, as he got better at his work, started getting fewer tips, and more complaints about his prices.Each job took him so little time or effort that customers felt cheated—even though, pretty obviously, being super-fast is an asset in a locksmith, not a fault.

In 2011, a study by the Harvard Business School researchers Ryan Buell and Michael Norton found that people using a flight-search website actually preferred to wait longer for search results—provided they could watch a detailed progress display to see the site “working hard” to canvas each airline’s database.

This would be no more than an intriguing quirk of consumer behavior—if it weren’t for the fact that we apply the same twisted standards to ourselves. Call it the “Effort Trap:” it’s dangerously easy to feel as though a 10-hour day spent plowing through your inbox, or catching up on calls, was much more worthwhile than two hours spent in deep concentration on hard thinking, followed by a leisurely afternoon off.Yet any writer, designer or web developer will tell you it’s the two focused hours that pay most—both in terms of money and fulfillment. (In Mason Currey’s 2013 book Daily Rituals, a compendium of artists’ and authors’ work routines, almost nobody reports spending more than four or five hours a day on their primary creative tasks.) Indeed, meaningful work doesn’t always lead to exhaustion at all: a few hours of absorption in it can be actively energizing—so if you’re judging your output by your tiredness, you’re sure to be misled.

It’s doubly hard to avoid the Effort Trap because our culture so strongly reinforces its deceptive message: Hard work is ultimately what matters. From childhood, parents and teachers drum into us the moral virtue of effort, and the importance of “doing your best”. Numerous approaches to productivity—even the best ones, like David Allen’s Getting Things Done—encourage a “cross-it-off-the-list” mindset:They’re so preoccupied with clarifying and keeping track of your to-dos, you forget to ask if they’re the right tasks to begin with.

And too many workplaces still subtly communicate to employees the idea that intense effort, usually in the form of long hours, is the best route to a promotion. In fact, though, if you can do your job brilliantly and still leave at 3 p.m. each day, a really good boss shouldn’t object. And by the same token, you shouldn’t cite all the effort you put in when making your case for a raise. Why should a results-focused boss even care?

In America and northern Europe, the roots of the Effort Trap may well lie in the “Protestant work ethic,” the old Calvinist idea that being a hard worker was evidence that you’d been pre-selected for Heaven. To reach creativity heaven, though, you’ll need a different approach—one that prioritizes doing the right things, not just lots of things.

The well-known advice to do the most important tasks first in the day is probably still the best; that way, even if you do lapse into busywork, you won’t be wasting your best energies on it. And if your work situation permits it, experiment with radically limiting your working hours: The added constraint tends to push the most vital work to center-stage. You could set electronic reminders through the day, as a prompt to ask if you need to change your focus.

But above all, remember that tiring yourself out—or scheduling every minute of your day with work—isn’t a reliable indicator of a day well spent. Or to put it more cheerfully: The path to creative fulfillment might take a lot less effort than you think."

François-René de Chateaubriand writes about the art of living

Over 100 years ago,French writer François-René de Chateaubriand wrote

"A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both."