I have been asking myself this question a lot lately. Naturally, it’s the end of MAAI but does that mean it’s the end of The Money Shot Project? And either way what does that mean for the future? Ask have established I think this project has legs and I’ve had a lot of positive feedback to confirm this. Parental stakeholders as well as professionals from different areas of porn, Sex Ed and art have all stated they like the intention, format and delivery if the project. As I reflect on all that has been done in the last 20 months I know for sure that I could continue on with workshops for parents, not just continuing these conversations on Sex Ed and porn but extending to all kinds of topics around rape culture, feminism, contemporary culture and in particular social media. But do I want to continue on this path?
I vacillate between thinking that small group sessions like this are the way to genuinely offer people the chance to think, grow and perhaps change a little in a real way and then contrastingly feeling like it isn’t enough and doesn’t make enough impact in the world at large. I frustratingly feel that both are really effective and ineffective at changing the world, I know doing the work in the everyday is where it’s really at but it also feels so slow and at times insurmountable. I like doing workshops and I really love the conversations (and the magic in the room) but I also hate the hustle of putting on events when you’re not confident your network will come through – or rather being in that position again. Starting from scratch in this sense has been hard and I am really considering if I want to spend the next couple of years trying to recreate what I had built in London here in Brighton instead. Equally I don’t like always working out of other people’s spaces, I have been really lucky that Ella at Metropolis has been kind enough to give me the space for free.
I also want a brain break for a little while. I don’t know what this says about me but I often do this where I research the hell out of a particular area and get to know it really well and then hit a saturation point. For a little while I would like to stop thinking about porn and Sex Ed and the consequences on kids (at least as much as I can stop thinking about this as a parent, ie: i’m always thinking about it to some extent.) It’s interesting and important for sure but so are many things and I find myself becoming somewhat of killjoy because ultimately the consequences are bad and it’s just making me so jaded! I have a bunch of books on art and motherhood I would like to read and some other things and it will be nice to think about something else for a change.
But what of the project? I think I have a couple of possible avenues to follow with The Money Shot Project in particular that I will continue to pursue and develop if they come to anything. One of which being doing something at WOW (Women of the World) . I am still trying to speak to the Director of Programming there whom I met at a WOW event at the start of the summer. I am trying to think about what I would propose to do there and might submit a proposal to the festival. Potentially Sex Ed art workshops or Abstracting Porn making maybe. In a slightly different format, I have two places in mind to try and contact about a collaboration of sorts where I would start a regular group to meet and have discussions in the vain of the Salon Social intervention but with some digital examples of a couple of pieces of art to get things going. There are a couple of Arts Council funding things I could apply for but I need to be clearer, again, on what I want to propose, and beyond that I need to be sure that I want to continue with what I am doing.
Something that has plagued me throughout everything I have done in this process is executed a project that is perhaps too cerebral, for want of a better description. I wonder at times if the results are too passive and not practical enough. In other ideas, for example a network of places in Brighton town centres, shops, cafes etc that are safe spaces for tween girls. They have a small sticker in the window and are trained in what to do if a young girl needs help with harassment etc in public spaces. This is only shared amongst the girls, parents and spaces. A bit like the “ask Angela” thing in pubs. I genuinely think its a good idea and would work and feels like an answer to things in practical active way. What I had trouble with there is that I didn’t want to do a project that was creating a good solution to avoiding a problem we have accepted is there, immovable. I wanted instead to do something that felt like it was attacking that embedded problem itself. I can’t always decide which is better, or if they are the same and need to happen in union perhaps? Both are equally worthy of execution though, I do not mean to diminish what I have accomplished with The Money Shot Project which is a lot.
I also continue to tackle the issue of space. Always something I dealt with in London also where I both had some free space but also paid for others. I still find myself playing with the idea of opening a studio. A large space with rentable studio spaces and integrated childcare. Having a space of my own feels like the best way to continue to build on any network I have started here and is for sure a better way to get funding than as an individual. I would like to continue working with adults and kids as well as traversing the line between art and feminism. Integrated childcare feels like the practical aspect of that idea with the use of the space the more cerebral one.
For now I shall continue to use my newly flexed reflective process muscles and sit on all these ideas for a while. And the use of this blog has really helped me find my voice in this process and being forced to write these posts and catalogue my thoughts into a useful behaviour – even though they are rambling and extraneous at times (Is anyone even reading this far down in fact? How much really gets read of aaaaaallll these blogs?! If you’re still here, thanks I appreciate you sticking with me!) It has really helped me the most probably of anything to just spew it all out into words and work through all the kinks in my brain. In a funny way I now realise that I have been contemplating ways to continue this process once this blog ends on Monday.
So I guess I should end saying something like I learned a hell of a lot, which I truly did of course but seriously. I also confirmed many things about my thinking and myself that I maybe wouldn’t have had the confidence to really lean on before. I have experienced an education in taking ideas that are usually spilling out all over the edges, in need of more structure and dimension and developing an adaptive process to create the right conditions for those ideas to expand and flourish, and ultimately, I grew through all of that also.