art smarts

Chapter 5. Training and Development

The classes I took were OK for the most part, because some of those people actually talked to me.When I was in school, that was a different area. I was mainstreamed, so none of the kids would talk to me there unless they were my friends. Both teachers that I’ve had so far in Bharata Natyam have been inclusive. They were told beforehand by my mother what disability I had. And of course they had to be in tune with my learning style as well, which is sort of slow, but it’s still there. I can learn. Some people think that I cannot learn. Some people think I learn way too slow and not enough. But I learn slow in some cases and fast in most.
rasika

Training is really important. Something I didn’t realize until I was pretty much out of training is that training is not just a place to learn how to do, it’s a place to explore how you’re doing it. It’s an opportunity to just get out there and do your work and to experiment and try, and fail or succeed. It’s a place to practice your craft. I was ignoring disability and trying to overcome it, when I think my efforts would have been improved by acknowledging disability and finding ways to use it. Finding ways to explore it, finding ways to express it.
james

In my late twenties, I went to Vancouver Community College to study jazz, which included theory, performance and jazz guitar. I played locally in coffee shops and organized some musical and multidisciplinary shows at various venues.

I have been studying electroacoustic and soundscape composition at Simon Fraser University. The sonic studios in the Communications Department are accessible, and the Centre for Students with Disabilities can provide note-takers and assistants. The computer music labs are not yet accessible, but I understand they will be. There are several local institutions which offer courses in audio work.

I have received my training in electroacoustics as part of a degree leading toward teaching. Most of my work has been created while studying at SFU, where I hope to continue to complete a Masters, with funding through scholarships and grants, some of which are available to students with disabilities. I would recommend consulting centres for students with disabilities and financial services at institutions, for options in training.

And after the training, it’s practice, practice, practice. With some experimentation thrown in, it’s the only way to develop your own voice, your own style.
sylvi

I was ignoring disability and trying to overcome it, when I think my efforts would have been improved by acknowledging disability and finding ways to use it.

I took an audition class – and silly enough, this was a class you had to audition for – so I worked on a monologue and I went there and auditioned, and I must have looked like a frightened child. It was pathetic. The instructor said, “Look, I don’t know what they’ve been teaching you at SFU, but I want you to do that again, and don’t engage me – you’re breaking some rudimentary rules of monologues. Start again.” So I started again and I couldn’t finish it. I was really nervous. And you could hear him saying, “It’s OK, it’s all right.” And then he says, “Look, I really think if you want to take this trade seriously you’re gonna have to look at more training.” And I’m thinking, “What the heck? I’ve just done eight years of training, I can’t listen to this!” And I looked at him and I said, “You know, you’re wrong. You’re wrong. I don’t need more training. I need confidence. I gave you a bad reading. Give me a minute to regroup and do this again.” And he says, “OK, prove me wrong.”

So I went off to the side and I said “All right, let’s just get it all together.” And I came back and I did a performance. I heard him laughing; he was really involved, enjoying the performance. And I finished it up and he said, “I’d admit you just on the strength of that to any program I’ve got here. It’s obvious that you’re a strong actor. But what’s going on?” And to me that was the sure sign that I’ve got the talent and I’ve got the training but it’s all for nothing if it’s not practiced. And that’s the training, the training is ongoing, the work is ongoing, the practice is ongoing.
james

The way that training works in comedy is you just go on out into the fire and see if you can survive. Fortunately, I survived. I would say it took me a good five years of working steadily at it before I had a solid twenty-minute or half-hour act. In my early years, the first five or seven years, I was really beating my head when it came to getting my first crack at the comedy business, so I was pretty much working on my own as a disabled comic. Other fellow comics were supportive of what I was trying to do, but when it came time for me to really push, I very much felt that I was on my own.
alan

I think even when you do go to painting classes and are supposedly being taught, it’s still self-taught. I don’t know how somebody could teach you how to do that. It really is just practicing and looking and experimenting and playing and practicing and looking. It’s all of those things, over and over and over.
bernadine

Honestly, I think I’m self-taught. I’ve always feared being too technical – then you never have feeling. The reason I paint is emotion. And if I paint using certain techniques, like mixing colours according to a plan or an instruction manual – if I do that that way, first of all it will be work, a task, it will be routine. For me it makes no sense to do it that way; that means you’re better off making a balance sheet or financial report. For me, when I paint, I’m completely involved in my canvas. I get pleasure from playing with colours from beginning to end.
roger

It’s exciting to be on a really strong show. When one comic leaves the stage he’s got that audience at a pitch where they’re thinking, “No, no, stay, we want more, we want more!” And if they’re introducing you, you’re walking into a very negative energy, because they’re looking at you like, “No, we don’t want you, we want the other guy.” So you have to make adjustments in your own performance to wipe the other guy off the face of the earth and get your image into the minds of the audience. That’s the evolution of the personality on stage, which only happens over a period of time. When you first get into the business you only know your material, you’re still terrified. You walk out and you do your routine the same way every single time. You don’t change the phrasing, you don’t change the intonation, you don’t change a single word. But now I can walk out there and say, “Oh, yeah, I do this joke like this but this time I’m doing it like this, because this will get a laugh if I do it this way.” And it’s that little inner voice that tells you exactly what to say, when to look, how to move. If you don’t listen to it, you won’t get the laugh you want. I’ve learned to listen to that little voice. That’s part of that evolution thing. Never try to fight it.
gord

If you’re lucky, or if you search for one, you may find a mentor – someone whose work you respect who will teach you, one-on-one, about specific techniques or about the world of art generally.

I learned to carve when I was seven years old. I borrowed my mom’s paring knife and I carved the end of my grade one pencil – the wooden pencils that they issued at those Catholic day-care schools. It didn’t look too good. That was my first carving. And after, I just kept on carving, better and bigger totem poles. I’d sit with the elders and they told me, “Oh, carve this and carve that and carve it like this,” and basically showed me how they carved things a long time ago.That’s the style that I follow now.
koskas

Why do I want a mentor? Naïveté. Any industry has what you see on the outside and then what really happens on the inside. I did some research for CARFAC-BC on the possibility of establishing a mentorship program. And what I found was that all the emerging artists absolutely wanted it, and the senior artists also felt that they would get a lot out of it. So there’s a lot of good will in Vancouver for people helping each other out as much as they can.

For me, it was a matter of running into this person; I heard him speak twice, and then simply approached him and asked him if he was interested in doing it. Which he was – it was just a matter of whether it was going to fit. He does something very different – he does landscapes. And he’s not a woman, he’s a man, which, considering my topic material, there’s that. I’m not really sure where that’s going to go.
bernadine

he pushed me, every day, pushed my limits. sometimes it was too hard, and
sometimes it was magic and fantastic and unbelievable.....