T H E M A K I N G R O O M
T H E M A K I N G R O O M
The Making Room is a creative immersion for artists seeking to make work in film and the performance arts. It is a unique course, devoted to the process of excavating and transforming your vision into creative form. For 7-weeks, you will work alone and within a community exploring, testing and sharing material within a supportive network to illuminate your creative process and discover your essential artistic voice.
The Solo School is designed to offer individual artists a way into their creative worlds to develop a unique approach to private personal practice. The school is a journey into the rich territory of working alone, venturing into an ever-developing excavation of your expression. Now, the Solo School invites individual artists to explore the rich world of creating work and to illuminate making pathways that might build on existing approaches and manifest new possibilities for creating work.
The work is facilitated by Henry McGrath who has been devoted to the investigation of personal practice for 11 years and to making original work in theatre and film. Henry is an actor, director and a physical performance artist who has worked within a wide-web of performance worlds, from collaborating with experimental avant-garde groups to working in mainstream TV and film. He is the Founder and Co-Director of Eden’s Cave, an experiential production company based in the Forest of Dean. He teaches acting, approaches to embodied expression, and the development of solo practice at institutions across the UK. He has worked with over 100 artists through the Solo School.
Next coursE
26th MARCH - 13th MAY
WHO IS IT FOR?
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Emerging and established theatre artists, dancers, filmmakers who are seeking to make a specific project. Also open for visual and sound artists who might be looking to create an exhibition of works around a particular theme
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Artists curious about the process of working alone, held within the framework of a supportive community. Although the MAKING ROOM has elements of working with others, participants will be required to self-organise their own creative journey
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Anyone who desires to deepen their creative work, understand their process of making that connects them to themselves, and helps shape and enhance their work in the world
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Artists prepared to film their work and share actively over the course of the 5 weeks
Week 1
AWAKENED VISION
Week 1 focuses on awakening the inspirations that sparked your creative vision and opening new enquiries of research that can deepen and trigger performative possibilities. You will start to map threads of ideas, drawing on what you know, the kernel of where it began, and then opening to wider research that will excite and deepen the source material. Over the first week you will be invited to record and notate in numerous ways, to begin opening your creative process and become an active explorer on the quest of your own making journey.
Week 4
CURATING FORM
Week 3 launches us out of the processes of exploration into the process of making. You will begin to think about how to structure your material, how to create sequences of action, generate more focussed writing, and have opportunities to interrogate style and the imaginative design of your work. This week seeks to draw out your individuality and unique artistic vision and plunges you into the act of making, learning through doing, dreaming through actualising.
Week 2
DEEP PLAY
In Week 2 you will be invited to start actively exploring the ideas you have discovered and formulated in week one. Now, in Deep Play the intention is to excavate, to enter the worlds of your ideas, to play and experiment. You will start to uncover your own explorative process and research material through various modalities of expression. You will be encouraged to work within the framework of their own disciplines and also meet different expressive forms to create counterpoint and inspire new insights to your work.
Week 6
BRAIDING
In Week 4, fragments of material will start to coalesce and move into synergy. Through a process of dramaturgy, you will begin to order, cut and refine the journey of your material. You will work alone and as part of a group to discuss your material, receive input from your peers in an effort to find the journey-arch. Over the week you will work with these arches, weaving and braiding moment to moment, interrogating meaning and bringing depth into your work by making connections on multiple levels.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
The course will run for 7 weeks from Sunday 26th March - Saturday 13th March
Introductory Video - You will receive an introductory video when you sign up for the course
Group Meeting – Before we open, artists will meet, set intentions and explain their project
Week 1: Awakened Vision
Group Meeting to Open Course - Sunday 26th March
Video – 1st Sunday
40-minute One-to-one Online session
Week 2: Deep Play
Video – 2nd Sunday
40-minute One-to-one Online Session
Week 3: Deep Play
Continued work with Deep Play
Week 4: Curating Form
Video - 4th Sunday
40-minute One-to-one Online Session
Week 5: Curating Form
Continued work with Curating Form
Group Check in and Sharing, Saturday 29th April
Week 6: Braiding
Video – 6th Sunday
40-minute One-to-one Online Session
Week 7: Braiding
Continued work on Braiding
40-minute One-to-one Online Session
2-hour sharing of final work – Saturday 13th May
Throughout the course, participants will receive videos of other artists speaking about their
work and process through the ‘SOLO SCHOOL Conversations’. And there will be a
live debate with a performance artist (tbc) where participants can ask questions.
HOW MUCH DOES IT COST?
£200
10% discount for returning participants
(There is a bursary available worth £50 for a disadvantaged participant)
Limited places
Includes an introductory video; 2 hours of online footage; 3 hours 40 mins of personal one-to-one facilitation; personalised tasks and support over the 4-week period; 5 hours of discussion and sharing with the course group; and over 4 hours of interviews with other solo artists through 'Solo School Conversations'.