What can get your heart racing, give you warm fuzzy feelings and potentially annoy the christmas jollies out of others, all at the same time? No, not being in love. It's street arts of course you crazy Red-ette bunch! This is what we managed to achieve in today's lecture. The lecture started with a brief explanation of the interventions we were about to create on the street in order to communicate with our potential audience. The proposed tasks included small acts or happenings that to the regular shopper may be completely overlooked and go absolutely unseen but to those with a more open mind at the time of passing, could be more visible and influential.
* Above:one intervention included all pointing at nothing in particular. Obviously.
* Note- my gorgeous street arts peers as we carried out our mini exploration, pictured above.
One of the acts carried out by our lecturer included entering a bookshop and singing. This, surprisingly, was actually very well received by the staff and customers who either smiled or continued about their literary shop completely ignoring him. I could actually talk for days about how interesting I find the varying reactions of the public to street theatre (but dont worry, I wont). The 'if i dont look at you, its not happening' look being my favourite which is akin to those I expect homeless people get alot. I think, however, the positive reaction here was due to the choice of song, time of year (people being more open to festive cheer and all that in late November) and the fact that my lecturer has an incredibly nice voice.
Another of the tasks included the applausing of members of the shopping centre we met on our way and again, surprisingly this turned out to be quite a crowd pleaser! The man doing the grouting seemed positively made up that he had received such a big hand, so much so in fact, I heard him telling whoever he was on the phone to about it later. The security guard slightly less so, but he smiled all the same.
Our final task was to make a connection with a member of the public, including something small such as a smile or even eye contact. Interestingly enough, despite having the best will in the world to make a positive connection,my heart was still racing with this task. Walking towards an elderly chap ( who looked like he'd had his fill of festive shopping) I decided to shoot him a smile and though he took a few seconds to respond, he did all the same. I then went in for a full blown 'Merry Christmas' (despite it being late November, but didnt really know what else to say!) and to my surprise he grinned and replied 'Merry Christmas'. He seemed so taken aback as I walked past that anyone would think I'd just given him the winning ticket to the lottery! I was pretty happy too and had that weird little fuzzy feeling in my tummy when you've done something good to make someone else smile. And it made me think, I mean, sod the street arts for a mo...wouldn't the world be even just that tiny bit better if we all just smiled at each other and gave people a 'merry christmas' in November...well, not just that obviously but it's a start.
Most importantly though, I learnt that just because you're a street artist doesn't mean that you can just waltz in and declare the attention of the audience around you. You have to earn that from them, moreso than you would in an auditorium where people have paid to be there and will find it difficult to leave! People have real lives, real shopping to do and may not want to watch you doing some contemporary dance piece on the current economic crisis. They may just want to crack on with buying new pairs of novelty socks for their sisters and old spice for their dads. And that, I believe is one of the most important things I will take with me....(not the Old Spice, the moral,innit.)
x x x
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