8x8 at Cockatoo Island

We had our first meeting for the 8x8 program on Saturday: 8 school students from the Liverpool area, and 8 uni students from SCA and NAS visited Cockatoo Island to speak to Biennale of Sydney artists, view some of the installation process and start thinking about their own art-making for upcoming workshops and exhibition.

Unfortunately I couldn't make it because of my own work commitments (pretty much everything in my life seems to be clashing!) but all went to plan and they sound a great bunch of students to be working with.

On one hand the strength of the project is obviously in bringing together the knowledge and approaches of different organizations, people, artists and setting up ongoing relationships. That said, my biggest difficulties so far have been working in a partnership across organisations, where just contacting people for a minor query or getting approval from all parties can delay plans for weeks, particularly considering I've only been available for the internship one or two days a week. I guess this aspect is common to any part time work, but something that seems fairly common in the arts where people are lecturing, studying, parenting, or working outside of weekday business hours.

This has become a surprisingly big project when added to liaising with project partners is the relatively simple yet time consuming task of contacting and securing proper paperwork from 16 high school and uni students. Again, because the project is never going to be the only thing each participant has going on in their life, sometimes responding to an 8x8 email or phone call is not a priority.

What I have come to really value in this project, and my internship in general, is people's willingness to let go and see what happens rather than run everything their way. To me the best managers trust you enough to have some creativity and not just recreate their vision.

Interestingly this ties nicely to a theme we are prompting students to explore in their art-making in response to similar themes in this year’s Biennale of Sydney: looking at different types of collaboration, the relationships and power balances that are set up through this exchange.