Ideas Tap asked us to share some of our experiences of Resolution!…

The support of individuals and institutions is critical. As Resolution! artists, we were lucky enough to be able to sign up for professional development workshops run by The Place, in everything from project management to lighting design. People working outside of this environment can find courses and workshops through organisations such as Creative Choices.  

Treat everything you do with the same effort – and joy – as the actual piece. Making short trailers, thinking about what kind of photographs you want, designing flyers, tweeting and retweeting, and composing emails inviting people to come and see you.

Treat yourself as if you’re a professional from day one. Whatever the scale you’re working at, the principles are the same. Be straight to the point and don’t make promises you can’t keep. Treat everyone you work with respectfully, and always be courteous.

Get the best photographs, description, graphic design, video and website you can. We built a simple WordPress website, but for the rest, we didn’t have that expertise ourselves, so we worked with talented friends and acquaintances. Some of them were also starting out and we offered credits and links to their websites in return for producing something for us.

Be open and engaging about yourselves and your process – particularly online. Not only does it help people get to know you, it also helps break down some of the mystery of contemporary dance, particularly if you are trying to cultivate a cross-disciplinary, or non-dance audience for your work.