SUMMER SCHOOL

JULY 4TH – SEPT 6TH 2019

On our wedding day John and I did the official legal bit first thing in the morning before we’d even showered or had breakfast. Just us and two friends in a room at Hackney Town Hall with a poster on the door warning against sham marriages. Thankfully the best man was carrying his suit, lending credence to our story of the main event being in another venue that afternoon.

“John knew what his work was in a way I didn’t”

After the registrar satisfied herself that everything was above board we moved on to the extremely short ceremony and paperwork. She went through all the info she needed to fill out the marriage certificate. When she asked, “What’s your occupation?” I rattled off my standard response of marketing consultant, but John hesitated before giving his answer. “Does it have to be my paid work? My day job?” The registrar shook her head, “You can put whatever you like, it’s up to you.” “Oh,” he said, “then put Sound Artist.”

I don’t think I processed it consciously in the midst of our wedding day but in that moment I registered something. John knew what his work was in a way I didn’t. What ‘sound artist’ is to John is NOT what ‘marketing consultant’ is to me. I wished I had the kind of clarity he had.

Envious For Years

At that stage in our lives John was the artist still trying to figure out what his ‘career’ was going to be. He’d gone back to uni in his twenties and had just started a Masters degree a few months before the wedding. I, on the other hand, was consumed with my career. I was building my web design and marketing agency and trying to learn everything I could about business and what it took to make it work.

John always had some project on the go

I’d been envious of John for years. He always had some kind of project on the go. I’d watch as he scurried around the house in full flow, soldering, drilling, making electronics for his performances. Childcare limitations these days mean I don’t get to go to his shows as often as I used to but I did get out to one a few months ago. At the end of the night as I was waiting for John to pack down I noticed one of the bar staff clearing up. He picked up some glasses that looked a lot like the ones we have at home. Then I realised they were the glasses from home. John had taken them from the kitchen cupboard to use in his performance because he liked the way they amplified the sound from a tiny speaker. I almost had to break into an argument with the barman to get them back.

This is not an unusual occurrence. I once had to draw a line after John returned an espresso cup – part of a nice set we’d received as a wedding present – with the handle broken after a gig. As part of a ‘best men’ video at our wedding one of his friends wondered “just how Megan puts up with all the tiny bits of solder that must accumulate in the carpet?” Over the years I have done my fair share of complaining about broken household items, bits of solder and wire in the carpet, and cupboards spilling over with vintage oscillators and old walkmen. But the truth is all that stuff is a big part of what drew me to John in the first place.

Working Artists

After the wedding certificate moment I started paying more attention to the other working artists in my life and how they approached their work. I was in a mastermind group of sorts with some friends, a few of whom were artists. Proper events-at-the-Tate type artists. As I came to understand their working processes in more depth I started getting glimpses of clarity around how I should be thinking about my own work.

By this point in my career I was aware I didn’t fit in the traditional business world. I’d built a business that worked and then declined to scale it because the bigger it got the more it took me away from the work I was actually interested in doing.

Passive income, 4 hour work weeks, exit strategies. All the things I was being told I should strive towards in the business world were about getting away from the work. But when I finally found the themes and questions I was captivated by, all I wanted to do was move deeper into it.

Questioning In Paris

In my early twenties I shared a house in West London with 7 friends. Emily, an old school friend, was working for Bloomsbury – many people’s dream publishing job – but she wasn’t happy there and was talking about going back to do a masters degree in French poetry. She had taken to tending our garden as a form of self-care in the meantime.

One June afternoon there was a freak hailstorm. Hailstones the size of golfballs. I’ve never seen anything like it in London before or since. Certainly not in June. I got home and stood at the back patio door with a couple of housemates, surveying the damage to the plants. “Emily’s not gonna take this well,” said one. I hadn’t realised how much the garden meant to her until I saw how devastated she was at its decimation. Not long after, she started her masters and later moved to Oxford for her PhD, where she got an allotment and tended her vegetables at every opportunity.

A few years ago I visited Emily in Paris and interviewed her about her work. She was becoming established in the extremely competitive world of academia and had recently won a prestigious award. As I was becoming more and more fascinated with exploring the boundary between artistry and entrepreneurship I couldn’t help but think of Emily. Over the years she had somehow found a way to merge her research in French poetry with her interest in ecology. As a result, her work is completely unique.

“I had more in common with artists and academics”

In describing her current research project she says, “I’m drawn to writers who conduct unusual thought experiments, who ask themselves what it is like to be a plant or a bat…” She is doing the work she’s uniquely placed to do and as a result she has since won the holy grail of a permanent post at Oxford.

When I came to talk to Emily in Paris I realised that, in terms of how I was thinking about my work, I had way more in common with the artists and academics I knew than with the business people I knew. As well as interviewing Emily I interviewed artists and other people who appeared to be doing work they were personally invested in. Work they wanted to go ever deeper into. I thought of this interviewing project as my own personal therapy project. I knew the traditional approach to business didn’t work for me and I was scrambling around trying to figure out what would.

Real Work vs Paid Work

As I talked to these people who were out in the world doing work they cared deeply about, slowly I began to understand my own work as artistic. And despite never before having considered myself to be even a hint creative, let alone artistic, I started to lean into taking a more artistic approach to my work.

One thing became clear to me: Real work and paid work are not the same thing.

“Real work and paid work are not the same thing”

Your real work, by my definition, is the work your most authentic self does. It’s the work only you can do. It’s born out of the unique intersection of all your curiosities and is rooted in your history and experiences. Sometimes it overlaps with your paid work and sometimes not.

Your real work is inherently creative. So I quickly came to understand that in order to know what your real work is and then do it, you must understand yourself as an artist.

Over the course of a year or so into my interviewing project I started to gain an understanding of who I was in an artistic sense, and I began to see the hidden threads that ran through my body of work. They had been there all along I just couldn’t see them before.

Cashflow Crisis

My thoughts related to all this were starting to crystallise around the time our daughter was born. I took a break of a few months for maternity leave and returned to work as we were making the final transition away from web design and building our product and service offering entirely around the ‘Be Yourself’ work I was doing.

My first official day back at work after maternity leave was at my mastermind meeting in London. The reality of the situation was that my time off had hurt the business financially, especially as we were winding down all the web design projects. So when I took my turn in the hot seat that day in London the business was in the midst of a cashflow crisis but I knew I had to look beyond the immediate situation.

At the outset of my hour I said, “I don’t want to have a conversation about what I can do that will make the most money or the easiest money,” which is so often the case in mastermind groups and business discussions. I wanted to talk about how I could spend the year creating work I could be proud of and that would scratch the itch of my deepest seated curiosities. I wanted to get serious about adding to my body of work.

“The retreat felt like a full expression of my artistic identity in my work”

The idea that came out of that hot seat was the Dunfanaghy Retreat. It was time to figure out what that would look like and when I could make it happen. 14 months later I held the first Dunfanaghy Retreat and it felt like a watershed moment for the business – we’d just had our most profitable 12 months ever, and we’d done it without selling websites. But more than that, it felt like a watershed moment for me personally. The retreat felt like a full expression of my artistic identity in my work. And as an added bonus for me, John was there to witness the whole thing.

Colours & Shapes

John first asked me out in a pub in east London after one of his gigs. We had been workmates and then friends for a couple of years at this point. We’d spent the previous few months hanging out a lot. John’s band at the time was having a bit of a moment so there were gigs pretty much every week in trendy venues across east London. I loved going to see him play. That joy and excitement of seeing the full expression of who he is in action has never gone away.

“an expression of his real self”

During the months when I was preparing for the retreat John had the first screening of Colours & Shapes: A Portrait of Free Improvisers, a short film he made about improvisation. I’m not sure I’ve ever been more proud of him. In many ways his video work started out as paid work, but this screening was a very clear marker that his film work had become as much an expression of his real self as his sound work was.

John and I had spent the previous 10 years moving towards each other from opposite ends of the real work/paid work spectrum. And as he told me how much he loved seeing me do my thing at the retreat it was not lost on me that, after a decade of me proudly watching him do his real work on stage and in galleries, he got to come to Dunfanaghy and watch me in the full flow of my real work.

I’m becoming increasingly aware it’s not just him who’s watching…

Are We Doing It Right?

When I went off on maternity leave I was worried I might not have a business to come back to. I was terrified of pausing my regular consulting and other money-making activities but I knew there was no way I’d stay sane without taking a few months off completely. Turns out it was the clean break I needed to really commit to doing my real work first and foremost.

When you have a young child in London you end up mixing with all kinds of other parents you wouldn’t necessarily cross paths with otherwise. Everybody’s gotta get out of the house with their baby and socialise. In the past few years, more than ever before, I’ve spent time with people who have, or whose partners have, big jobs in finance and other big money sectors, and they have the lifestyle to go with it.

In the face of all this you’d have to be superhuman to not fall into the trap of comparison and wondering if you’re maybe doing it wrong. If you’re paying attention at all, parenting is a big bag of insecurities.

Méabh is growing up with parents who are fully engaged with their work

John and I know it’s a foregone conclusion that we’ll screw up on the parenting front in all kinds of ways, many of which we won’t even be able to see until years later. But we’re both very grateful that Méabh is growing up with parents who are fully engaged with their work, and that she gets to see us out in the world doing our thing.

Over the six and a half years from the wedding certificate moment when I realised I wanted to uncover what my real work was, I’ve slowly formalised what I’ve learned about taking an artistic approach to work. And I’ve developed a structured process for uncovering your real work and your unique artistic process.

This summer I’d love to help you clarify your artistic identity and process as I walk you through how you can take an artistic approach to your work and move deeper into the work only you can do.

Introducing Summer School

Summer School is the program artist-type entrepreneurs have been waiting for without knowing it. If you are building a body of work first and foremost – or you want to – then Summer School is for you. The past few years of my work have been about understanding myself as an artist and studying how both artists and artist-type entrepreneurs work.

Business and marketing education is based on the rules of the traditional business paradigm. But when you’re primarily building a body of work rather than building a business for business’ sake, the rules are different. In the past few months I’ve defined the ‘Rules of Business For Artists’. I’ll share the rules with you and over the course of July and August we’ll put them into action together.

This online program is all about understanding yourself as an artist, even if you’ve never thought of yourself in those terms before. Over our summer together we’ll uncover your signature process, your key concepts, your core forms – everything that goes into making the work only you can make.

In each live online class you’ll watch as I walk someone through the process (you can also volunteer to be the person I work with directly). This is not just about theory. You’ll spend the summer engaging your artistic self and experiencing the benefits of taking an artistic approach to your work. By the end of the 10 weeks you’ll have added another piece to your body of work and have deepened your understanding of yourself and the work only you can do.

PROGRAM OUTLINE


Summer School is an online program running from July 4th – September 6th. It is comprised of 5 online classes across the 10 weeks. We have break weeks and creation weeks built into the schedule to allow you time to put the theory into practice. In each class I’ll give you an exercise to go away and do – this is all about experiential learning. You are encouraged to join the classes live but everything will be recorded so you can catch up if you miss the live class. Classes will last 60 minutes.

At the end of the summer you’ll get a 1 hour private one-to-one call with me to debrief your experience and talk about anything you still need help getting clarity around.

Also, throughout the program I’ll be running regular ‘office hours’ sessions on Zoom where you can call in and talk to me (and other participants) directly to ask questions and get help as you go through the program.

PROGRAM SCHEDULE


WEEK 1

Class 1

Date: Thursday July 4th, 6pm UK time | 1pm Eastern

Title: The Rules of Business for Artists – Intro to taking an artistic approach to your work and overview of the Summer School process

WEEK 2

Class 2

Date: Tuesday July 9th, 4pm UK time | 11am Eastern

Title: Step 1 – Examine Your Body of Work and Uncover Your Defining Question

Office Hours

Morning: Thursday July 11th, 9:30am – 10:30am UK time

Evening: Thursday July 11th, 6:00pm – 7:00pm UK time

WEEK 3

Class 3

Date: Tuesday July 16th, 4pm UK time | 11am Eastern

Title: Step 2 – Decipher Your Signature Process

Office Hours

Morning: Thursday July 18th, 9:30am – 10:30am UK time

Evening: Thursday July 18th, 6:00pm – 7:00pm UK time

WEEK 4

BREAK WEEK

Week beginning July 22nd

WEEK 5

BREAK WEEK

Week beginning July 29nd

WEEK 6

Class 4

Date: Tuesday August 6th, 4pm UK time | 11am Eastern

Title: Step 3 – Define Your Key Concepts

Office Hours

Evening: Wednesday August 7th, 6:00pm – 7:00pm UK time

Morning: Thursday August 8th, 9:30am – 10:30am UK time

WEEK 7

Class 5

Date: Tuesday August 13th, 4pm UK time | 11am Eastern

Title: Step 4 – Identify Your Core Forms and Make Your Work

Office Hours

Morning: Thursday August 15th, 9:30am – 10:30am UK time

Evening: Thursday August 15th, 6:00pm – 7:00pm UK time

WEEK 8

CREATION WEEK

Week beginning August 19th

WEEK 9

CREATION WEEK

Week beginning August 26th

WEEK 10

1-2-1 Calls

Week beginning September 2nd

Everyone gets a 1 hour one-to-one call with me at the end of the process.

PROGRAM FEE


The fee for Summer School is $995 or £780+VAT. Places are limited and will be awarded on a first come first served basis.

During the Summer School program you will:

  • Deepen your understand of your artistic identity and how it relates to the work only you can do
  • Clarify your unique Defining Question that runs through your entire body of work
  • Discover the Rules of Business for artists
  • Identify your Signature Process that lets you do the work only you can do
  • Uncover the simple filters you can use to make the best decisions for your work
  • Get clarity on the direction you should take next in your professional life

Ready to Register?

The fee for Summer School is $995 or £780+VAT. Places are limited and will be awarded on a first come first served basis.

Payment plan available, click for options

Questions? Email hello@meganmacedo.com and we’ll get back to you.