Mentoring Articles
These articles were originally published in the ACG Mentoring Project Handbook, editted by Michael
Gough, ACG Mentoring Project coordinator 2000-03:
"The ... articles are on subjects that seemed to
resonate most strongly with the regular participants. The
authors all have hands-on familiarity with the themes they are tackling. This isn’t a collection of high
aspirations and untested ideas written from ivory towers, this is a collection of honest, raw and pragmatic
insight that has been refined and shaped by daily experience."
These articles are available in the member’s area. Alternatively, you may contact the office to enquire about purchasing the Mentoring Handbook, price £3.50 plus postage.
A Biblical Vision For The Arts
’All art is quite useless’ is Oscar Wilde’s assessment. Wilde sums up the feelings of many towards the artist. Mainstream society often views the artist as a parasite who should get a ’proper job’.
The Importance of Belonging to a Christian Community
'Community' is a vague term that has a broad meaning. My dictionary has ten different interpretations of the word ranging from 'the public in general' to 'a monastic order'.
Hope and Faithfulness
Hope and faithfulness can be enemies. So if contemporary artists are interested in pursuing hope in their lives and through their work, they can also become enemies of faithfulness. But how can two such good words become pitted against one another, tearing at one another and competing for our devotion?
Pursuing Excellence In Your Craft
An oft-repeated story is told about the Japanese painter Hokusai. Once a great nobleman asked him for a painting of a rooster. He agreed, telling him to come back in a week.
Handling Success in the Arts and Media
When given this title to write about, it immediately raises the issue of ’What is success?’
Handling Rejection in the Arts and Media
Rejection has nothing but negative connotations. It’s the thing all artists fear for their work and with good reason. Who wants to give birth to an idea, painting, sculpture, play, poem (fill in your own blanks) and have it turned down, ridiculed or worse still simply ignored?
Creating and Managing Opportunities in the Performing Arts
The various challenges for anyone going into the performing arts in the 21st century are not much changed from those I faced when I joined the acting profession 30 years ago.
Creating and Managing Opportunities in the Visual Arts
’When it comes to the future there are three kinds of people. Those who let it happen, those who make it happen and those who wonder what happened?’ JM Richardson Jnr
Creating and Managing Opportunities in Broadcasting
Work on networking. Most media companies will do their best to ensure that nepotism or relying on ‘who you know’ - is officially against the rules, but in practice there is still a lot of it about. Getting into the media is all about who you know, what you have already done and being in the right place at the right time.
Engaging With Our Divided Culture
You’ll often find the distinction made between ‘low’ (or ‘popular’) culture and ‘high’ culture. In popular culture, the audience is a mass audience and its knowledge is largely informal: in high culture it’s small and usually has some expertise in whatever the culture is dealing with.
