mutantspace, why bother?
People often ask me why I bother with mutantspace arts resource. Why I would do something; run a website, a bi –annual DIY festival and a daily blog for nothing, free gratis. It’s a lot of work. It has cost money to set up, install, code, programme and none of it was cheap. Infact you can safely assume I’ll be in paying off my Credit Union loan for another 5 – 6 years. So what do I get out of it? How much time do I spend on it? What’s the point of it? What good is it?
Well, my stock answer to all those questions is that not everything has to have a monetary value. If that was the case we truly would be living in a dark world, a world without invention, creativity and expression.
Bottom line is that I spend up to 40 hours a week working on mutantspace.com – along with my paid job – doing everything from updating the site, optimizing it for search engines, writing blogs, getting in touch with members, updating the facebook and twitter feeds, learning about the ins and outs of online marketing and basic SEO practice as well as organising our members festival, the Trash Culture Revue, twice a year. It’s a slow and laborious process and one I thought I’d be ill suited for as I was a puppet and carnival prop maker in my previous incarnation. But there you go. Live, learn and move on.
And as for what I get out of it. Well that’s easy. I get loads out of it, it is my baby after all, I am emotionally and intellectually attached to it, it is a cyber manifestation of many ideas I’ve gathered over time, a vehicle driven by my ideals, my philosophy. Above all, mutantspace is my way of confronting the status quo in the arts industry, my way of saying that our so called cultural economy is an emperor with no clothes and if we are to be free of its spectacle, of its bureaucratic, monetized culture then we need to build our own system; a new way of creative production that is centred around co—operation and free expression.
When I hear of people using the skills bank, when I read members articles, when I see members shows, meet volunteers during our festival I am amply rewarded. It is a wonderful thing to do, to give space to creativity, to create a place where people can comfortably share information, skills, knowledge and resources, can found new relationships, friendships and connections. I can only hope that mutantspace continues to grow, continues to support people and their arts projects, continues to provide a viable alternative to our bloated culture economy.
So If you’re only reading about mutantspace for the first time then why not check out what we can do for you, what you can do in co – operation with others and how much fun we can having building our own system of production, a system that works and is getting bigger all the time
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