It is always good to meet up with people from the other projects; and to have people who are both the 'artists' and 'administrators' as Nick Capaldi described. My thoughts are detailed below.

Maindee and Arts Council of Wales' Ideas: People: Places

Enjoy most?

It is always good to travel to other places in Wales - with some intense conversations on the train up and down! The session on Friday morning was perhaps the best thing. We heard two perspectives from the the local authority i.e. that they have considered the value of the arts in terms of 'intrinsic' and 'instrumental.' And Eugene's presentation about evaluation was also fantastic as he argued strongly that it's about being there which is important to research. I think we are lucky that this relatively small programme has touched on many people and at many different levels.  

Not so good?

The workshop on day 1 with Studio Weave was a little too complicated. Although I did like the game with the tiles that joined I don't think that anybody really had time to fill in all the sheets that we were given beforehand.

Sharing ideas? Networks?

Eugene's presentation is convincing in terms of being in the present and that the act of performing and doing is what we should perhaps concentrate more thought into. Consequently we in Maindee try to document our work from a purely qualitative and - potentially - speculative point of view through our blogs http://www.maindee.org/blog, Instagram posts and so on; we hope to see how it all assembles afterwards. In terms of the future I think that Nick Capaldi's talk was helpful in terms of saying that everything ACW does in the future will be influenced by IPP, albeit without an IPP programme. So let's just carry on doing what we do and then have a chance at the end to look through the results and the relationships that we have developed [and not]. Eugene's research could be very useful to our agenda[s] if we are able to help him push it further - perhaps connecting though Paul Haywood's academic profile?

Any other points?

For me the chance to chat to other people in a safe environment is probably the most valuable thing. The chance to extend into the evening is particularly useful as this is where we can all loosen the shackles and discuss things more playfully [and perhaps more honestly also.] I hope we can have some follow-up events. I'm sure that we can host something in Newport.