THE BACKSTORY

In 2022 we were supported for the first time as resident artists during which we were proposed with the opportunity of meeting 5 programmers that were important in the field.

An encounter that could help us achieve more through their network, eventual support and could pave the way to having our productions programmed in various locations.

WHAT WENT WRONG?

We did not form any meaningful relationship, received any real form of support nor any proposal to program any of our productions.

Some of the meetings went relatively well but were not able to be converted into an actual collaboration of any kind other meetings were incredibly tough to get through.

Here is a quick overview of the statements that these 5 programmers, who we will leave unnamed have made.

Programmer 1: Your company is already too established. I do not have the possibility to craft the vision of the company together with you so I do not see how I could help you further.

Programmer 2: Your company is too small. With the kind of that you it is simply not established enough to support you in any way or kind. Maybe in 5 to 8 years time?

Programmer 3: Your work looks exactly like the work of Peeping Tom. If you want to set yourself apart you really need to think differently and come up with your own ideas.

Programmer 4: While I think you are doing a good job and love the vision of the company, I can not support your work because the funding of our institution has just been cut.

Programmer 5: I do not program performances.

ANY REGRETS?

As this was the first time for us to pitch our work to a group of programmers, we have just taken this as a learning experience.

Therefore there are no real regrets because we did the best we could have done with the limited amount of experience we had.

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED?

Not every opportunity that comes your way will be the break-through of your career.

It is better to foster longterm relationships with people that connect to your work than to chase people in important positions that do no understand your vision.

Sometimes it’s simply about timing, sometimes it’s simply not the right match-up. As long as you keep working and improving on your craft eventually you will start amassing an audience and the right opportunities will come your way.

THE BACKSTORY

When covid hit in 2020 the whole art world was hit pretty hard with the majority of the artists struggling economically. This combined with the fact that everybody was confined at home gave rise to a whole lot of online content from artists that were previously still doing everything in front of live audiences.

As I was already toying with the idea of setting up some kind of online workshop I saw this as the perfect opportunity to launch my very own online workshop and thus the Lizards in Shoes online workshop was born.

It was hosted on Patreon, a website which supports various types of online content creators.

WHAT WENT WRONG?

There was more than one single thing that went wrong with this online workshop.

I had originally lined up enough content for 3 to 4 months in which every single tier was going to get different kinds of material. Every single tier was getting a video in which I gave the explanation of a physical task, the higher tiers received never before released footage of certain creation processes with a voice-over of what I was doing and thinking at that time and finally there was the final tier who also received specially curated videos of my inspiration of dancers/choreographers/performers whose videos I linked on my channel.

As you can notice this had become quite a huge task with many different elements to it.

One thing that I had underestimated is the amount of work it takes to come up with an idea, shoot it on location, edit the video, work on sound and colouring, adding subtitles in three different languages which I thought was necessary for some reason, rendering and finally uploading everything on the date set out.

Then there’s a second step in this process which is interaction with the patrons, these are the people that pay a monthly fee in order to get access to the footage, which took up some time as well as I was trying to interact with every single one of them.

Last but not least there was then also the marketing which had to been done in order to let people know that this workshop was available, guide them to the website and then explain the registration process.

What ended up happening is that once I started touring/creating again it was impossible for me to combine that lifestyle with this online workshop and I slowly stopped posting. I still have about 3 to 4 videos that are fully finished but I haven’t posted and 4 to 5 videos that were filmed but were never edited with one video floating somewhere in the middle on which the subtitles are halfway done because I lost my sanity translating everything manually.

ANY REGRETS?

At one point the weight of it started haunting me and created a certain guilt that I wasn’t able to fulfil what I had set out to do.

I regret not having been able to properly close it off and thank every single person that supported me.

Therefore I’ll use this post as my sincerest apology to my abandoned patrons and a big thank you for having supported me.

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED?

I have learned to start small and then work my way up. If I had started with just one tier and focused on that I likely would have lasted at least 6 to 7 months instead of the 2 months that I got to.

EXTRA

You can watch the video of the introduction page that was used as advertisement here: Introduction Patreon