Hellion Trace is renowned for the work we create worldwide, and as the company founder I wanted to start the new decade by saying thank you to the collaborators, commissioners and co-conspirators that we love working with.
It would be impossible to make a conclusive list after 10 years of extraordinary learning and creative output. An amazing number of people have challenged us, helped our work grow, who we have loved making work for, and who has created safe spaces for our growth. And I’ve decided to focus on one relationship at a time.
So; let’s begin with our foundation, and our rock: The Pervasive Media Studio.
"Unlike many of the creative spaces in the UK, we enter this space because we have a question."
In 2010, I was offered a residency at the incredible Pervasive Media Studio in Bristol to start exploring how we could liberate our use of composition and movement in public spaces. That residency was life-changing. Suddenly, I was in this critically supportive and collaborative environment full of people developing everything from citizen space travel to new forms of documentary storytelling. I moved my company to Bristol two years later, because the studio community was so extraordinarily rich, and such a different environment to what I had been encountering in London. I haven’t looked back since. At the Pervasive Media Studio, no one is working on the same thing. Every conversation you have is from a point of being un-knowing. In any one given day in the studio, you'll have a conversation with somebody developing new publishing techniques, new forms of documentary filmmaking, tools for people with dementia, bone-conductive gobstoppers, city change-making, to our work exploring movement and technology.
What's extraordinary about that space is that permission for all of us to be un- knowing. Unlike many of the creative spaces in the UK, we enter that space because we have a question. We've often been an expert in another field, but have had a question that we wanted to explore that combines pervasive technology. Technology that is increasingly part of our environment. We've come in with a question, not an answer. We come into a space where we're given permission to be vulnerable and unknowing on a daily level, at a conversation by the coffee machine level, a collaborative level.
It is extraordinary that in the 10 years or so that the studio has been open, they have built a community that thrives and loves and cherishes and supports each other in that unknown place. There are many quiet tools used from hacks, to using open questioning and critical feedback (and Port Wed/Thurs/Friday as an opportunity to celebrate or commiserate). They have developed a space where you can come back from a meeting in which you've had to hold your own and presented, “Yes, this is all doable” and have permission to ask the community, “Did I miss anything?”, “Did I forget anything in this plan?”, “What have I not looked at?”. How often do you get to ask “What's wrong with this idea?”, “What have I not considered?” and for those open vulnerable questions not to be viewed as a weakness, but as a strength.
I knew I was somewhere special the first time I showed a very early prototype / proof of concept / R &D idea to some of the community. I was blown away by the quality of the feedback we got from those critical friends - because nobody in the community is doing the same thing as you, there is a real openness to the critical feedback. “I saw this and it made me think of this”, and “I was wondering about this” and “Do you know this person?”. Nobody is defensive, nobody is holding onto space preciously.
The Pervasive Media Studio has grown out of the incredible cultural leadership of The Watershed, Clare Reddington and the in-house producers. But I think it landed in Bristol, because of the city’s open, DIY attitude. The city’s communities have a base-line attitude which is that if you have a good idea: great, crack on.
I had been creating work in London for years, running venues, choreographing work and touring shows internationally: and I hadn’t realised how deafening London’s paranoia was. I had gotten so used to the fact that if you told somebody that you were doing something their response was, “How come you got to do that?”.
If you tell somebody in Bristol that you want to do something they go, “That's great”. “Do you need help with that?”. “I know so and so would you like me to make an introduction?”. The ego isn't front and centre, and therefore the cross pollination between so many different fields is extraordinary, from aerospace engineering to circus, robotics to culinary experiences, natural history filmmaking to groundbreaking dance works, animation to ecobuilding. It all grows from that place of trust.
Going back to being unknowing, let’s be honest. This can be terrifying. When you first come into the community, you're usually coming from a discipline where you knew all the rules of how you're supposed to engage with people, from what they want, to the competence you need to have, to the timelines involved. Then suddenly, you're in a space where you often don't understand what anyone else is doing, not in a detailed way. And you have not decided the finite end goal of what you're exploring. You just know the starting question, the question that you're interrogating. And because of the new technology your exploring you don’t often know ‘the how’, either
"I can trust my company to conceive new and exciting work because I have learnt the tools, and I have a community that places value in this approach."
Being part of that community has completely changed who I collaborate with, why I want to collaborate with them and what I want to do. It has given me the confidence to trust the scale of the ideas and the change making I want to be part of . I've learnt an ease and a love for working with people from very, very different disciplines, and gathered a whole load of tools which I use to make that easier.
Over the years, I've also had permission to fail and to absolutely mess up. The Pervasive Media Studio has two guiding principles: generosity and being professionally interruptible. Being professionally interruptible is a genius principle. It means anyone in the community had a right to interrupt your day to ask for your help/ knowledge. I might lose 2 hours of my day helping somebody else out. But in exchange, I have the right to ask somebody else for their advice, their guidance and their knowledge - which could unlock 5 years of work, or a commission, or a moment of personal learning, confidence and growth. It embeds the right to be unknowing. The community has grown around it’s principles of generosity and being professionally interruptible in the most beautiful way: The generosity gives the community permission to be honest about when life events invade our work - to be vulnerable or grieving, or sad or ill, and to feel supported and respected in all those guises. Even when we're not at our most resilient.
I will always make time for the Pervasive Media Studio community as I don’t believe I’d be making any of the work that Hellion Trace now makes if I hadn’t been part of it.
All of Hellion Trace’s best work from first proof of concept to final award winning work - has been guided from within that place of Un-Knowing. The work that is strong and extraordinary, that will have an impact has developed from this incredibly supportive space. That principle allows ideas to coalesce together in a way that's extraordinary and new. Over the last ten years, I have found that when I am conceiving work that I now only really begin developing a project when I have found that place. I can trust my company to do that because I have learnt the tools, and I have a community that places value in this approach.
That's pretty amazing.
Search out those that allow you to grow.
More Information
Celebrating the Pervasive Media Studio would not be complete without offering more information on the projects, spaces and people mentioned.
