Rejection and Crumbling Systems

oh and some slugs

Hello dear reader,

It’s been 9 months since I last wrote a newsletter, mostly because I’ve felt like I haven’t had much to say.

I had a couple of fun projects in 2025; a commission for Berwick’s Salmon Queen Crowning, performing in Two Destination Language’s show ‘Bottoms’, co-running visual art workshops with Neurodiverse young people, but mostly I was sat in my studio, staring at my laptop, writing an application.

As someone who is extremely restless and finds concentrating on screen based tasks very, very hard, application writing is truly my least favourite thing to do. I spent a total of 12 months writing, and then re-writing, a funding bid for a project that I’d been dreaming up since 2023.

Then last week, whilst doing my shopping in Tesco, I checked my emails and there it was, the rejection. Working in the arts you become accustomed to rejection emails, but some feel tougher than others, especially when it’s a 4 month wait to hear back.

The feedback on the application was positive, it met all the funder’s requirements, and yet it was still a no. I know that I wrote a good bid, that the idea was a strong one, that audiences would come and see the work, but it’s hard not to take it personally, to feel as though I could have done more. The problem is of course not that my project wasn’t fundable but one much bigger than that:

there simply isn’t enough money.

More and more artists and creatives I know are getting part-time jobs, completely re-training or having conversations about whether they’ve got the capacity to carry on or not. When I was first starting out as an artist, working other jobs alongside was of course the norm (unless you were rich or incredibly lucky), but 10, 20, 30 years in, it simply shouldn’t be the case. These are successful, talented, capable artists.

We are being ground down, our resilience tested.

After 2 days spent looking at local jobs (‘do you think I could work on a pig farm’ I asked Alex last night), and feeling completely hopeless, I reminded myself that whilst it’s really hard right now, it’s not impossible. Being an artist is a fundamental part of who I am, it’s a way of being in, and responding to, the world and I simply cannot turn that off.

I’ve been looking back over ideas, thinking about new directions I want my practice to go in and applying for some smaller grants.

I’ve also been making many, many felt slug bookmarks, because when life feels hard, why not fill it with slugs. Would you like a slug? Get in touch and one can be yours for £5 only.

I’m hoping that 2026 can bring a renewed sense of creativity, and that I can give myself time to play, to make new kinds of art, to read, to make new connections, and to remember that our creativity will continue to exist, outwith the crumbling systems.