Get inspired by someone’s life or defining moment

Post 17 of Dream, create and make money in the arts – My Series on becoming a Successful Creative

In a previous post I talked about picking an anniversary of someone and putting together a show or event around this. The idea is to put together songs, poems, moments of their lives, perhaps books they loved. It can be your grandfather or a local author or historical person, someone who moves you to create in whatever form works for you: paintings, songs, a play, a theatrical piece.

It could be an important day in their lives or anniversary of their death or a moment that defined who they were.
Entire musicals have toured on this, including the moment four very famous artists were all in the Sun Records studio in on the same  night in 1956 when Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis came together to make music and ended up making history Million Dollar Quartet (Original Cast Recording)

The show was basically based on the photograph someone had the forethought to take

There are so many examples of this in film for example: Piaf the movie and Piaf the musical as well as hundreds across the world of events collating Piaf songs and performing them, many films about sports moments eg Miracle, authors, musicians and painters Frida [DVD]

I have done two events on Shakespeare’s Birthday where as a group of actors we have done monologues and I have even sang sonnets. My podcast on the last one I did is here

However I saw this article below on Londonist and so I am going to let you read the brilliance of this, perfect proof that choosing a special anniversary of someone who fascinates you and putting on your own take on it gets press, creative, thoughful, beautiful  and by the sound of it very cold work!!

Jake Wilson has written an album which he produced to commemorate the centenary of Scott’s doomed expedition, featuring one song for each of the five explorers on that expedition. Jake spent a lot of time reading the letters of Wilson, Bowers, Oates, Evans and Scott.

Jake will be talking about his voyage on Saturday Live on Radio 4 tomorrow morning at 9am.

From his website

On 3rd March 2013, Jake reached Cape Evans in Antarctica, and fulfilled his dream of performing his songs in the actual hut where Captain Scott and his team lived and worked before setting out for the South Pole. Conditions at the Hut were perfect: sunshine, blue skies, no wind, and a temperature of around -13 degrees.

The journey to the Hut and Jake’s performance there were filmed by Colin Rogal, a close friend who has worked with Jake on projects for the BBC, the Open University and the Roald Dahl Estate. Jake is now putting together a film about this extraordinary experience, which will be ready later in the year.

Jake received special permission for this performance-of-a-lifetime from the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust and reached the Hut with Antarctic travel experts Oceanwide Expeditions. To cope with the extreme conditions in the Hut, Jake performed on a Rainsong graphite guitar.”

I love this and how moving each song must have been, a reflection on a life long gone now.

So if you have a person or an anniversary in mind as a basis for your event start to jot down what you could use as elements to add to the overall story, including little known facts.  Audiences love to be entertained, educated and look at others lived to the full lives.

About this series – Being a Successful Creative – The Business of Creativity

This is a series of daily blogs for you on how to dream up, build, market and sell a creative event, gig, festival, book launch, cabaret night, exhibition of rude plastic cupcakes or whatever creatively inspires you. It is time to create and put on that play about your family, a series of drawings about hedgehogs, the album you have talked about making or the short film you always wanted to write and make.