Feedback – its a tricky thing to get right, isn’t it?
As an artist making work, it seems pretty essential, but it’s so hard to know how to filter the stuff people say. Everyone has some kind of agenda, a different aesthetic preference.
We got a whole range of snippets of written feedback following 10 minutes of extracts from Avon Calling at First Bite a couple of weeks ago. Inevitably the negative ones sear themselves onto my retina, whilst the positive ones float in and out and get forgotten about. I decided to put all the text into Wordle, and the result I think paints a more positive picture than is correct – since it breaks up sentences and just shows single words.
So here is the wordle, and a couple of my favourite bits of feedback. And just so you know, I do read the feedback, and the negative stuff does hurt my feelings, but the positive stuff has the power to make me want to keep going and make more work and make it better.
“This evening was billed as ‘the region’s most daring theatre…” well if this is one of the “most daring” then heaven help us!”
“very pleasantly tickled by the whole concept”
“Confused… apathetic.. Maybe disgruntled at best.”
“My favourite I adore this piece! Moving Touching Thought provoking – would love to see it develop”
Avon Calling, In development post by katie.