‘The boring shit’ #3 - running budget

This is something my dyspraxic brain has always struggled with. I think since numbers and dates and time confuse me, maybe money over time is just too much to get my head around. Oh wait thats cashflow? Okay never mind.

There’s a very specific feeling I get which I associate with my brain not being able to do something because of neurodiversity. Its a really fluffy, annoying feeling of ‘bamboozled’. Like no matter how hard I try, I just can’t compute the information. That’s what I get with the running budget, or even trying to explain what I’m recording and why I’m confused.

Anyway luckily I was able to share this with the amazing Pippa Frith (Exec Producer of Fierce Festival), who is someone I actually feel comfortable expressing my bamboozlement to. She showed me some examples of how her documents work, and I made this new system.

Here are some images of an example template:

[ID: a budget spreadsheet (see audio for full description) ]

• ‘Cash budget’ is the amount you have assigned to that budget area.

• ‘Spent’ is money that has actually left the bank account.

• ‘Committed’ is money you have committed to pay, but not yet paid - eg. fee instalments.

[ID: example of a formula in the budget spreadsheet. Remaining = Cash Budget minus ((SUM:spent column)+(SUM:committed column)) ]

• ‘Remaining’ = Cash budget - (Spent + Committed).

• At the bottom of the sheet, the Remaining total should match the bank account.

• In order to ‘reconcile’ the bank account, you need to go through each bank statement and check that all the transactions are listed in the budget and have a receipt or invoice number.

• (Please please have a separate bank account for receiving grants - aside from being best practice it makes everything so much easier).

The spreadsheet should have several tabs, so you don’t have to look at too much information in one place.

My example has a tab for a list of invoices and receipts, this is where you record them and assign them a number, eg. when you buy something and there is a paper receipt, you can file it or take a picture and enter the data in the sheet, and give it a number. These can just be consecutive numbers for a list which includes both invoices and receipts. When an invoice comes in you can rename the file to include the new number.

Then a tab for the running budget, and a separate tab for the ‘original’ or ‘submitted’ budget. This is the one submitted in the funding application, so you have a record. When you start the project and probably need to modify the budget, you can just start a new one which will become the running budget and re-assign the headers there. When you do the evaluation then you can compare the original budget to the running budget.

Containers for work - physical & digital space, precarity, annoyance, and boundaries between admin & practice

• What is needed to make containers for my work?
  
  Physical space: I need an organised place where I can sit comfortably to edit and do laptop work, drawing, thinking. I need a clear space where I can leave my things overnight (not the kitchen table). I need to be able to plug my chargers in easily!
  
  Rehearsing is different - but I don’t need that all the time. I do need to be able to test out some stuff, either in a clear space in my flat or a studio space. For this I really need an easy camera setup (or iPhone tripod) so I can just put it there and quickly film myself and watch it back. (I dread plugging in the wires, setting up the camera, tripping over everything… and thats a bit of a barrier to work).
  
  Digital space: I need containers which are already set up to upload things as soon as they are done - like this blog, or a Twitter. I need a good filing system and I need to stick to it. That takes effort to set up which I can’t do when I am in project mode, so I need to do that at another time and create good containers first.

• How precarity feeds into not being able to build those things
  
  I realised that precarious housing is really feeding into my inability to set up good work space. How am I supposed to invest in building something or buying furniture, when everything feels so temporary and I’m not sure if I can stay where I am for long?
  
  This also feeds into my ability to make work - of course I can’t focus on making a show, when I’m not sure where I will be living by the end of the process.
  
  This thinking is encouraging me to be realistic about what I need, and try hard to put it in place. When its not possible to have certainty (for instance I can’t find out for sure right now, whether I can stay where I’m living long term) - then I have to just make a decision based on what I need now, and commit.
  

• Annoyance
  
  If things consistently bug me, and stop me from looking forward to work, I need to sort them out!
  
  It might seem hard but sometimes just something small like putting up some shelves or screwing a hook into the wall for my keys can make things feel so much more organised and manageable, and stop me from dreading work.
  

• What counts as ‘practice’ - eg. Reading, writing, drawing, sound, rehearsing, talking with people, moving/stretching
  
  I want to expand my definition of ‘practice’, to take account of all the things I do which are feeding my work.
  
  For instance, listening to podcasts and audiobooks has been a main source of information for me recently. Just because its not sitting down to read a physical book, doesn’t mean its not research.
  
  Going for walks allows my thoughts to flow and new / different ideas come to me while I’m walking. Even if its not directly productive, moving my body and seeing the sunlight and the water and the plants *is* my practice.
  
  I am someone who really bounces off other people. Since I am a solo artist, I need to factor in that conversations with other artists and friends, and even sometimes online discussions, are a really important part of my work and not think of them as time wasting.
  

• What counts as admin eg. Life admin, work related admin
  
  Admin is separate to practice, but important to support it, and it also needs space and the right conditions.
  
  Admin is replying to emails, writing proposals, managing budgets, sending back forms for grant conditions, updating website or social media, doing my tax return. I can’t pretend these things don’t exist, I need to leave time for them.
  
  Its also all the life tasks - ordering new bank cards, paying bills, health appointments, bureaucracy - which intersect with my ability to get other stuff done and ultimately are foundational to my ability to exist (which means they have to be done, in order to work).
  

• How to divide those times so I can put admin aside & stop thinking about it to get practice time done

  For me, the problem is when I have an admin task, especially an urgent one, its hard to think about anything else.

  For practice, I need to sink into a deep focus and stay with one task for a while. I can’t do that when my brain is constantly bubbling with thoughts about a payment I need to make, my upcoming tax return deadline, or responding to emails as they come in.
  
  I need to respect both practice & admin, and create the right conditions for them - but keep them separate. I can’t deal with admin (even if its about my practice), during practice time.
  
  No idea how to do this right now, other than staying on top of admin tasks as much as possible, and scheduling time to do them so my brain knows they will get done.

‘The boring shit’ #2 - filing system

I have never had a good filing system. Working with audio and video, I am constantly saving source files and multiple versions of the same project. 

Sounds are so hard to file! How do you categorise them? Names like ‘crunchy 2’ are everywhere.

Then how do you deal with versions? Every single time I end up with ‘[filename] final final FINAL THIS ONE’. 

Then there are the random project files the software creates which I have no idea what they are and always have some extension I can’t understand, but I assume are necessary for something? And I always forget to set it up properly so the files are just saving to some completely inconvenient location and they all get split away from the project files and then when I come to put it all back together its just a mess.

Hoping to solve this, I worked with my Access Support Worker to research how other artists - like video and sound editors - deal with filing.

One major consideration was that I work in projects which span different media types - so the existing system of Documents, Pictures, Music, Movies on a Mac wasn’t really helping me. It would be better to somehow group those things together by project first.

This tutorial was really helpful (and quite short).

These were the main things I learnt:

Project name

• Use the project name in every filename

• Create a short code eg. the first 3 letters of the project name

• The aim is to make the files searchable - so if you search that code all those files show up

• (Often I don’t have a project name at the start, so I decided this): Choose a code at the start & replace it systematically later if the project name changes

Key words

• Choose key words for filenames & always use the same - this is to tell you without doubt what is in the file

I looked at the types of files I usually have for each project and chose one way to name them (to avoid having multiple words for one file type eg. audio, sound, samples, recordings).

v.1, 2, 3 etc and ‘Submitted’ are there to avoid the curse of ‘final final 2 FINAL’ :)

With the sound & video I decided to use the venue name to show it was a final version, and which performance it was for.

Filename format

• Naming every folder & file the same format eg.

So ‘ExP’ is the project code for ‘Example Project’, then it is followed by ‘proposal’ to show what is in the file, and v.1 to show the version.

Hopefully when I go to the folder, I can scroll to the latest file version just by selecting the highest v. number.

Then, when I send something off for instance a grant application, I should save that version as ‘submitted’.

This is how I named the folders.

The numbers are just there so the Mac displays them in the right order - this helps my brain somehow.

Each project should have quite similar folders, but they can also be modified to fit the types of files needed for that project.

Working with an Access Support Worker #2: meeting candidate and setting up contract, negotiating work

Starting my DYCP, I have never worked with an Access Support Worker before and I didn’t know a) what to ask for help with, and b) how to find someone to work with, and set up the working relationship. Here’s an account of how it went for me.

Finding candidates

I considered advertising nationally on Arts Council ArtsJobs and ArtsAdmin e-Digest, and locally on pages like Theatre Bristol. I also could have used Facebook to share a callout.

I was concerned about my capacity to shortlist and manage an interview process alone, so I wanted to find a more realistic solution. In the end, a friend of mine was running an interview process at the same time, so I asked her if she could send my job description to any suitable candidates that she didn’t end up working with. She actually suggested one person and put me in touch directly with them, so capacity wasn’t an issue in the end.

(Although it would be great ethically to open up employment opportunities more publicly, at this time I felt like I had to be mindful of my own capacity. In future, now that I have more experience and if I was working on a project with support available, I would probably do an interview process).

Interview

I arranged to meet the candidate over Zoom. They already had the job description and I read their CV beforehand. I was nervous since I have no experience of being an interviewer, but I was honest about that and it went fine.

In that conversation I gave more details of the project and how I saw the schedule working. I got a sense of what their availability was like, and I also asked them if they had any access needs or considerations to put in place.

We talked about their previous experience and how it related to the role, some specific skills they had and some things I wanted help with but they didn’t have experience with (eg. Budgeting). This was good because it gave me a sense of whether I would need to seek additional support for any areas of the project, and also brought up things they might be really skilled at helping with that I hadn’t already thought of. They also agreed that they were happy to do online research for tutorials for things they are not experienced in, which is really helpful.

Negotiation & setting up work

I was happy to work with the candidate I met, so then we moved on to setting up expectations for the working process. These were the things we had to cover:

• Schedule: I made a rough schedule which divided the hours across the period so they knew how many hours per week/month we are likely to work

• Flexibility: we agreed to what degree we can be flexible about changing times, dates or amounts of work per week

• Payment: on what dates would instalments of the fee be paid and by what method (in the end we agreed that I would pay them a fixed amount every month and we would also keep a log of the actual hours worked, so they could make up any un-used hours flexibly)

• Communication: what methods of communication would we use (Zoom, email and Slack)

• Time boundaries: when can we contact eachother and how quickly to expect a reply

Contract

We made a freelance contract from a template, outlining the basic details officially, and both signed it electronically.

Working with an Access Support Worker #1: job description

Starting my DYCP, I have never worked with an Access Support Worker before and I didn’t know a) what to ask for help with, and b) how to find someone to work with, and set up the working relationship. Here’s an account of how it went for me.

Job description

I got help to create a job description from the person I worked with for Access Support for my DYCP application. I based it on other people’s JDs which I saw online, and changed the fields and descriptive part to fit my needs. This is the structure I used which can be pasted as a template:

ACCESS SUPPORT WORKER: [artist name] 

Pay and timescales: 

X total fee
Broken down as: X per hour for X hours total
[dates and schedule of working] 

About me: 

Brief artist biog & any info about the project, or your needs that you want to share

What I’m looking for: (here is the actual text I used, replace this with your own)

• Someone who can support and bring structure to the creative process

• Knowledge of disability or neurodiversity access support roles & approaches

• An understanding of neurodiversity

• Good listener who is able to translate chat into action points

• 'Zoomed out' view, able to prioritise tasks and ideas

• Good at problem-solving & technical troubleshooting

• Skilled with admin and basic software/online technical skills, ability to research 'how to' if needed
  
  List of duties:

• Building structures that support me to grow my creative work, eg. access support meetings, time management, workflow and filing systems

• Being a partner for 'verbal processing' - me talking through my ideas and what I need to get done, eg. 1hr Zoom sessions with note taking

• Regular check in and setting priorities for next period of time

• Supporting to set up regular admin structures eg. monthly accounting

• Some admin & technical support and research tasks

Structure of work: 

eg. How many meetings per week, any time restrictions / requirements, how will the work be organised

Mode of working: 

eg. Remote or in person

Working language: 

Applicants of all backgrounds welcome. We can also discuss your needs in relation to the role and how the work is carried out.