Taking an Art Community from idea to reality.

When we started trnqculture we were all unsure of where it might lead. We knew that there was a need. Something that we had all been missing, even if we couldn’t quite put our finger on what it was.

I was first contacted, back in February. Alfonso proposed it simply, as an online meeting space for artists. A regular(ish) meeting between like-minded souls. There were ideas about the event, slight glimmers of what this group might grow into. But at its soul, it was simply a Collective of Artists.

There were a few elements that worked immediately in our favour. The greatest of these was how clearly the five of us worked. Some of us had never even met in person, but from that very first meeting I felt at ease and slightly protective of the group we had formed. We were all recent graduates who missed the fun of a good friendly debate. All of us artists, trying to find time to create Art for Art’s sake. All of us, perhaps by coincidence, were internationally minded. Together we had jumped around and built friendships in more countries than is reasonably acceptable.

We realised what we craved was a way to reconnect with those people we had lost as we lept from place to place. We wanted a community that might hold us to the artistic goals we set ourselves. We yearned to create a Community of Practice, a space where creative expression and self-care were not considered an optional afterthought but built into the very idea of who we were together.

Weeks turned into months and slowly ‘The Event’ started to take its loose shape. We took time to make sure that no meeting was wholly business. We took the time to check in with each other. We performed and read. We wrote poetry, both together and apart, we drew and recited, Ben sang and Edo played the Piano. As the idea for our event developed so did we. I, for example, have been a private writer for years. Scribbling away stories, rhymes and prose in notebooks and sketchbooks that remain firmly hidden from view. But with trnqculture I read out loud for the first time, I even published my first public blog propelled by the confidence this community gave me.

There were, however, hurdles we had to face. When we started we were split across 4 different countries but had at least been in a similar timezone: Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the Uk. Through the 4 months we spent working on the event however, Leo re-settled in Germany, Ben moved from Germany to the Netherlands, Ali moved from the Netherlands to Spain and I shifted myself over to Thailand with a really helpful +5 time-zone gap to deal with.

And if 80% of the committee moving country wasn’t enough, we were all still dealing with the general lack of time that had brought us together in the first place. Between us we were starting new careers or committing to old ones, we had members both beginning and finishing masters whilst others were job hunting and decision making. The very soul of our practice was ‘slowing down’ deaccelerating as it were, but this was never easy.

Internally we refer to our ‘Guiding Principles’ as our ‘8 Common Requests to Privilege.’ They are practices that we know work towards our own wellbeing, they are healthy and productive. But they require the sacrifice of time, they require consistent commitment and reiterating. They require a community to remind us that the benefits of committed practice are there for the taking. And so we created ‘The Event’. To share what we had. And because one always finds strength in numbers.

To find out more about who we are check out our website here:
trnqculture.com

To be kept up to date with any new events please follow us on Facebook here:
@trnqculture