Ellie Harrison
Ellie Harrison talking about her work at the Apple Store in Buchanan Street, Glasgow.
Yesterday I went to see Ellie Harrison and Andy McDonald talking about their projects at the Apple Store on Buchanan Street. Both have recently won funding from Alt-W, an arts body in Scotland.
It was interesting how they structured their projects — they started them, documented them, packaged them and then sold them to us. They were neatly self-contained. It helps with a project to define what you are setting out to achieve.
Ellie’s current project she is called Trajectories, where she enters in the lives of 100 people who have achieved things in their lives and create an webapp where you can compare yourself to them. Every so often the webapp will question our achievements and send us emails telling us about what the people we admire were doing. For instance, Ellie is interested in getting into politics and compared herself to Angela Merkel and Margaret Thatcher.
Made me think of my own projects. There is something very satisfying about self-contained projects rather than ones that drag on and on and on.
On the other hand, dedicating your life to one project does have its benefits. Tom Hodgkinson has been doing the Idler since 1993. It has evolved, brought new and unexpected opportunities, adding fans all the time. Imagine if he’d imposed an arbitrary number of issues on it. What a waste!