The Beginnings....
Me (Maggie Tran), Bryony Hendersen and Workshops

2005

Me and Bryony randomly met in Rotterdam, she was doing an MA exchange at the Piet Zwart, I was just living and working there as an artist. We were already working/planning on experimental workshops individually. Bryony hosted one at the Witte de With and Tent gallery. A storytelling workshop that was lead by 5 different people from a politician to a businessman. I was soon to be doing one back in England, Hull called Play, Perform and Publish as part of the Bookville Publishathon, a workshop to explore different ways of publishing performance.

A period of time later B having returned to Devon, England, and me having a holiday down that way. I stayed in her caravan home in Devon and told her about the PPP workshop. She warmed to it immediately and dialogue begun about the possibility of working together in doing workshops. This carried on to and fro for 2 years via email, I returned from Holland, B moved to Brighton and then finally I moved down south to London.

During this time I pondered what I had gotten out of the PPP workshop but could not quite put my finger on what drew me to this workshop format. Then Bryony hosted another workshop which I also attended in Kingston called Survival Challenge. At the end of this as well experiencing an unfamiliar place in a very interesting and revealing way, I felt I had actually made a piece of work - a performance. I continued our dialogue about workshops via hosting one myself in which Bryony also attended - the Random and Nonsensical workshop. More avenues and ways of making performances revealed itself and it became more and more apparent for me and Bryony the potentials of workshops as not just a space for learning and skill obtaining but as a tool to communicate ideas and become integral working processes in art-making and are even pieces of work in themselves.