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The role of mentor can make all the difference between the sinking of an arts initiative and its survival and ultimate success. Tamara Malcolm outlines her personal experience as mentor to an emerging theatre company.

The role of a mentor is made clear by the definition in the Oxford Dictionary: ?an experienced and trusted advisor.? But there is no entry for the person who is being mentored. What Mentor did for Telemachis in Homer?s Iliad is one thing, but Telemachis did not catch on as a definition of the recipient of mentoring. We are left at the mercy of experienced mentors in the arts world, who use the word mentee, a clumsy solution, but I am afraid it will have to do.

Successful partnerships in mentoring are established when the mentee recognises the gaps and inadequacies in his or her experience and knowledge and, having identified those areas, selects a mentor with a proven reputation. Between them they establish a learning procedure set alongside the daily tasks of the mentee?s job, to complement and enrich their work and that of their organisation. The partnership remains one of equal status but authority must always rest with the mentee.

Often it is the mentor who offers his or her services to the mentee. This is understandable, as the advancement of the role of mentoring in the arts world is inevitably undertaken by those who wish to secure the position for themselves. A shared provenance of discipline is an absolute for mentor and mentee. A retired curator of the Wallace Collection would be of little use to a novice theatre general manager. The value of a mentor to a novice general manager of a newly founded company is, in my limited experience, one that rests in guiding the mentee to decide priorities, to identify risks and opportunities and to interpret ?mirages?. The mentor can act as a sounding board to explore and edit the workload, particularly when the mentor can refer to actual precedents in practice, legislation, finance and fundraising, for example. Advice that would not be out of place, given at the right time, might include ?place the money from project grants in a deposit account until the main work comes on stream?, or ?check the subsistence status of stage management if rehearsing/playing in London?.

Emergency mentoring

I am a novice mentor but an experienced theatre practitioner. After 30 years as co-founder and Director of the Theatre Chipping Norton, I left in 2002 having secured a commission for a new adaptation of Trojan Women by Femi Osofisan set in Nigeria, to be directed by Chuck Mike with his ensemble company. Collective Artistes, a non-profit distributing company was set up by Chuck Mike and Marcia Hewitt in February 2002 to take on the role of lead producer for a mid-scale tour of the show.

Effectively, Collective Artistes was Marcia Hewitt. The office was her spare bedroom with a computer, a telephone and her cat. It did not take a lifetime?s experience in professional theatre to know that this task was too great for an inexperienced one-person management. With Marcia?s agreement I emerged as her mentor. By October 2003 mentee and mentor had met together on 21 occasions in locations as varied as Paddington Station, the Royal National Theatre, the British Museum, Birmingham Rep and my home in Stroud. The emails and telephones were humming.

Within a year Collective Artistes was a company name faintly recognised in the right places and had secured funding from the King?s Trust, the Arts Council National Touring Programme, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation (for the tour), Arts Council England (for London Workshops), and Wingate Trust, KLM, Leventis Foundation (for Nigerian Workshops). Marcia had found a studio and offices to rent in the Old Seagar Brewery in Deptford. It was the end of the year of mentee and mentor. My paid role as executive producer could now begin and Collective Artistes could fund a general manager, freelance marketing officer, book-keeper, administrative assistant and so on.

Wise investment

Mentoring in the arts world has to be a good thing. Experience and (dare one say) wisdom is then not wasted. Some fragments can be passed on to novice arts administrators and managers who struggle frantically against all odds. It can prove to be a wise investment.

Tamara Malcolm is a theatre producer and part-time mentor. t: 01453 752293;
e: tamara@fuerst.freeserve.co.uk