Dustbins and poetry? Sounds like an unlikely combination, but not when you are talking to Geraldine Collinge, Director of Apples & Snakes, the leading performance poetry organisation in the UK. This is just the sort of project that gets her excited.
Walking into Battersea Arts Centre (BAC), you can feel a buzz in the air. Geraldine has just got off the phone to celebrated poet Roger McGough to discuss her new venture, Write for Life, which will see poetry on dustbin vans around South London.
“I want to get more people enjoying and participating in poetry” she enthuses.
BAC is the artistic hub for Apples & Snakes, serving as a springboard for its work and where Geraldine’s ideas take root and flower.
You would never guess that the woman they call The General used to work in a factory packaging soap for Her Majesty’s Prison Service. Watching her in action, it is clear that she is popular and can produce results. Perhaps less of a General and more of a cross between agony aunt and captain, earning respect by listening to others and sharing ideas.
Performance poetry, at first glance, may not be everybody’s cup of tea, which is why Geraldine is committed to making it accessible to everyone, particularly non-traditional audiences.
“Art enables people to express things they otherwise can’t”, she explains in her soft Yorkshire accent. “It is a blank piece of paper and a place where people can say I can be me here, I don’t have to be anything else”.
Geraldine’s role is massive. As Director, she is in charge of programming and producing at Apples & Snakes, managing 15 people in five regions across the country, reaching audiences of more than 700, 000 each year.
No two days are the same. Her work brings her into contact with a diverse group of individuals, from youth offenders to poets, and from school children to visual artists. One day dustbins and programming for a Literature Festival on the South Bank, the next an anti-gun project in Manchester and tea with Gordon Brown.
In her time at Apples & Snakes, Geraldine has transformed the company, bringing performance poetry into the heart of the local community as well as escalating its standing as an equal player on the international arts scene.
How did the daughter of a local Yorkshire shopkeeper become The General?
“When I was little I wanted to write stories. I used to put them in the library for people to stumble across”, she says. “School suggested I become a secretary, because that’s what girls do”, she giggles.
At Sussex University Geraldine devoured books whilst working as an invigilator at Hove museum. There she met a woman working in an office hidden away in the rafters upstairs and who managed an arts centre.
“I remember she had corkscrew curly blonde hair and a job that I never knew existed, but which I wanted”.
From then on, at the age of 22, Geraldine saw her vision. In her head she had already created her dream job – to work in an old-fashioned style arts venue, at the centre of the community.
“I wanted to allow different art forms to come together and be accessible to everyone”. However, she did not have the experience to match.
“I used to stalk three of the local arts centres and would apply for any job that was on offer, from Manager to toilet cleaner,” she confesses. “I turned up so often they knew me by name”. Occasional job interviews came to nothing.
To make ends meet Geraldine packaged soap for HM Prison before working in the Box Office of a musical.
”I went to see the show and hated it so much I left at half time. I thought, how can I sell tickets to people for a show I can’t stand?” This is typical Geraldine—she has to feel passionate about what she is doing.
Changing tack she applied to work at the BBC via their typing pool. No matter to Geraldine that she couldn’t type.
“I passed somehow by typing really fast with two fingers. Then I was in”. Being “in” meant working as a humble Information Clerk. ”My job was cutting up articles from newspapers and filing them in folders”.
“I sat anonymously in some dark corner on the floor with a pair of scissors”. After six months the phone rang – the Director of BAC had tracked her down. Landing herself the job as his Personal Assistant was the break she had been waiting for and she has never looked back.
“Once I had done his PA stuff, I could do whatever I wanted. I created my own job”.
That included programming three theatres, a cinema, comedy, storytelling and literary festivals. It is Geraldine we must thank for bringing the pre-Edinburgh comedy festival circuit to London and showcasing the then unheard of names of Eddie Izzard and Jo Brand.
She was rapidly promoted to Programme Manager at BAC and then left for a short while before becoming Director of Apples & Snakes and taking them back to her artistic roots at BAC.
Working for Apples & Snakes fulfils all her loves as “it combines a love of literature and performance”.
Has she reached her vision?
“There are lots of things possible that haven’t been achieved yet. I’m still looking for that ultimate inspiration”.
Implausibly, I think she has only just started.
