Well here we are, embracing 2014 with a vengeance. Is this the year you'll achieve your artistic ambitions? Perhaps it will be the year you get your Gold Arts Award!

I start writing this in a place ideal for contemplating rural arts, the New Forest. Having spent a week down on the south coast, the fresh air and rurality reminds me of where I grew up. I've lived in cities for the last 6 years and a large town for about 5 years before that, so rural arts had become a thing of the past.

Well, here on Voice it's 'affordable art' month and I know that's handy after the Christmas splurge. For me it's not about the Boxing Day spend bonanza, or even the cost of presents. It's the cost of travel to see everyone and the meals out!

I've enjoyed reading the articles and items posted to voice just in the first week or so of the month. I'm sure there's many more to come!

I'm doing something unusual right now, creating a short blog post direct to Arts Award Voice. I've just been spurred straight in to action

Halloween to me always seems like a great opportunity for interactive arts And creating daring work. My background is Theatre and the concept of Theatre of the Oppressed excites me. Direct audience engagement and creating something that not only wows audiences but brings them in as participants too.

Polictics is key to life. Our democratic system is the cornerstone of our society. And arts are a foundation upon which to build. You should embrace politics, and make of it what you will.

Me and music go back a long, long way. But recently...let's just say things are a bit complicated. Here's what happened:

Raising The Game, an NAYT (National Association of Youth Theatres) event packed with workshops and opportunities for youth theatre groups to join and learn more.

With a specific focus on the backstage theatre industry, is being a multi-skilled practitioner a help or a hindrance within the industry today? Can someone market themselves as having skills in multiple departments? And how important is it for someone who has chosen to specialise to have a knowledge of other departments?

Getting involved in festivals can be a great way of getting experience in the industry and getting access to events, as I found out reviewing and volunteering at this year's Durham Book Festival.

The destruction of a musician's wooden instruments at the hands of US customs, on the grounds that they are agricultural products and thus pose a biological hazard to native species, poses a grave question to musicians the world over: is there any justification on which an instrument that forms a key part to someone's livelihood can be destroyed because of what it is made of?