2. Everyone Has a Story Worth Hearing; an origin story.

A little bit about me, and why I do what I do.

This piece began as a response to a question in my Spotlight Profile for the Tees Valley Freelancers Network - and, like most things I work on, it expanded. Think of it as the very soft launch of SIDEQUEST, my evolving creative producing practice. More of a mood than a mission statement, but a useful first step in naming and shaping the work I want to do next.

It explores the role of storytelling in community-led projects, the importance of listening first and why I’m drawn to making things happen in places that often get overlooked.

Along the way, it touches on some of the influences that have shaped how I think - like the Gutai movement, Fluxus and 30+ years of playing video games. From civic festivals to speculative cardboard museums, I’m interested in producing work that’s surprising and grounded in the realities of place - while still leaving space for the weird and wonderful to unfold.

At its core, this is a piece about care, collaboration and the belief that everyone has a story worth hearing - and that good producing helps those stories find the light.

Everyone Has a Story Worth Hearing
Me, why and what else?

Who are ya?

I’m Aaron Bowman, a creative producer based in Hartlepool and working mostly across Tees Valley and County Durham. I’m always thinking about how stories get told - not in books or on stage - but in the way we build projects that connect people and make things happen in places that are so often overlooked, left behind or just considered a bit shit. Everyone has a story - that’s why, if you’ve met me, you’ll know I like to ask a lot of questions. People are fascinating. 

That idea of story - and who gets to tell it - is something I come back to again and again. It underpins almost everything I do. Not in a wanky “everyone’s an artist” kind of way, but in the belief that meaning is made through process and through participation, through being part of something. The story is already there - sometimes it just needs someone to help bring it into the light.

My work sits somewhere between contemporary art and performance, live events and community-led activity. Sometimes it’s polished and public-facing. Other times it’s quiet, developmental, even deliberately unfinished. I’ve never been particularly interested in traditional venues and the hierarchy that can come with them. I’m happiest making things outside of the usual frames: parks, shopping centres, market squares, community halls. Places with leaky edges, or just places with leaky roofs. Places where something surprising might happen - both purposeful and accidental.

That’s something I really started to understand more deeply during my time working on outdoor events at Hartlepool Borough Council and Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council. Programming for civic events pushed me to think differently about what makes something feel meaningful in public space - not just entertaining, but alive to the context it's in. I found myself looking beyond the usual references and into the work of the Gutai group, the early Happenings in the US, and the Fluxus movement. There was something in their approach - spontaneous, participatory, sometimes chaotic - that helped me better articulate what I was reaching for. It gave me a language and a lineage to draw from when shaping work that’s site-responsive, socially engaged and grounded in everyday life. That research didn't just inform my programming - it changed how I initiate projects altogether.

The Dress Rehearsals of Belonging

I think a lot about who gets invited in - and who doesn’t. In too many cultural spaces, there’s still a kind of silent contract: you’re welcome here if you already know the rules, the codes, the dress rehearsals of belonging. But the places I work in - the towns and estates and corners of the North East - often don’t see themselves reflected in that version of the arts. And I get it. I grew up in places like that. I know what it’s like to feel that spaces are for someone else.

So a lot of my work starts by unpicking that. By slowing down and being open to what might emerge when you start from a place of care and curiosity. Sometimes that means co-creating something tangible - a festival, an installation, an event, a programme of training, a commissioning programme. Other times it means holding the space open long enough for people to trust that something could happen. It’s not fast work. But it’s based in reality. If the person you’re speaking to about ‘the work’ isn’t able to talk about their own work with a shared sense of social justice, care or curiosity, then think hard about whether you want to go into partnership with them. 

I believe that creative producing - when it’s done well - is a practice of noticing and of asking better questions. Of making room for contradiction and mess, for humour and grief, for resistance and joy. And when it works, it can shift something. Not always in big, obvious ways. Sometimes just in the shape of a conversation, or the confidence to speak, or the sense that this place could hold more than you thought it could. I always try to make time to speak with younger or newer people first. Partly, I think, because I feel more at ease around people who haven’t had the chance to solidify into cynicism. But mostly because I want anyone coming after me to know that they have power. That they can change things. That just because something’s always been done a certain way doesn’t mean it always should be. There’s a quiet kind of activism in that - in holding the door open a bit wider and reminding others that they belong here too. 

Right now, I’m working on my own projects, as well as with No More Nowt and ARC Stockton. That combination of freelance independence and long-term relationships keeps me grounded. I’m not interested in parachuting in, ticking a box and moving on. I want to work with people, not on them. To build things that last, even if what lasts isn’t the project itself but the connections it makes possible.

And look, sometimes you do have to parachute in - sometimes that’s how the funding’s structured or how the invitation lands. But if you’re going to parachute in, then you have to be willing to do it more than once. You have to come back. If you’re going to appear somewhere, it’s worth appearing three or four more times. Not with fanfare, necessarily - but with consistency. With care. With the willingness to listen again, even when you think you’ve already heard the story. That’s where trust lives. That’s where change can actually take root. But that can be onerous (onerous engagement).  If you’re an independent artist, think wider! What other work has happened in this place? Are you being properly ‘held’ by your commissioning organisations or partners? How do you fit in the wider ‘programme’ of disparate activity happening across a wider town or place and what does your voice add to the conversation? 

SIDEQUEST

I’ve recently started shaping my practice under the name SIDEQUEST - a small shift, but one that feels important. It gives me a bit of distance from “Aaron Bowman the freelancer” and opens up space to collaborate, to experiment, to think differently and, ultimately, to produce work I want to produce. The name comes from video games, but also from the idea that not everything has to be linear or goal-oriented - interventions are powerful if they’re regular. Some of the most interesting work happens when you take a detour. When you follow a thread you weren’t expecting. When you say yes to something that doesn’t quite make sense yet.

I want SIDEQUEST to be about producing projects that interact with place, artists and community - work rooted in a developing, shifting practice.

Since creating festivals, I’ve become more and more interested in world-building: not just the event itself, but everything around it. The atmosphere. The mechanics. How you talk about the work, both to communities, to artists and to decision-makers. The sense that you’ve stepped into something made with intention. I keep coming back to the idea of staff as NPCs - non-player characters, if you’re not familiar. If you think of a gallery assistant or steward as an NPC, it completely reframes their role. They become part of the narrative architecture - progressing the side quest, building immersion, helping others make sense of where they are and what they can do. The best NPCs are the ones that want to have a long chat, the ones that want to show you their gems or jewels or loot, not just sit passively at the side of the space.

And side quests are always a bit of fun, aren’t they? That joy, that sense of curiosity and possibility, is something I’m trying to hold on to. I’ve been playing PlayStation since the original Crash Bandicoot came out, so I’ve been a gamer for over 30 years. Games are masters of total immersion - something that also drew me to the work of companies like Punchdrunk, where story, environment and choice blur into something much richer than a passive experience. I love how the rules inside a game world are different to the ones outside of it - and how that can give people permission to act differently, try something new, even imagine a different future.

SIDEQUEST is about borrowing that thinking - not the visuals - to create public projects that feel immersive, generous and full of possibility, even if they’re made out of cardboard in a car park.

Creative producers have the ability to build those kinds of spaces in the real world - not just physical spaces, but emotional and imaginative ones too. That doesn’t mean we all need to be inspired by video games, but there’s something in the mechanics of game design that feels deeply relevant to this work. A good project, like a good game, should offer multiple entry points. It should reward curiosity. It should let people choose how they take part - and let them change the outcome of something just by being there. If there are any gamesdevs that wanna chat - hmu. 

The first project under the SIDEQUEST name will be a collaboration with Kat Lynas and Hollie Notman. It’s playful and speculative, made of simple materials but packed with big questions. What do we choose to remember? Who gets to decide what’s preserved? And what kind of futures are we curating, even now, without realising it? It’s exactly the kind of world I want SIDEQUEST to help build: one that’s accessible, surprising and unlike what’s already out there.

SIDEQUEST won’t be presenting work that’s ‘inspired by games’ in any obvious way - no 8-bit nostalgia, no inspired-by-D&D5e aesthetics, no VR headsets in black boxes.

That’s not the point. It’s not about style; it’s about structure and ethos. What interests me is how the mechanics of building games - world-building, multiple entry points, levelling up, nonlinearity, optional participation - can offer a different way to think about producing. A different way to design experiences. A different way to build trust.

SIDEQUEST is where I’m holding the stranger, slightly slower, speculative stuff. The things that don’t always fit into project briefs or funding categories. I want it to be a container for risk and play and tenderness, whilst empowering and amplifying marginalised voices. A way to gather work that’s deeply place-based, but not afraid to imagine elsewhere.

And if I zoom out a bit - if I think about what ties it all together - it comes back to that original belief: that everyone has a story worth hearing. That if we listen carefully enough, and create the right conditions, something will always take root.

Because ultimately, this work isn’t about me. It’s about what we can build together. It’s about recognising value in people and places that have too often been dismissed. It’s about keeping the door open. And for as long as I can, I want to keep doing that.