Interview with Sally Tabart

By Emma-Kate Wilson

I got to e-chat with the wonderful Sally from Melbourne’s Ladies of Leisure about setting up workshops that allow for spaces to grow and develop our own ideas with real-life experiences. We spoke about what it means to be a creator in this current world climate and what it means to provide a service for the ladies of today. If you look at the different workshops on offer, you can see that not only the focus is on working in the industry but also looking after your self. The workshops on offer can provide you with tips on being a writer; making socially engaged eco-art; taking pride in your identity; and even how to get out of your headspace and into the physical space of your body with dance classes. The workshops offer something for everyone and this truly awesome collective of ladies who leisure. They are inspiring and provide a little more motivation for us who can sometimes feel lost between the multiple docos, movies, the Internet, celebrities and brands that are always telling us who we should be and what we should be doing.

First up, Sally, I love your site and your zines! Ladies of Leisure seem to be doing something really incredible. What were the original ideas behind setting up LOL and from there, why the workshops?

We started LOL about three years ago initially as a printed publication to share the works of our talented gal pals. It was a fascinating project to work on because at the time, there wasn’t really a platform for up and coming, creative young women to have their ideas heard, and it was SO satisfying to have a tangible outlet to do whatever we wanted with! We also thought it was essential not just to document a final outcome when everything is finished and perfect, but wanted to have honest conversations with women about strength, weakness, success and process. By opening up this dialogue, we hoped that we could encourage women to pursue their goals by seeing how others were doing it and that there isn’t one “right” path.

The workshops are basically a natural extension of our core values. While we have been going through the process of creating the community around Ladies of Leisure, we have had so many conversations about how traditional education doesn’t necessarily prepare you for the “real” world. Like, who teaches you how to create invoices? Or manage multiple projects at once? Who is telling you that you have to prioritise your mental health? The workshops are about connecting with our community IRL and offering a fun, safe space to learn some genuinely beneficial life skills from people we look up to. No one has their shit totally together – and that’s okay too!

So true! I think the struggle to make it as an artist can really be meant with resistance and even seeing that between this generation and the one before. Almost like “it was tough for me so it should be tough for you” mentality. Great to see inspiration from you guys to help new artists and even established artists! How did all the magic start between you and the fellow startup members?

LOLs creative director Sav and I had met through our mutual friend, Tara, at an event a few years ago.

I remember Sav was wearing this bright green skirt with a slit all the way up her thigh and all these crazy jewels – I was very down with the whole thing. A few months after we met, Sav approached me to help with the written content of a publication she wanted to make. At the time I was really burnt out from doing a lot of freelance writing and editing I didn’t really care about, and I thought Sav had such a great eye. I was on board straight away.  We’ve been working together on LOL ever since, and earlier this year Tara (the friend who introduced us) officially joined the team as our online editor.

Where did the name “Ladies of Leisure” come from?

Sav was complaining to a friend about how much work she had to do at the time but was like, “Whatever. Let’s just go to brunch.” He called her a lady of leisure, and the name just stuck. Once we realised LOL was the acronym, it was like the stars had aligned. I still love it so much– I feel like it encapsulates exactly what we’re about.

Also wondering, as I knew you were in New York for the past year, how do you feel about the difference between an American audience and an Australian audience to this kind of workshops?

While LOL didn’t run any workshops in America, there was so much exciting shit going on all the time that I was inspired by. New York is so big, messy and sprawling – literally, anything can happen at any time. It’s such a crazy place to live. While our Australian community is so wonderful, sometimes I do feel there is a bit of fear of standing out or failing. There’s absolutely none of that there.

I loved how you could do something entirely whack, like put on performance art dance piece with your cat on the rooftop of your apartment building and people would still be supportive and try to get it. I think generally creative people in New York are really responsive to personal development, growth and education – but after all, that’s the reason why we all go there in the first place!

How do you go about finding the ladies to run the workshops? Likewise with the website article and artists you support? Do they come to you or is it a process of finding inspiring women?

It’s a bit of both! For the workshops, a lot of the leaders are people who have been friends and mentors to us personally over the years or people we admire. Everyone has been really down to be involved.

For the website and publication, I would say it ends up being a 50/50 split of content we are sent and people we have found ourselves. We do a LOT of research to find a diverse range of inspiring people – Instagram is so good for that. We also get so many wonderful submissions for the website – it’s really hard because there are only a few of us and we all work other jobs, it sucks when we can’t get back to people! I feel really bad about it.

I’ve found I’ve become friends with some amazing female artists that are changing the way we are looking at art. Completely disrupting the dominant male gaze! Do you feel like the dominant male industry has been something to overcome pushing these workshops (also with the zine and the site)? Have you felt any resistance because of ‘gender’?

Yeah, I love the Internet! It’s really opened up the conversation about women, bodies, age, gender and sexuality in a way that didn’t exist even 5 years ago. In saying that though, I am so glad my friends and I didn’t grow up with Instagram as a way to directly measure perceived “worth”, I think that can put a lot of pressure on young people in a whole new way – MySpace top 8 friends were pretty harmless by comparison.

In terms of the dominant male industry, it’s something I have encountered and still face in my personal life and in other workplaces. I’ve definitely encountered a kind of “art bro” mentality that’s made me feel unworthy and uncomfortable, like people who pretend to be progressive but still have really warped perceptions of gender, beauty and what is “cool”. With LOL though, I feel like since we have had such a strong and unfaltering message since the very beginning no one has really tried to fuck with that, I guess because we’re not afraid of being vocal about our beliefs. The discussion surrounding gender has also developed SO much in the last few years, and it’s something we have really tried to listen and learn from. I think the majority of our community has that same kind of desire to grow. We’re all trying to be better together.

Ladies of Lesuire Instagram: @ladiesofleisurezine and Sally Tabart’s: @sallytabs

Originally published on The Ladies Network, November 17, 2016: http://theladiesnetwork.com.au/a-conversation-with-sally-from-ladies-of-leisure/