But luckily, having just worked on this article, I had Adam Natale’s words in my mind – “Ask for feedback, especially if you were denied the grant.” Ugh. Not fun. But I’ve won and lost a few grants in my time and never had thought to do this before. I emailed the contact and asked if it was possible to get feedback. A couple of days later she replied, “Actually, all of the reviewers thought your submission was great! The only feedback I got was that it was ‘unique and modern approach to character study and can be accessed by any artist at any time, potentially’ and ‘a very interesting project – unique, thoughtful and progressive.’”

Now, I write this because, well, for all I know they thought all the negative things too, but they also had these positive and encouraging thoughts, and hearing this helps me nurture the faith I’ve had in the work. And it’s helped me continue plugging away. As actors auditioning, so often the feedback we get is crazily subjective due to the slap-dash nature of auditions and, well, useless (you either got the part of you didin’t, right?). But when we do work that can be evaluated in a more objective manner, we have nothing to lose by asking for feedback (that is, when we care – I didn’t ask why the temp job disappeared…:).