Last weekend I finally got around to seeing Salmon Fishing in the Yemen:

From the director of Chocolat and the Oscar-winning® screenwriter of Slumdog Millionaire comes the inspirational comedy Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. When Britain’s leading fisheries expert (Ewan McGregor) is approached by a consultant (Emily Blunt) to help realize a sheikh’s (Amr Waked) vision of bringing the sport of fly-fishing to the desert, he immediately thinks the project is both absurd and unachievable. But when the Prime Minister’s overzealous press secretary (Kristin Scott Thomas) latches on to it as a “good will” story, this unlikely team will put it all on the line and embark on an upstream journey of faith and fish to prove the impossible, possible.

There are a few inspirations that come from this movie.  The first one is to believe in your dreams and take action to make it a reality.  Everyone thought the sheikh was absolutely nuts for attempting this project.  It was his belief, since it was so strong, that won the consultants over.

The second inspiration is to have faith even when the beginning looks a little bleak.  If it is meant to be, and your dreams are meant to be, it will happen if you have a little faith. It may not happen right away or on the time schedule that you planned, and you might find some changes that need to be made or are naturally made for you. It will happen by keeping the faith.

The third inspiration is to be yourself.  When you succumb to other people’s wishes and definitions of who you are, you will end up leading a false life.  If you want a life filled with passion and joy, learn to be okay with who you are and be yourself.  You will attract the right people into your life.

Lastly, and this one was pure audience development gold, the project failed because members of the community didn’t believe in the project.  In fact, it was some of these members that sabotaged it to failure.   Fred, the fishing expert, noted that if they were to start again, this time they needed the community to buy in and be a part of the project and get them excited about fishing and building a fishing community.  Whoa!

In that one sentence at the end of the movie, I realized that many arts projects fail because we are not getting the community involved and inviting them to be a part of our arts community.  We are getting better though, and I am keeping a watch out for some great examples to share in the near future.

This movie may have been fictional, but the storyline of creating a successful project was very real.  I recommend watching it to discover some of these inspirations for yourself.

Do you have a movie that inspired you?  Please share below with Disqus!

Cheers to happy and loyal audiences,
Shoshana

Shoshana Fanizza
Chief Audience Builder