MA Week 9 - Professional Context Presentation

Presentation 2: Professional Context

I gave my second presentation on 27^th November, this time looking at “professional context".
 

I decided to start out by talking about the creative industries, cultural capital and some facts and figures, all of which I pulled from my week 7 blog post . I talked about the USA and Italy as international players, then brought it down to the UK, then to Leeds. As it’s unlikely I will be applying for funding abroad any time soon, the USA and Italy topics were quite conceptual for me, rather than contextual. However, we had been briefed to look globally and this seemed to me to be the best way to do this. The most interesting thing was the discovery of the small grants offered by Leeds Inspired.

 

I then talked about where I fit in. As I mentioned in the week 7 blogpost, I need to undertake two main steps: get networking, and thereby identify opportunities; and get creative! I identified 5 networking opportunities as examples for the purpose of the presentation:

• Twitter – where I’ve already “met” some artists, including the Leeds-based ceramic artist Rebecca Appleby

• FCK LDN website – they blog on all things cultural outside of London and I have just sent them a re-written version of my Linder blog entry
• Curator Space – they have had some interesting call outs but for a lot of them I just haven’t got the body of work
• Creative Networks events at Leeds College of Art – a really good way to meet people, everyone is mingling and happy!
• University of Leeds Heritage “Show + Tell” – again a great way to mingle and meet. I have also contacted the organiser to ask about the call out for papers for the Spring 2016 date. I really would like to do a paper (if you can call 3 minutes a paper!) at this. I have a couple of ideas: bricks (as per my current investigation) and wanderings (as per a paper my tutor heard at a conference – where you walk, then stop and observe)

I also showed a picture of me exhibiting at my Access course final show. I think the things I have done hitherto are quite “white cube gallery”, but if I can get going with doing some of my printing ideas – if – I think they could go in a more industrial setting. I stressed I need to get creative. And I gave an open invitation to collaborate!

 I finished by talking about my current investigation into bricks, a nascent collaboration between myself and the writer Christina Croft – a conversation with Christina led me to think about bricks and this led to something definite for my MA proposal –and about Linder’s collaborations for the British Art Show 8, with Kenneth Tindall, Max Sterling and Dovecot studios (see previous reference).

I thought the structure of the presentation worked well, and it came in at just under 10 minutes, the allotted time. I did seem to get through it a bit quicker than when practising at home, though. Perhaps I spoke quicker than I expected due to a bit of stage fright. I would have liked to have said more about my own context but I really feel I am at the very start of this journey, and I didn’t want to put things forward then end up not doing them. In contrast, other people on the course seemed to have lots of professional practice already under their belts. But I am where I am. For me, it would be really interesting to do the same exercise again in a year’s time.

There was some interesting group feedback. The gist of it was to get to know what’s going on locally and get involved. For example, pop-up events, online communities, studio space. So the Heritage Show + Tell would be one example, but what others could I get involved in? You also need to think about separating out your subject and your approach. I took this to mean that you need to think about positioning what you are doing as well as doing it. Another point was a “knowledge audit” – know what you know, and own it. For me, an example was suddenly finding I could undertake a creative collaboration with a longstanding friend.

I feel that, by identifying my 5 networking examples, I am starting to think about this, and act upon it, more importantly. If I can start to produce some creative work, that will be another part of the proverbial jigsaw. These are all factors that will need to be incorporated into a plan for the next term of the course.