Teaching as an Option for Students in the Creative Field

Ursula Byrneis the ITET Manager at Aberystwyth University, which is the Mid-Wales Centre for Teaching. She is part of the education and training forum. She started the session very positively. She said that teachers have a lot of influence and a lot more enjoyment in their jobs. On average, a teacher laughs 3 times and smiles 10 times in each half an hour.  This is a great thing to have in a job. I believe this would make teaching rewarding and it certainly appeals to my personality. However, I feel like the rest of the talk was irrelevant. She focused on Welsh people studying within Wales and was not helpful at all when it came to English people studying in Wales. This made me a little bit annoyed and exasperated as the lecture had started so well.

Getting a Job in the Media

Phil Hurst presented this talk. He has been working in the industry for 25 years. His experience has been as a journalist for BBC Merseyside, working with an independent production company and working freelance. This talk started great and made me feel ambitious. The thought of putting my burning ambition into a job of the media made me excited, even when told it would be tough and challenging. I believe that the rewards outweigh the challenges. This proves how determined I am to succeed in my chosen industry. Phil highlighted that I would need to be multiskilled in order to really stand out. I know that i need to keep on learning and not get complacent with my skills. This talk also made me think that I should start looking at making my professional CV. In doing this it will help me to promote and market myself.

Again, it was drummed into us that work experience is vital in helping us to get a job. With the collective, I am getting a lot of hands on experience. However, I am going to try to get a placement with an established media company. This will all help me to get my name known and network. A degree in media is not necessary but certainly helps. In the current climate, I would need to show how skilled I am, so no room for modesty. I am glad that I am a confident woman and believe in myself as I think this could give me a competitive edge. This will help me strive and push through until I land the job I want.


www.bbc.co.uk/workexperience

http://resources.leavingcare.org/uploads/02bf4fd5d8befaa2db22723fb08ea4c2.pdf
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/wiki/Graduate_Employers_Guides
https://careers.bbc.co.uk/fe/tpl_bbc03.asp?KEY=41103114&C=253356622523&PAGESTAMP=sebbrfxvxuoxyvxqyy&nexts=INIT_JOBLISTSTART&mode=1&newQuery=yes&searchregion=1411&searchdivision=0&searchpositiontype=0&searchgrade=0&formsubmit4.x=20&formsubmit4.y=12

Election Harlem Shake

The student elections at Glyndwr University were bigger than ever this year, with all of the candidates doing as much as they could to make themselves noticed. I was approached by the current Vice-President, Laura Lawson, to help her with her re-election campaign. She also had Tobias Perks and Rachel Bloomer as part of her campaign team. The first thing they wanted was a 'Harlem Shake' style video. Harlem Shake is a song by Bauer that became a YouTube sensation, with many parodies being made of the iconic video. The original plan was to have all of the candidates present. However, it was only Rachel, Tobias and Laura that turned up, alongside some of their supporters.

 This was one of the most enjoyable filming experiences I have ever had. It was fun and laid back. We decided to do the Harlem Shake dance in a variety of places. It took around an hour to finish the filming. I then had the job of editing and uploading to our YouTube channel on the same night. It was easy enough to edit due to how straightforward the filming was. I managed to get the whole thing turned around and distributed within 4 hours. I am very proud of this achievement. However, when uploading to YouTube, the quality of the HD footage was compromised.

Collective Stall

During the Tuesday of Creative Futures Week, we held another stall in the foyer of our Catrin Finch Centre. We each took a session on the stall, so that others could go to lectures that they wanted to. This stall turned out to be as beneficial as the stall at Ffresh. Firstly, we recruited some new people for the collective. This is great as we have so much coming up soon. We also met with some people from careers and businessline. We need to set up meetings with these people soon to get us off the ground running.

Neil Dunsire was giving a talk about his business, TAPE. After the talk, he came directly to our stall to speak to us. We arranged a meeting with him to discuss how he got started in business and maybe some collaboration work. I am very excited to see what comes of this!

We also got our first paid job offer from this stall. Shrewsberry Council got in touch with Holly to ask for our help in filming a Mental Illness Awareness day. We accepted it and a small crew will tale on this job.

Business Start Up Support

Judith Alexander and Liz Wallens

Unfortunatley, Judith could not make the talk, due to illness, so Liz Wallens and her colleague from Wrexham Council came to do the talk alone. Liz is a business adviser at the council, based on the industrial estate. She came to tell us what would be on offer for people setting up a business in the Wrexham area. The first are free business workshops which can be attended by anybody who aims to set up a business in Wales. There are also a number of grants and bursaries available to those who want to set up a business in Wales. The business Wales team are always on hand to give advice too.

Liz then gave us the chance to ask questions on what we wanted to know and tried to help as best she could. The first question asked was 'what is on offer to graduates wanting to go into business?'. Liz went over what she had just said again, this time highlighting that individualised one to one advice is available by appointment. She then explained some of the bursaries on offer, such as the £6000 available to graduates between 6 months and 7 years of graduating. As good as this seems, your forecast must predict an £80,000 turnover in the first year of business. I think that this is way too much money to expect from a new graduate business, especially after the first year. Hopefully this will get lowered, making it more accessible. Liz then explained that they can help to create a business plan and a cash forecast so that a person can put in for a grant or bursary. Some other grants that are available include one from Wrexham County Council and a Bilingual Grant. The Bilingual Grant is available for a business that is willing to have their leaflets and advertisements etc in both Welsh and English. Liz then went into more detail about the workshops, telling us that there are 6 in total, including, marketing. mindset and finance. I am intrigued by these workshops and will look into signing up when in my final year of study. I will write a future post with regards to this after attending.

I did not realise how much needed to be done to gain funding to set up my own business. To even be considered for a grant, i would need to apply and provide a business bank account, financial evidence of my own contribution to the business and i would then have to make my purchases and claim them back. If I want to go into business, which is an option I am considering, I think I would have to work for a company while building up the funds for my own business. Another thing I would need to consider is the location of my business. As these are Welsh grants, my business would need to be set up in Wales and I would not be able to relocate for at least 5 years, one of many conditions of the grant.

There are a lot of training oppurtunities and classes available that I didn't know about until this talk. Yale College, the local college in Wrexham, offers night classes. It costs £50 pounds to become a member for 3 years, as long as the person attending is a resident of the college catchment area. This is for as many classes as you want to attend.

Key Note Address

Painting Over the Cracks - Paul Heywood

Paul Heywood is the advisor to the Vice Chancellor at Salford university whilst also being the chair of NAFE. NAFE supports visual arts within the UK. Paul has a wide background in art and design but specialises in community based practition.

I was a bit put off straight away by the talk, due to Professor Paul Heywood's opening slide said 'Isn't art sort of pointless?'. However, he did tell us to be a bit selfish this week and get everything we can out of it, which is sound advice. I found it hard to keep up with what Prof Heywood was sayin at first about chairs. It seemed a bit pointless to me and I really felt lost.

Paul's nest point hit home. Everything changes. This is so true with every creative outlet. I came to University with the aim of becoming a freelance photographer and now I really love to edit. This is similar to Paul's' experience of practice.

Paul then got onto some more statistics, with regards to the very current global economic crisis and recession. He told us that 1.6 million companies, in the US alone, avoid payroll taxes. These are the taxes that go towards things such as pensions. There has also been around 100billion capital flight from Africa each year. Add to this 3.1 trillion that illegally evade tax each year and we definitely have a problem.

Paul the went on to talk about his career, which is quite impressive. Most of his career has been spent in Manchester, as he is from around that area. His role in Salford is to make learning co-operatives across the city. He aspires to bridge the gap between agencies and creativity. I think this is a great thing to aim for.

Ffresh Festival 2013 - 20th-22nd Februaury 2013

Glyndwr University was holding the Ffresh Festival in its 10th year, so I was able to attend. Ffresh is a festival that celebrates the moving image. It features the work of students across Wales and Welsh Universtities. At this years festival, the collective had a stall, in order to promote ourselves. As I am now a key member of the admin and 'managerial' team of the collective, a lot of my time was taken up running the stall. This meant that I did not get to many of the masterclasses and lectures or see a lot of the shortlisted films. However, having the stall was very beneficial for us.

©Sue McGrane. Me at Ffresh Festival - Collective Stall

We had some posters printed, along with some examples of our work, and pinned them up around our stall. We also had a slideshow of images being played on loop, along with some of the videos we have produced. These caught peoples eyes as they walked past and a lot of people stopped to ask questions. The first to talk to us was a couple of women who owned their own online business, Web Waterfalls (www.webwaterfalls.com). They are based in Oswestry and are extremely keen to get a meeting with us, as we are local and a collaboration would be beneficial for both parties. Another company that liaised with us were Printers Inc. They are a company that helps artists get things printed and delivered. They are also keen to set up a meeting with us. We have also been approached by GTV and the Photographic Society for collaborations. We were also approached by a number of prospective clients and had some jobs booked in. All in all, this was a very busy week for us at the collective and lots of things are coming up.

©Will Aron. Myself, Holly and Sue at work on the stall.

-->

Tomato Collective

The speakers name was Dylan Kendle. He is part of the Tomato Collective. I chose to attend this talk because of my work in the collective. I thought it might be beneficial and that I would get some good hints and tips to pass on to the group and use in my own professional practice. It turns out that I was right to go to this talk as it inspired me so much as an individual artist, as well as a key member of the collective.

            I learnt that there was no structure in the running of Tomato. This meant no hierarchy. This was a valuable piece of information as we have been having problems with this with in our own collective. It was great to hear Dylan’s views on this. He says that, although there is no strict hierarchy, the person who knows the client or has the most skill in the specific design area will head up the project. This is the way we have been running things and it is how we should carry on, as Tomato is proof that this works. He went on to say that this more casual attitude leads to a better atmosphere and therefore makes for a good forum for relationships. He also says that Tomato is a non-profit organization. I understand why this is the way it is but our collective needs to make money to survive.

            Tomato has been running for 22 years, since it was founded in 1991. Dylan didn’t join until 1993.It was founded by a group of men looking to collaborate together. They are constantly working on new and exciting projects. 

The Mill Talk with Sid

 www.themill.com

I was really looking forward to this talk, having visited The Mill last year on our industry trip to London. Watching the showreel and examples of work done by the mill got me sitting up and excited to listen to the talk.

It was great to see what is being done in the media and the creative sector of employability recently.

However, my mind started to wander as the talk turned to the more technical side of visual effects. I am not really interested in the visual effects side of film making so I did not really benefit from this talk.