Slide 1 - Creative Identity
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There are 2 main
things that are very important to me and create who I am. There is illustration
and art but there is also music and dance
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These 2 different
identities are both separate but also together and connected.
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Because of this I
would class myself as a creative in a wide sense rather than in a category.
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The boundaries
between different but related fields are where interesting ideas occur.
Slide 2 - Beliefs
- I have really realised what is important to me through
my COP exploration.
- Aura, Experience
and Expression.
- What makes something special, out of reach and ephemeral.
- How powerful, magical and impactful a multi-sensory
experience can be.
- The subjectivity, authenticity and honesty of
expressing feelings and sound. These are things that I have been holding close
to me whilst creating visual work, visualising this in relation to music
specifically but they also have consumed my beliefs and day to day life.
Slide 3 - Learnt from University
- The course has developed me to think in a visual way
and I am convinced that I will always look for visual possibilities and
solutions no matter what job I end up having.
- I’ve learnt how to come up with ideas, use colour,
come up with ideas, use Adobe Suite technologies and physical analogue methods
which seem normal to me now but outside of the art school bubble, people who
haven’t come from a creative background won’t understand at all.
- I have also developed professionalism and how to interact
with professionals but also how to present myself and my work to the world
outside of university.
Slide 4 - Visual Language
- Initially, I found it quite hard to discover my visual
language and I feel like I have established that my visual language is quite shapeshifting.
It depends what the project is as to what type of image I will produce.
- Also perhaps it is quite chameleon - like because the
thing that ties all of my different work together is definitely colour. The use
of strong colour and I guess the use of different media as well.
- This is reflected in Brexit mixed media images, Delia
Derbyshire mixed media collages, branding for Badmash, painting of bands and
abstract visualisations.
- Connected through their use of colour rather than the
aesthetic.
- It has been really satisfying seeing all of my work
combined, in one place and it collects what I am proud of achieving whilst at
uni…
Slide 5 - Online Presence
- For example, via creating a website which presents
everything professionally.
- Another digital portfolio has been my Instagram
account which I have been posting work on throughout uni. My COP this year was
focused on bringing the experience of bands I have watched back to life and I
have posted these on Instagram tagging the band in (seen a range of different
music genres). This has been a really good way of getting my work seen as the
bands often repost the artwork and one band even bought an original painting.
- I have also through COP begun to create a blog which
documents the experiences of each band I have seen through both words and
imagery. This is something which I will keep adding to and shows my commitment
to appreciating live music and in itself will become almost a diary and
portfolio. Who knows when this might be useful in the future for getting perhaps
a music related job.
- I have also created a range of different CVs which are
relevant to different possible jobs in the future 1) Creative CV 2) Working
with people CV 3) Artist CV of visual achievements. This has been helpful to
gather all of the things I have done over my time at university and present it
in a commercial language.
Slide 6 - Offline Presence
- This year particularly I have done quite a few print
fairs. This has been interesting seeing which of my artwork appeals to which
audiences. For example my earrings are more popular with young people/students,
my collage cards have been more popular with adults and my T-shirts are more
popular when sold at gigs.
- It has made me appreciate that it means people can
take a piece of you/your art home with them. However, it also seems a very hard
way to make money more than pocket money.
- The battle I am having at the moment is that the work
I am creating for 603, and am currently invested in, is a passion project and I
am not sure where in the commercial world my work would fit.
Slide 7 - Musical Identity
- I have experimented with; singing the music,
responding to music through drumming and tap dancing, visually rejuvenating
experiences of live musical performances and expressing music. Experiencing
music has fed back into my art.
- Growing up there has always been 3 strands of creative
hobbies. There is art but also music and dance. At school I played instruments
and was in choirs, musicals and orchestras. Since then I have been in multiple
bands and have been learning the guitar and drums.
- I am also extremely interested in rhythm and I have
experimented with different styles of dancing but I am a tap dancer.
- This has all come together particularly this year at
uni where a key theme of my practice has become responding to music.
- A huge part of my university journey has been being
part of 2 different music scenes in Leeds.
- Since my COP I have focused on experiencing music. I
have been up for all types of music and have ended up at some very weird yet
memorable gigs.
- Personally though I have been in 2 bands. One was a
bluegrass band in the folk scene and the other an indie rock band.
Slide 8 - Badmash
- Being part of this band, I have gigged in various
different venues around Leeds and have interacted with members of other bands
and like-minded individuals, making a point of following the bands and adding
them on facebook.
- I have also done all of the promotion and merchandise
for the band, including posters, tickets, CDs, Tshirts and being commissioned
to create an official poster for at the Lending Rooms. I have loved applying my
faces logo to various different outputs, changing it each time - creating a
brand/identity for the band.
- I have worked on performance and confidence when on
stage. I have also helped write and construct the songs helping create the aura
and identity of the band.
Slide 9 - Bean Train Gang
- The BTG was a bluegrass band formed of people who are
freelance musicians. Through being around freelancers I have had an insight
into the instability of earning money through performance. Where I was getting
some extra pocket money, they were trying to pay their bills. Their lifestyle
opened my eyes quite a lot. This experience complemented the info we were
getting at uni about life as a freelancer. The band could have been much more
professional about performing as we sort of missed our break and we were too
slow and unorganised.
- I researched the culture of bluegrass through my COP2
investigation of bluegrass album artwork. Folk music is extremely community
based. Although the band broke up last year, I am still integrated and still
have friends and connections within the folk community.
- I have been to monthly “jam” sessions, where although
I can’t play an instrument really, I come a long and singing and draw.
- Also I have found a new passion, which is flatfoot
Appalachian step dance. This is the bluegrass version of tap dancing and I find
it very exciting as it responds to music through rhythm but is completely
different to tap dancing really.
- So, the big question is -how can I turn this “being a creative”
into a career?
Slide 10 - Music Industry
- As covered at the beginning - I would like to do
something creative when I leave, but not necessarily where imagery is the core.
- The music industry seems the most obvious path for me
however beginning this year I realised that I knew absolutely nothing about it.
- I asked the promoter from the Lending Rooms, who I
have interacted with multiple times, if we could have a chat. He kindly spent 2
hours explaining the monopolised Leeds industry to me (3 Futuresound Events,
Superfriendz and Brudenell) and that it is very closed and difficult to get
into. He explained the different roles that were about and drew some diagrams.
- Feeling inspired I applied for a project coordinator
role at Music:Leeds which I didn’t get – see below. This job would have been
applying the skills I have learnt through the degree to the real world - organising
gigs and the getting the promotional material out there. Whilst I didn’t get
the job – (the Catch 22 of how do you get a job without experience) this made
me think about the qualities I did have which could be applied to jobs and
actually creating a CV and application.
- I went to a panel talk about ‘how to get your music
out there’ which was very interesting as it was advising from a bands
perspective from people who had jobs in the industry as promoters, magazine
editors and radio hosts. I have booked to go to another industry day as part of
Live @ Leeds which is more about the different jobs in the music industry.
- I started looking into music PR, after ruling out
other jobs that were less relevant to my interests and experience. I spoke to a
lady who does music PR for ‘Hall or Nothing’ who made me realise that actually
I know very little about upcoming music and I don’t read magazines or blogs. I
know that I have a very eclectic music taste and realise that I would struggle to
work for bands that were quite generic and or uninspiring.
- I feel like I have come a full circuit back and am not
sure about this route at all. Perhaps it would be better for me to keep
enjoying music and working in the music industry separate because organising
music can end up having nothing to do with music at all.
Slide 11 - People and Art
- Another strand of work that I have experience in and
thoroughly enjoy is working with people, specifically children.
- I have worked at an arts and crafts holiday club for
years now and look forward to each time I work there. I love working with
children, especially in a setting where I can help them express themselves and
over time see them develop.
- I did some work experience over the summer as a
Teaching Assistant in a primary school. It opened my eyes to the lack of
creative people within the school system, for example they bit my arm off to lead the children through their art syllabi
as the teachers dreaded art lessons.
- However, through this experience I was most immersed
in classes with 5 and 6yr olds. There were 3 classes of this year group and in
each class there were at least 3 children who suffered with severe mental
health issues. I spent a lot of my time taking the children out in small groups
to make collages of their ‘topic’. The process of making art seemed cathartic
for them, and for some a way of channelling their energy, but most importantly
really was spending time with the children individually- giving them some
attention.
- I did some interviews with a child therapist who
teaches coping mechanisms through stories of a child with superpowers and a
lady who changed from being a head teacher to wanting to do play therapy,
working with children on a more personal basis and aiming to help prevent
mental health issues rather than deal with them later.
- Also I have an illustration currently being published (at
current) in a book about clay therapy.
- Through talking to these people I have realised that
like me feeling like a creative rather than an illustrator, there are ways of
helping children’s mental health that are interdisciplinary - they just focus
on natural expression eg play therapy. This would be further education that I
would need to study and would take a lot of time to build up the necessary experience.
Slide 12 - Immediate future
- From this I have realised that my ambitions are:
- To do something that is creative.
- To work with children/people.
- To do something where perhaps I am involved in event organisation.
- To live in Germany/Austria and improve my language
skills
- I think that I need thinking time. Due to dyslexia I
take quite a while to process things. I think that I need to gather experiences
in the real world in order to find a direction. These experiences will not be
wasted ones, they will still be linked to my ambitions.
Slide 13 –Future plan
- My plan is to work at Edinburgh Fringe Festival where
I will be around the creative buzz but also interacting with people and helping
organise things like tickets.
- I also wish to chalet host in Austria or Germany for
the ski season. This will involve being around people, keeping things organised
and improving my German.
- I have also seen with the Erasmus + scheme that there
is a job opportunity next spring for a recent graduate to help organise a children’s
music festival in Hamburg which seems to tick all 4 of my main ambitions.
- Throughout all of these I don’t know what
opportunities may arise. It is exciting.
- In a year’s time I can see again if anything has
evolved towards pathways both of the music industry, and secondly, working with
children and their mental health. For example, I could come back to Leeds and
become a teaching assistant in a primary school temporarily.
Slide 14 - Conclusion
- I contacted an artist I studied for my dissertation,
who illustrated live musical performances, and I have very recently had a
reply. She is extremely inspiring and is herself a dancer, singer and artist. She
worked in a café until she developed enough clients and contacts to be
supported by her art. She does lots of musical illustrations from gigs she chooses
which get applied to merchandise and promotion by the bands as an alternative
to photos. She moved to Sweden for a while and learnt the language and became a
kindergarten art teacher. She doesn’t just do musical illustration though, she
regards herself as a creative and does anything (poetry, dance, theatre
festivals and mental health work and illustrations).
- I think of myself as a creative who combines art,
music and dance. This is something I will continue to explore forever now.
- There is an
interesting overlap and that creative space is something that creates who I am,
who I want to be and where I want to go.
Presentation Prompts
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