Professional Practice Lecture Series

Finding Your Path…

Today was the first day of second term. After our start of term briefing and verbal feedback for last terms module ‘Research and Development’ I attended a lecture presented by Ingrid Murphy (head lecturer of Maker) which is the first of the series called ‘Professional Practice’.

Beginning with general thoughts and points on leaving university and education to foray out into the world of work, Ingrid briefly recounted her own experiences of signing on the dole, eventually finding work she wanted to do and then about getting on to realizing her lifelong ambitions of becoming a teacher, an educator. Next Ingrid spent much of the rest of the lecture outlining, suggesting and positing jobs, work and ways of living and working.

One of the things she said concerning work outside of the creative industries is that people with creative degrees are attractive to public sector jobs in service industries. Should my original ideas and attempts of ‘having a stab at it’ go awry this would be useful to remember.

What she was really trying to get us to think about however was our skills. What skills do I have? How skilled am I in those areas really? I am a producer I make work. But with my skills can I both produce and also provide a service?

A comforting point she made in the lecture was that when she graduated she had no plan really, just an ambition which she worked towards. This was said to remind us that success does not come about overnight, there will be a journey towards ambition and goals.

The lecture followed Ingrid’s recent journey around New Zealand where she was judging an international ceramics exhibition. Much of her time there was spent meeting artists and makers. All these people that she met she served as examples to us of the plethora of opportunities that can be found and pursued out in the world.

There are so many things to think about! What do i want to do? Where do I want to go? Well… I want to make things most of all, perhaps one day run my own business of some description. I would work most anywhere initially. Residencies seem particularly inviting to me at the moment, a way, I think, that I could develop my practice contextually as well as my skills.  I also think that after a while I would like to work collaboratively, within a group of creatives which I will have assembled working on a variety of projects producing personal work to show for galleries and also work for commission and competition. I know that I also want to work with new technologies among other more traditional skills and ways of producing work. This is very important to me. So I think I shall begin by investigating opportunities around creative technologies, particularly those focused around the merging new technologies, art, design and sustainable living.

As the lecture series progresses and I find interesting opportunities or ideas of what I might want to do hopefully a better picture of what I could do after university should build up.