Creative Futures - Day 4

How to be passionate, and the benefits of being self employed.

By the final day of creative futures week I was starting to feel really overloaded with information. Although I feel much more of it has been beneficial to me this year, I think it would be a good idea to spread the week over a couple of months, two days here, two days there. This will make it easier to digest all of the information being given to us without it overloading us.

So, the fourth and final day arrived. I was going to attend '

20:20 visions' with Andy Cheetham, however, when we arrived at the Catrin Finch building we found it had been swapped with 'The Chip Shop story'. So we decided to head to the library to keep on top of the creative futures blogs. I've found that I'm writing much more this year!

(The Photo Foundry icon, image courtesy of Google)

My first of two talks for the fourth day was by Alison McLean founder of the Photo Foundry. Another ex student of Glyndwr, but more recent than Dan Fox, graduating in 2010, the year we started. After running her own business, in the financial services for fifteen years, along with teaching Tae Kwon-Do for fifteen years also, Alison considered coming to Glyndwr her 'birth'. This is very similar to how I feel about my own experience with university.

I found a lot of Alison's talk to be useful, like her advice on writing your dissertation during the summer months, which I fully intend to do. Also, she advised that if possible to find a part time job after graduating to enable you to continue to work creatively. After graduating, Alison took a long break, but kept teaching Tae Kwon-Do for about 8 hours a week to keep money coming in.

It's no big secret that having your own website is a basic requirement in the current climate. If people can't find an online presence for your company or service, you don't really stand a change of being noticed. So, if everyone in the world has a website, how do you make yours stand out? Well Violet Fenn had the right idea, to keep your site as up to date as possible and have presence on all the social networking sites, and ensuring every site links back to every other site. It's easy to make a free/cheap website and along with the social networks being free it's simple to get your face out there with very little up-front costs.

If you're not savvy with technology, and if you think HTML is a highstreet clothes shop, then work with a graphic designer to make your site look more professional. You can also use a free portfolio site like Carbonmade which is a hosting site similar to Flickr but with a cleaner and more simple layout. If you're someone who's literately challenged, then a site like Ghotit will pick up on more than just incorrect spelling, but will also correct any bad grammar. A site that's badly spelt, or is full of mistakes or doesn't make sense won't look good to a potential client or customer.

• Improve traffic (people who visit your sites) by putting videos, blogs and keywords on there. And not just your own work, plug others' work that stands out to you. Sites with video content are five times more likely to come up in the top results in Google.
• Make it personal by interacting with your viewers, run contests or give out freebies.
• Always keep your site(s) up to date, I know personally if I see a blog that hasn't been updated in more than six months I'll lost interest pretty quickly.
• Business cards. Everyone has those these days too, Moo do pretty neat little cards and their standard cards are great quality. Looking for ways to make your business cards stand out is also a good way of ensuring people remember you. A lot of businesses, especially artists use postcard sized business cards because of the ability to do more with them. People are more likely to see them as little pieces of art and frame them.
• Spreading the word. Tell everyone! Family, friends, colleagues, students, all lead to referrals.
• Under promise and then over deliver. If someone gives you a job that you know will take three days, tell them it will take five. Then, when you finish early, saving your client money and time you'll look great.
• Do it personally. Turn up to events, socialise, network and be friendly but professional.
• Using social media is great, but use something like Tweetdeck, or Hootsuite which are dashboards that will post an update you make to all of your social networking sites. On the other hand, if you're someone who can while away hours or days on Facebook or Twitter, you might want to look at Anti-Social which is a website that will turn off the social side of the internet, enabling you to work without getting distracted.

All very valid tips really! Alison went on to talk about watermarking your images. Something I only really do if I know my photographs are being sold. If you're posting them online, Adobe Bridge allows metadating, which is an embedded watermark stopping people from saving the image to their computer. Also only upload small images 700 pixels, for example. This stops people from being able to print them large.

Sometimes, it can be hard to stay inspired, it's like writers block and everyone suffers from it from time to time. Alison gave us a list of sites to look out, as well as suggesting we keep a file of ideas for 'rainy days'. I've since gone on to join Arthouse Co-Op (amongst others) where lots of artists from across the world join projects that go on to be displayed in a gallery window in Boston.

Alison explains that having already run her own business that starting the Photo Foundry wasn't too hard. But for the rest of us the ideas of tax, employees, overheads, liability, HMRC, and PAYE to name but a few, are all quite daunting. But there's plenty of help available, especially through the Citizens Advice Bureau. Finally there was a list of websites that might be helpful to us.

• Artists Newsletter. Which is a resource for artists across all fields. It has a magazine that offers £2.5million public liability insurance with subscriptions.
• BJP Online. The British Journal of Photography is a monthly publication, supported by its website offers editorials and new and upcoming talent next to well-known photographers.
• Freelance UK is aimed at freelancers in the creative industries, offering help and support to those who are just starting out to the seasoned self-employed.
• Photographers.co.uk is a site for photographers looking for jobs, employees, training courses and supplies.
• Professional Photographer is another publication and website, with competitions, exhibitions, a directory of photographers the latest news in the world of photography.

All in all, I found this talk to be quite helpful, but it was also long and had a lot of information to take on board. It's only after I've sat down and re-read my notes that I've been able to decipher them and pick out what was relevant to me.

As I've mentioned before, it has been nice to have talks from so many ex Glyndwr students who are doing well for themselves. So it was a nice end to the week to have a talk from three students who only graduated within the last year and are already doing really well. My final talk for the week was 'show passion in your next step (photography and video) Minimal Media'. The three students were Graham Cooper, who's passion is film. Hollie Harmsworth who's fine art background saw her change direction to Glyndwr, and Alan Whitfield who worked in a factory for ten years before doing a GCSE, A Level, HND and finally a degree in photography.

I looked at their website, Minimal Media, which is very simple, and clean and straight to the point. It's nice not to see a plethora of adverts, but being brutally honest, I didn't think much of their show-reel. I didn't see anything that stood out to me, and there was nothing particularly special about it. That said, in the short time they've been a business they've had lots of different projects, some big, and some small. But their advice was very similar to that of most of the other speakers. Don't pigeon-hole yourself, the more skills you have, the more employable you are. Never say no to a project, get industry experience, find opportunities and take every chance you get to improve.

Resonance, is a Glyndwr film that the three are involved in, it was promoted through Twitter and Facebook, which are both great ways to promote for free. It's not just a Glyndwr film, Resonance is about an object that changes the lives of the people who come into contact with it, and it is now a global film stretching over many platforms and many countries. Visit the Facebook page here.

Unlike some of the other talks we've had this week, this wasn't crammed full of information, and although we've already heard most of it, they ended with quite a poignant quote. "Passion is a positive obsession. Obsession is a negative passion" - Paul Carvel.

So, what did we learn?

Well, honestly not much that I didn't already know about the basics. Employability is about being good at lots of stuff, not just knowing one thing inside out. Presenting yourself professionally, saying yes to everything (within reason), get a website and business cards, make people remember you, make use of free advertising, show passion and dedication and a million other things. But first and foremost to remember that when we graduate, hundreds of people will be applying for the jobs we want and to stand out you have to show your potential employer that you're the best man (or woman) for the job.

Having already lived in the big scary world, I already knew a lot of this, but it has been a lot more beneficial this year, with lots of talks that have been useful and relevant and not all of them have been tedious like some talks can be when you're bombarded with information. I'm sure next years' creative futures week will be more important and informative again.