The day of the Placement Meeting has landed

So, this morning I met the Curator and the Director of the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery.  Both were lovely and made me feel welcome -  which is reassuring in itself. I'd been more nervous than anticipated.  The whole process feels a bit like inviting yourself along to an interview for a job role that you wrote yourself.  In professional practice speak this is essentially self-initiating which is something I'm going to have to get used to. 

I'm glad I took along supporting documents and examples.  I was concerned that as well as I thought I understood my proposal idea and how to explain it, in reality, it might just all fall away from my mind or, it'd be too much to blurt out without some kind of record of my intentions.  The supporting info was well received and the examples were helpful.  I took along a leaflet from the recent Zine project on the off chance that they weren't familiar with Zine publications ( as I wasn't before my introduction to them a couple of years ago. ) This too was really useful and helped me to explain the concept.  I'll drop a thank you to Laura Williams on this one as she put it together ahead of the workshop that she facilitated for her own placement.

The curator explained that there is an oil store that she can introduce me to and she had several artworks in mind that would connect to my personal practice. We discussed work in the PMAG collection by Eric Gill which isn't widely displayed due to the deviant sexual behaviour of the artist and the difficulty of separating the artist from the work.  This is really interesting and I'll do some research into this.

One thing I hadn't anticipated was the offer of a space in the Art Gallery in which I could work to create art in response to the collection. The curator was amazing and suggested that works from storage could be retrieved or printed copies could be put in this space for me to work from. It's a great spot!  There's good lighting, walls that can be repainted if needed, the floor can be covered, an easel can be provided and there's a power-point. I've explained that I'll aim to create provisional drawings in this space that I can then paint from but the scope to create and to interact with visitors is amazing.  She also suggested that my studies could be exhibited next to the work I was responding to; again this was unexpected but very welcome.

There was a positive reception to a couple of different ideas around how to focus the zine and around sharing information on social media so I'm really looking forward to working with the PMAG to make work that could potentially reach lots of people. 

I have a few actions to take from here in terms of sharing some images of references from the meeting and checking on any cost implications.  Because the publication cost of zines are low and I'm used to sourcing my own materials for my degree, I didn't consider funding which now seems a little shortsighted as I'm sure in future, I'll need to tap into funding opportunities.  I'd assumed that for the type of work that I envisioned creating in future, applying for funding wouldn't be too relevant.  I think I imagined creating, exhibiting and selling work but I'm now really reflecting on how I'll create the work initially.  This placement will help me to follow a line of enquiry and research art that relates to my personal practice effectively, I may need to apply for funding that accommodates this type of opportunity in future too.  

I'm hoping that the costs will be minimal as zines are intended to be low-cost publications. I have a stash of A3 paper but will do some research and check in the Print Bureau and academics at the uni to make sure the paper that I have is sufficient and I'm fully informed of overheads.  A small potential amount of funding may be available from the museum so I'm off to do my homework.. .  .  .

As far as a "negotiation of terms" I'd tried so hard to make my placement proposal an appealing "offer" for the PMAG, I'd not fully considered what they would offer in return - which was amazing.  

My copy of the proposal meeting "agenda".  The PMAG version was the same minus some prompts intended for me.

Feedback sent to student who produced the zine leaflet.