What I'm actually proposing

Yesterdays Practice and Placement session was a good time to reflect on how things are going and what I'm actually doing.  In this session, we broke into small groups so that we could explain to each other, just what we were doing on our placement.  I'm becoming aware of other peoples placement promotion and there's a feeling of things coming together -as well as hesitance, where decisions are being changed or confirmed.

It struck me that my blog has recorded lots of stages but I haven't really outlined what I'm doing here; it's just a record of how I feel as I log incremental steps to pull things together. 

I think in the back of my mind I'd envisioned my proposal as a literal starting point that could have changed massively through the actual meeting with the PMAG but it's actually held up well.  It's getting real now with more suggestions of how to approach it and what could be accommodated.   

So.. let's get you up to speed!  This is the plan:

Day 1:  Spend time with the curator exploring the art collection.  The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery have a large storage space where the entire art collection is kept, and only a fraction of this is ever on display at any one time. So I'm excited to see what they have.  

Day 2: Respond to the art collection by producing my own work.

Day 3: Spend time with the curator exploring the exhibitions, including works by a local Artist Society; The Society of Staffordshire artists.  

Day 4:  Respond to the exhibitions, producing my own work.

Day 5:  Spend time with the Riso printer at the Air Space Gallery with a University Tutor, in order to produce a zine for the PMAG to encourage engagement.

I intend to do 1 day a week over 5 weeks.  One of my concerns at this stage is being able to get those dates in, with enough time to get all the information together for assessment at the end of March, but things are progressing so I'm going to stay positive. 

At the end of this session, I had a tutorial to check that my blog was on the right track and if there was anything I needed to revisit.  Some examples of blogs by previous students were shared in this session and they've been great to look at in terms of visuals, navigation and content.  Looking at these has been reassuring in terms of gauging the stage I'm at to where they were in January of their placement. It's also confirmed how differently the blogs are approached so I'm confident now to continue as I am and have checked in on my tone of voice again to make sure I'm happy with it.  One student featured in the local newspaper which made me consider if I'm brave enough to self initiate something like this? 

In terms of the proposal pack, I hadn't expected to be offered a working space in the gallery.  I'd hoped to spend some time creating art on-site but was receptive to working in the studio too because I can be a bit messy.  I think I'd imagined finding a quiet corner with a sketchbook and pencil somewhere, essentially presenting as any other gallery visitor.  This seems a bit daft now.. like. a covert residency.  

Now that I've seen the space I could be using it's made me think about where it is, the visitors to the museum that will be passing as I work, possible interactions, recording them and ... risk assessment.  I'll take another look at this to make sure that I'm considering risks properly.

A friend in the session asked if I could let her know when it was happening so that she could go along which is really encouraging.. and also.. something I'd not considered.   It feels like a much more interactive 'event' now.

I'm going over the presentation slides now to pull out some pointers:

• I've started to archive all the images I'm using for this blog in case they're handy for the evaluation images at the end.  I figure I'd better start holding images in one place. 
• I'm also thinking about all the ways that I can record my placement as photography isn't my most amazing skill and we talked about lots of possibilities.
• If you're reading this at the same time as approaching your own blog.. I'll confirm now that I'm definitely using the titles and labels so that I can get to the information I need later down the line when I write the evaluation.  I've been doing this since I reviewed the format in the early weeks.. I'm hoping it's handy.. I'll let you know! 
• Oh.. and those 121 tutorials that are on offer - are really helpful.  Do them even if you don't know what you'll want to discuss.

This meeting also confirmed to me that the research I'm considering about the placement is important so I need to get onto that too.