Here’s a few top tips we learnt at last nights Q&A session with Industry leaders at the Creative Futures Event hosted at Exeter College:
1. Work Experience
The most common question from young adults, but what does it mean? Do you have to have work experience in order to get a job? In short, in the creative industry experience is invaluable. You’re working in an industry that is constantly changing, constantly developing and looking for something fresh. Creativity stems from your surroundings, by being around those who do it daily work experience can only help you to grow creatively. It helps for both developing new skills, and networking. Work experience, shadowing, internships – do what you think will benefit you.
2. Finding Inspiration
If the opportunities to volunteer aren’t there, get creative yourself and team up with people around you that inspire you. The Young Collective has been made possible simply due the enthusiasm of a group of people who want to get creative. Want to play music? Gather a few friends, practise playing and going through the creative process, this doesn’t have to be your ultimate goal, but instead gives you a chance to collaborate with like-minded people. You can learn a lot from those around you.
3. University vs Apprenticeships?
It’s an ongoing debate, but the panel agreed they both have benefits. You have to do what works for you, are your friends going to University, but you don’t feel it’s right for you? Hey that’s ok! Seek the experiences that build your portfolio and showcase you in your best light. If you’re progressively learning to be the best you can be, then it’s your choice to choose which route you go down.
4. No Template for the Perfect CV
No consensus from the panel on the perfect CV. This goes to show there is no perfect CV, instead tailor your CV to the job. Your CV has to be relevant to the job you’re applying for, and illustrates the skills you have required for the job. This could mean you have two completely different CV’s for two different jobs…perfect! Take your time in knowing what they’re asking for, the important thing to remember is that the employer wants a taste of who you are and what you can bring to the company, if that summer cleaning job isn’t relevant don’t put it!
Rachel Williams discusses artists who are using their art to help promote awareness of particular global issues. Let these incredible artists use their work to inspire you to take in the issues that are impacting many across the world today.
Serge Belo
Serge Belo is a Montreal based interdisciplinary artist. In 2012 he created a beautiful mosaic highlighting the main problem of today’s society: Safe water. The mosaic represented a fetus in the maternal womb, emphasising the necessity of water for every living person, even before birth.
Belo filled 66,000 coffee cups with ‘dirty’ rainwater of varying shades to create this incredibly beautiful image. In just 62 hours and with the help of X volunteers the artist worked alongside the support of ONEDROP resulting in a mosaic spanning 334 sq m, using 15,000 litres of coloured rainwater. His piece highlighted a crisis of a monumental scale, which we need to begin to pay attention to.
PETA is reknown for their creative campaigns and cleverly use of the celebrity platform to communicate their controversial messages. However, a more recent discovery I’ve made is an art project by artist and photographer Arno Elias. He creates stunning images by collaborating with the likes of Cara Delevingne and Suki Waterhouse in order to overlay societies beauty icons into the context of the animal kingdom. He connects the freedom and liberation of these women models to voice a cause for those who cannot speak for themselves. Saving and protecting the future of wildlife ‘I am not a trophy’ campaign puts pressure on trophy hunting sports, naming and shaming, as well as creatively delivering messages.
When you first take a look at Zaria’s images your first thoughts may be manipulated photographs or even CGI. However, this highly climate-conscious artist creates unbelievably gorgeous pastel pieces with her hands. She does so in order to demonstrate not only the earth’s delicate materials but the rapid and very real process of global warming. Her work demonstrates a calming but concerning reality for the fragile nature of our planet. She uses her skill of hyperrealism in the most powerful way to communicate the issue; I envy her skill but hugely admire how she uses it.
Back in the years of taking my GCSEs, I took part in the Duke Of Edinburgh Bronze Award (not sure I even got the certificate in the end). Required to do a certain amount of hours on a skill of our choice, I chose to take the skills of sewing my Nan had tried to teach me for years that one step further. Optimistically and passionately I decided to take on the challenge of creating a dress that would be specifically designed for women of a similar shape to me – think the pears; Beyonce, JLo, Alicia Keys (although, I’d be flattering myself comparing me to them). For most of us, school highlights our biggest flaws, it’s a time of peer pressure and dissatisfaction of not looking a particular way. But, in all honesty, I’ve always been relatively comfortable with my body, still, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I never wished I was taller or slimmer. When it came to beginning my project I was stuck in the same old rut of drawing figures that represented standardised fashion proportions instead of reflecting how I or these other women like me were truly shaped. For me, the designs didn’t look flattering or didn’t look enticing without the figures and their tremendously long legs or prominent cheekbones. It wasn’t until I went to a water-colouring class that I realised the unrealistic bodies I was creating. An older lady approached me to ask what I was doing, after explaining she politely said “why do you make them so thin? Why don’t you draw them like us? we’re the ones buying them.” She was right but, it was my own insecurities and what I dreamed of being that restricted me from creating a piece that complimented who I was. I was trying so hard to create a piece of clothing that celebrated a woman’s real body shape whilst at the same time acting ashamed of it. In reality, this is how the fashion world portrays their designs but I had the opportunity to use my art to change it.
Having wanted to be a fashion illustrator for so long Nuno Dacosta and Sabine Pieper represent a few favourites of mine along with Megan Hess who does pieces for Dior, Prada and Vanity Fair. Their works are produced by solid lines and seem effortlessly perfect, something I hope one day mine will be too. However, as are with things that are so perfect they are almost always far-fetched from reality, yet even now this is what I inspire my drawings to be like. So when it came to taking a life drawing class for the first time at the University I didn’t know how to begin – In awareness of mental health issues, the University were aiming to promote body positivity – I didn’t know how to sketch so freely like everybody else around me. It normally takes me hours to get one side of a face how I want it, let alone be given 3-5 mins to sketch a whole person. This was all down to wanting perfection. I wanted perfect lines of the body to reflect the skills of me as an artist but, I was missing the point, I was trying to draw things that weren’t there. I was trying to alter parts of the people I was seeing because I couldn’t do with the varied proportions on my page, ones that didn’t coincide with what fashion drawing had taught me. Yet as I looked on and a new pose began I started to understand the freedom of sketching without setting restrictions. As I drew the curves of the woman in front of me I realised the beauty of all our bodies. I looked upon her with admiration, aware that what I was producing on a page from looking at a real life woman in front of me was just as gorgeous as the rule-drawn ones in my fashion sketch books. How people held their bodies, how their bodies curved and didn’t curved became so attractive, and one particular artist who represents this same admiration for people just as much as me is Austrian born artist Egon Schiele.
Born in 1890 Schiele only lived to the young age of 28, yet he managed to produce a varied collection of spectacular pieces in his too-short life span. There is not one piece of his work that ceases to fascinate me. That doesn’t draw me to the details of our bodies which we usually criticise. Instead, for me, Schiele’s figurative drawings amplify the beauty of the lines of our bodies, that demonstrate the diversity of our anatomy (Astrid points out a similar point in FEATURE: The Media’s damaging impact on 21st-Century beauty). For years I have been fixated on the steady one-drawn lines used in illustration, the flawlessness and the ideal. Schiele throws all this out the window, he not only strips down his subjects but, with limited mediums he can give more depth to a piece of work than any artist I know. It’s a personal opinion that his pieces strike something inside. When I saw his collection at the Leopold Museum in Vienna, the home of the young artist, it displayed a mixture of emotions. Many of the more detailed paintings looked unhappy and disfigured yet some although, their bodies demonstrated vulnerability at the same time illustrated confidence in a sexual and living nature. His works may not be as exposeing to us now as they were back in the 1920s, however, they still possess a confrontation of body image and sexuality that people are yet unable to face. We shy away from seeing our bodies as they really are, even without media influencing people to find a way to bring themselves down. The variations throughout his collections are unarguable, including his own self-portraits: with his famous-long hands, Shiele depicts himself in so many ways, using himself as a forefront of differences in association with our bodies. Life drawing has taught me the acceptance of loving who we are. Of course, I know there’ll still be days where I dislike how I look but I also believe that the bodies we have as humans, whether we are tall, short, curvy, slim, is the most beautiful thing in the world.
The Young Collective’s Founder Lauren Edwards spoke to 21-year-old, Laura Elisa Simpson about the beginning of her beautiful handmade enamel and copper jewellery business.
That moment just after you crawl into bed is when we all begin to develop crazy ideas and draw up optimistic business plans. But, for most of us, we wake up in the morning and almost certainly shrug of the spontaneous ideas thought of the night before.
After a period of ill health last year, Laura Simpson decided she needed something to do in order to occupy her time: “I wanted something to do at home when I felt up to it. I read a lot about jewellery making and enamelling was a technique which caught my eye, mainly because it was possible to add colour to the jewellery.” Even with no previous experience, Laura decided she felt up to the challenge, “I had no jewellery making skills, but once I felt a bit better I taught myself. Before I knew it I had bought a kiln and was bringing my ideas to life.”
Not many people have a hobby they believe they can take to the next level and develop into a business, never mind a young adult who has taken on something entirely new. Yet speaking to Laura she makes it sound so simple: “I enjoyed it so much that I just wanted to share my work with others. I shared some pictures of my jewellery on my personal social media and people seemed to like my work, so I took the leap.” With that began the beginning of ‘Gemwaith Elisa Jewellery’.
“At the start, when I was learning I would just saw out simple shapes and enamel them in one colour, just to get my sawing and enamelling techniques up to scratch. I now have a scrapbook where I put down my ideas.” Although, her jewellery is mostly custom made to order there’s still a very much personal touch to her pieces “My Welsh roots reflect in some of my designs, along with the shapes and colours I love. I also love adding text to my jewellery to add meaning.” Her business has only been up and running since earlier this year but, Laura worked on getting the technique down a couple of months prior to ensure the best possible outcome for her designs: “I saw the shape out of the copper sheet, file it and enamel it in a kiln. Most pieces go into the kiln around 6 times. I also make stud earrings and rings, which is of a similar process.”
Her pieces are up on Etsy, you can also find her on Instagram and on her Facebook page. With social media making it easier to spread the word about upcoming designers, there’s a lot to say when Laura takes her pieces to a local fair not too far from her home town, giving her the chance to interact with her customers for an even more personal touch. When asked about whether Gemwaith Elisa Jewellery is full-time she explains: “At the moment it’s a full-time job as I get ill from time to time. Having my workspace at home means I can rest when I need to. I’m planning to continue with my jewellery making as a side-line business as soon as I am able to work away from home again.”
As I’m someone that gets incredibly enthusiastic about ideas that run around in my head I asked Laura what she would say to other people who wanted to get started on a business or idea of their own. “If you have a business idea you’re passionate about, go for it! You don’t need a swanky workspace to start a small business; you can run it from the comfort of your own home. To be honest, starting my own business was never something I wanted to do, things change and life can be challenging; you have to adapt and carry on the best you can. Determination is all you need.”
Go and check out Laura’s social media’s or Etsy page and see her pretty pieces for yourself!
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