DEGREES UNEDITED

Richard Taylor looks at using Degrees unedited to its fullest and negotiating a ’review for a review’ come degree show season.

Making connections and developing working partnerships

Developed ideas about someone else's working pattern and how different environments inform modes of practice; inevitably progress into informative and heightened forms of criticality and peer review.

Degrees unedited is the site for you to establish such ideas and maintain working relationships with student artists and practitioners from across the UK. The unedited blogs give you the space to say what you feel 'you' need to say, however using the environment is just as much about others as it is about you: commenting on what people post and contributing to their ideas, reciprocally moulds a virtual or physical locale, in which to develop and progress with new understandings.

Virtual meetings towards people well met

Why not utilise the knowledge gained during your time spent on Degrees unedited: knowing someone's practice and understanding it in advance sets you up as a good candidate to offer and receive peer-review, constructing more valid criticism where and when it is needed most.

Your end result is inevitably the degree show as an integrated part of an important season in the UK's annual arts calendar, so make sure you do not miss out on opportunities to invite people and be invited in turn, for professional longevity.

Along with your degree show will hopefully come good reviews, the odd prize and additional acclaim. But do not leave this just for your tutors to decide, as people in the 'virtual' peer group that is Degrees unedited, may retain a more valid opinion as well as further working possibilities.

A good way of placing yourself within such possibilities is to consider how reciprocal gain is established for both parties. What do they have to offer in return for your own service?

How about a review for a review? Get someone from another city that has studied under a different 'regime' to visit your degree show and produce a review of your exhibition. What better way is there to establish and further working relationships beyond your citywide remit? In return you simply offer to do the same, as your opinion counts just as much as theirs.

Receiving worthwhile criticality and debate

As you progress towards your degree show, you will begin to pull together in your immediate peer group, working to the greater goal. Further than this, it is important to initiate considerations on how your end of year show is received and accredited by others. Start asking yourselves what is important and whose opinion counts with respect to your hard work: who is in the loop and who understands.

Other people in the loop are those that find themselves in the same boat, battling the same current, so why not lend them a hand in return for a favour or two? Establishing cross-institutional contacts through Degrees unedited will benefit you post-education, as you enter the working art-world without the support structure maintained by your university or college.

A return journey: negotiating your well founded review

To construct such relationships with like-minded people now, will bode well for your professional appearance in the future. For instance, using the blogs to gain insight into the practice of others is advantageous in developing the relevance of your aesthetic and research concerns. So as you use the Degrees unedited environment to forward virtual connections do not hesitate to think that such efforts can develop practically and physically.

A possible way of thinking is by way of considering expenses: to nominate yourself as a singular 'reviewer' that travels to another venue (a university or college in a neighbouring city... or perhaps further), and who requests expenses paid for developing a review of the their show. This is a form of good practice in working for other people and offering your service as a self employed artist and/or writer.

What happens then is that in direct 'return' for your efforts someone from another course does the same for your show: and their travel expenses, in realistic terms, then cover yours.

The end result looks past your degree show in negotiating a lasting and referenced piece of material that is well informed and developed. By negotiating a review in this way you gain something more than your BA certificate and get something to keep that may be worth more than your grade.

Links

• Uniformly blogging for individuality: Richard Taylor looks at how best to use the Degrees unedited blogs: make yourself stand out from the crowd by working together in the group your institution readily provides. Read on »
• Double your potential: Did you know that double the amount of virtual exposure is gained by adding user-generated content to the site? Take a look at how to use Degrees unedited as a window in to the professional world. Read on »
• Making the effort now: get in touch with people who are posting on the blogs this year, join in, comment and if you have not yet begun then start a blog of your own. 
  Start browsing Degree show blogs »
• Read within your prospective realm: previous Degrees unedited reviews, written by students on the work of students.
  Go to Degrees unedited reviews »

First published: a-n.co.uk April 2009