28 May 17

Professional Development Bursary

A blog of my Professional Development Bursary, learning new skills in metal work and After Effects

I applied to for the Professional Devlepment Bursary to address skill-gaps that were preventing me from realising my ideas.

My recent work has been part of artist-duo, One Five West. We’ve been making a series of games and interventions in public space that playfully subvert hostile architecture into an invitation to contribute.

This work was developed on the New Talent Residency at Pervasive Media Studio. Having this amazing opportunity offered me the time to think about where I wanted my practice to develop in the future, and it became apparent that I was interested in materials of discomfort and authority in public space. This led to an interest in working with metal, so that I could create my own artwork and furniture that reflected design in public spaces.

However, I hadn’t worked in metal before, and did not have the facilities, so felt I was unable to demonstrate my ideas. So, having been the successful recipient of the Professional Development bursary from a-n, I have been able to invest in welding skills which I’m currently undertaking at Tameside college.

I’ve only done a few sessions, but am feeling so much more confident in being able to use new equipment safely, and even more I’m excited to be able to apply these skills into making some new work!

I’ll be updating the blog with further process soon, and will also be covering the bursary I received to learn some After Effects.

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21 July 17

Upskilling

I have recently completed my welding course at Tameside College in Ashton, Manchester. I’ll be receiving a Level 1 certificate any day now.

Over the months, I’ve been able to feel confident in being able to set-up and use a MIG welder, and I’m able to do a range of joints. Soon I’ll be setting up my own little MIG welder and working on some projects on my own. Specifically, my work with One Five West has recently led to a commission with Curated Place for Bury Light Night and SPECTRA Festival in Aberdeen. As we’ll be developing outdoor artworks for festivals, this is where my welding can finally come into practice.

I’m planning to take structures I’ve created before, like the above (Code and Carpentry, 2016) and make them more durably from metal.

Investing time and money into up-skilling is definitely something I need to make myself do more. Being out of a university environment where there isn’t the access to equipment, and being aware that getting things professionally fabricated can be costly (and risky, what if it doesn’t turn out how you thought it would?), it can be hard to make the progress into work that’s currently only in your head.

I also think time out into different environments can be refreshing, and forces you to lift your head out of research to see other ways of doing things, to see other ways people work, and afford yourself the satisfaction of setting yourself a learning goal that can be quantified and measured. I think a lot of making work is waiting for an, “a-ha!” moment, and relying on intuition for when something feels right. Doing this course, and others, was a satisfying way of succeeding against set aims.

In the wider sense, I see only benefit in adding more strings-to-your-bow. The skills you learn from dance to welding can be transferred into different settings quite easily, and it’s an interesting experience to hear different types of terminologies and priorities in different types of work settings.

Next on my agenda is dance. I’m currently doing some R&D for collusion. I’m making an AI art piece that people can physically interact with to curate their own video content. Therefore I thought it might me interesting to learn more about dance and the body. I think the opportunity to up-skill through the Professional Development Bursary at a-n has opened me up more to trying new things in unusual contexts (being the only woman at a welding course for instance. Quite an interesting experience for us all!), and something I intend to do more in the future to develop and influence my work.

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29 June 17

After Effects Course

As part of my Professional Development Bursary, I took an After Effects course so I could learn a bit more about video editing. I’d self taught myself Final Cut Pro, but wanted to be able to make my own moving graphics, and have more complex animations but didn’t know where to start!

I went to Platform 39 which is an Adobe Training Centre in London. The course was good value, and as there was a very small class (just two students) we had plenty of opportunities to ask questions and tailor some of our learning.

We learned the basic navigation of the programme, and complete two short projects to learn about the basics of key frames, effects, masks and so on.

(This isn’t a photo of the actual footage, just a glitch… but it looks pretty great)

I’m hoping to use these skills for video soon. I’m working on a project soon with Revolve:R where I’ll been making a visual response to a poem, so this seems like a good chance to try something a bit more complex out.

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