Page 6 – Sidi's Journey

Seven days in the Art World

Last week I read a book named 7days in the art world. When I read this book, I mainly focus on the characters in the art world and their relationship.
This book introduced five main roles of the art market: the artists, the dealers, the collectors, the curators, and the critics. The relationship between them like this:

【The connection】
Then I am thinking about the relationship between artists and collectors.A purchase will happen when the buyer has some connection with the artwork. For example, some collectors said they would buy artwork when they feel something, or the artwork helps them understand the way they live.
However, this kind of connection is very personal. Everyone’s ability to appreciate art is different. Appreciation of art is influenced by a person’s past experience, background and other factors. I think that’s the another reason why its hard to sell artworks.

【Takashi Murakami】

In addition, the most impressive chapter is chapter six, which is about visiting Takashi’s studio. This chapter mentioned anti-elitism and the cooperation between Takashi and Louis Vuitton. The artist’s works flatten the distinctions between art and luxury goods, high and popular culture, East and West.

But I can’t agree with that. I searched Takashi’s work online; even printed works are pretty expensive, not ordinary people can afford it. No matter for his artworks or a Louis Vuitton bag. The distinction between high and popular culture is still here.

【Art is far away from our daily lives】

When I searched the review of this book, one reader said: ‘ I am sure that most readers of this book also chose it because we will never be able to attend a Christie’s Post-war art auction, the Venice Biennial, or the Basel Art Fair except through Sarah Thornton.’

I reckon that it’s hard to sell artworks because some people think Art is far away from their lives. For instance, we have to go to specific places, museum or gallery, to learn about Art. And in China, art subject is not as important as Math, Science and English. Only a small percentage of people will be educated in the arts.

Most people lack art education and appreciation ability, so they feel Art is far away from their lives. Therefore, when they see artworks, it is difficult for them to connect with them, so they will not buy them.

【Who is the audience of art student’s work】

Firstly, not those five characters in the book. They are the people who pursuit masters work at a high price.

I sale my watercolour paintings twice when I was undergraduates; the price is 60 pounds for a sheet and 1200 pounds for a set. Unfortunately, I even have no idea who brought my works. I guess the customer is someone who is willing to learn Art and purchase Art, but they can’t afford masterpieces with outrageous prices.

Now, I think my question can evaluate again to:

How can I improve the level of arts education? How can I make art more universal? How to bridge the gap between art and the public?

I think the potential market for Art is enormous. As the book said: ‘Only a century ago, no one had a car. Now, people have two or three. That’s the way it’s going with art’.

Few people knew about Art before because it was a spiritual pursuit. In the age of food scarcity, most people only focused on physical needs, while the upper aristocracy pursued spiritual needs. With economic development, people’s physiological needs have been met, the pursuit of spiritual needs is a trend.

I have no idea who is the audience of art student’s work, and I didn’t find some academic articles related to this question. Maybe my work is to turn ordinary people into an audience for art students’ works. And the plan is through improving the level of arts education to 1)reduce the gap between Art and the public 2) Let more people have the ability to appreciate Art and connect with artworks.

Intervention 2 – Idea – Create a concept

My thoughts:

I was inspired by this marketing event： Expand demand for diamond rings by creating the concept that diamonds are essential for a wedding.

https://www.thedrum.com/news/2016/03/31/1948-de-beers-diamond-forever-campaign-invents-the-modern-day-engagement-ring

After I read this article, I was thinking can I expand the demand for artworks by creating a concept? I guess the home decoration market is good to start.

A lot of people will not consider buying art as decoration when they are decorating their homes. Or, some may choose to buy a printed or mass-produced work of art rather than an original work.

Can I expand the demand for original art by
1）creating a concept： using original artwork to decorate your home is essential.
2) providing a reference for those who don’t know how to choose artworks. (such as hanging children illustrations in the kids’ room, modern abstract paintings in the living room, landscape paintings in the old person room).

The feedback and reflection of intervention 1

I chose to start with ‘tips’ because I found some students want to build their personal branding by creating an art-business account, but they don’t know how to start it. I also found that some tips provided online are quite general and are not only for art students. So I thought maybe interview the successful person and provide tips could help them.
After I talk it with my tutor, I noticed that successful people wouldn’t share their secrets. (I guess that’s why I sent lots of emails but nobody reply, and I didn’t realize it before.) In addition, the tips I’m offering are not what I or my audience can be successful if we follow it, so this way is useless. And this is not an intervention because it didn’t make the change.

Contact with UAL’s career centre staff

Finally there are one more person reply my email.

Kyle, an UAL career centre staff, gave me some advices. He shared with me a workshop slides which help student set up an account on LinkedIn. He also recommend me two links which is about how to manage IG portfolio.

From my own view, LinkedIn is different from other social media platforms. LinkedIn is more professional and is mainly for find a job. However, IG needs you to show your own characteristics and personality.

Through the slides Kyle shared with me, I found the linkInIn learning platform, which is free for students. I searched a bit and found a course on personal branding. This may be useful and relevant information for my project, and Chelsea Krost (the teacher of this course) might be my potential dragon.

Intervention 1 – Plan – Brochure

I made a draft brochure as my early intervention. The content of this booklet comes from an interview with the first dragon. I also found some articles on the Internet that provide guidance on how to operate a business social account, those guidance is general and not aimed at art graduates. But some of the tips inside can also be used for reference. I plan to combine the valuable information online with the information obtained from my own interviews as the content of my brochure.

In addition, I will sent this brochure to some key audiences (Those art students who are currently operating or plan to earn income by operating business social accounts ) and seek some feedbacks.

Contact with one expert successfully

Hayley is a freelance illustrator, she manage her business account on social media for years. Now she has more than 3,000 followers following her account. She also manage her online store to sell some relative artwork to support herself. We discussed about this topic and she said that it has taken a lot of trial and error to find a system that works for her and helps her to build her audience. Having more information and advice at her disposal earlier on in her career would have been extremely helpful!

Her answer made me more confident about the question I was studying, and I think the topic I studied is a valuable thing.

When I ask her : Could share some of your opinions about how to use social media (like Instagram) to operate an account and get benefits?

I summarize her answers as follow:

Post your work consistently

I think one of the main things to consider when using social media as an artist or designer is to post consistently. If we take a site such as Instagram, due to the algorithms it’s important to post content when your followers are going to expect you to, so keeping a schedule that you stick to will mean that your followers will see your posts. For example, you might post a new artwork 2 or 3 times per week on the same days and at the same time, which means that your post is more likely to be seen and interacted with by your followers, which in turn helps boost your engagement and makes your profile more visible.

Asking more engagement

The more engagement you receive (likes, comments, shares etc.) tells the algorithm that your content is interesting, so your post will be shown to more users. If you break that consistency and stop posting for a week or two, your engagement will drop and the next time you post, you’ll receive fewer interactions.

Communicate with your followers

It’s also important to make sure to communicate with your followers! Make sure that you reply to comments on your posts. You could also use this to further understand who your audience is, and from there you can tailor your content to suit whoever that may be. For example, if your specialist field is children’s book illustration, the audience that you are trying to appeal to could be parents/guardians of young children, as well as authors and publishers, so do your research and try to make sure that your feed speaks to these types of users.

Using appropriate hashtags

You could use appropriate hashtags to increase the chances of these types of Instagram users seeing your posts. It’s also useful to have a short yet informative bio that quickly tells people who you are and what you do, but is still punchy and memorable, that way any potential clients or customers can immediately see what type of artist you are and what your specialist field is.

Make your ‘grid’ appealing

You may want to add a link to a website, portfolio or email address so that you can be easily contacted. I would also recommend taking an overall look at your social media page; does your Instagram “grid” look appealing? Does it draw the viewers in and make them want to see more of your work? I’ve found that alternating between posting finalised drawings and photographs works well and makes my “grid” look attractive! It’s important overall to ensure that your social media pages are professional, but that they also feel approachable and look aesthetically pleasing.

I decided to make a booklet that contains the main tips on how to manage business accounts, which is my early intervention.

Further development of my question

From my last journal, my question is that How can I help art students who want to be a freelancer build personal IP in the Internet age?

Then I tried to contact some experts like Emma Thatcher, but she didn’t reply me so far. It made me rethink my question. Is my question not clear? I think the problem might be ‘personal IP’. Then I searched this word online, and it’s more like IP address.

But what I mean about personal IP is that people’s ownership of specific achievements. In the Internet era, it can refer to a symbol, a kind of values, a group with common characteristics.

It also represents the personal brand. When a person’s name is said, you will know that he is an expert. His name means authority and expertise in a particular field.

To sum up, personal IP is all about creating a label in the minds of your viewers and fans

Based on this, I modify my question again to make it more straightforward: How to use social media to help art students to support themselves in the era of the fan economy.

In other words，this means:

How to build a business account on social media and get the benefit;

How to let more people know who you are;

How to find your target audience;

How to make your business account more attractive;

How to let your followers willing to pay for your artwork etc.

The journey of my question so far

At the very beginning, when I needed to choose something in my uncertainty box, the direction I chose was how to develop art students’ careers. The question is: How can art graduates build their careers in the Internet age?

After I interviewed my previous classmates, and I found that the original question is that they chose the wrong major. My question then became: How can art students choose the right subject to help them define themselves and find suitable jobs after graduation?

After that, I researched the UAL foundation course, UAL outreach program, and UAL insights. I thought the foundation course is quite similar to what I want to do. But this course is mainly for that student who 1) would like to spend one year 2) can afford it. So I will specifically focus on other student groups. For example, I can create an online platform and collect lots of information to help them choose the right subject. Then I realized that I’m more of an information provider, and the most important thing is that they lack the awareness of choosing majors carefully. If they have the attention, they can gather relevant information by themselves, which is not that hard in this internet age. So my question became: How can I Awaken students’ awareness of choosing majors carefully?

Later, I discussed it with the dragon team. It made me thought more about: there are so many art graduates every year, but not everyone can become an artist. Should we do what we love or love what we do? Art students are more likely to feel uneasy in the face of employment problems because they are a group of sensitive and ambitious people. My question change again: How can I reduce art students’ psychological gap when facing employment problems?

When I think about it, I want to convey that we should accept our ordinariness and not have too many unrealistic fantasies. But at the same time, I think it’s negative. I still want to do some positive things and help ambitious students to build their careers. Then I found UAL’s Enterprise Programme, which is a creative business accelerator program. Due to my interests about ‘personal IP’ and ‘freelancer’, now my question is: How can I help art students who want to be a freelancer build personal IP in the Internet age?

Discuss with the dragon group

_{CROSS, P.G., CATTELL, R.B. and BUTCHER, H.J. (1967). The Personality Pattern of Creative Artists. British Journal of Educational Psychology, [online] 37(3), pp.292–299. Available at: https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8279.1967.tb01944.x [Accessed 22 Apr. 2021].}

The general area and keywords of my question so far are:
Art students, Subject choice, Employment, and Future development.

In discussion with the dragon group on Wednesday, Dominic recommended a book named the way of integrity. In the introduction part, the author said that but how I, and other people, could create lives we actually enjoyed.
It also reminded me of my previous investigation: Only 4% of my earlier classmates are doing art-related jobs now, while others change their careers. Then I found that although they didn’t choose the art-related job, they did find jobs. It makes me think of a question: should we do what we like or like what we do?

In addition, art students are a more sensitive group： Sixty‐three visual artists and twenty‐eight craft students were compared with a matched control group. Significant differences in mean scores between artists and controls were found on twelve factors of the 16PF test. On eleven of these twelve factors, the scores of the craft students were intermediate between those of the artists and the controls. Especially salient features of the artists’ personality pattern were A – (reserved, schizothyme tendency), E+ (assertiveness, dominance), Q2+ (self sufficiency), G – (low emotional stability), Q3 – (low self‐integration, casualness), M+ (autistic or bohemian tendency) and G – (low superego strength). They also differed from the control group in being more suspicious (L+), more apprehensive or guilt‐prone (O+), and more tense or overwrought (Q4+). In terms of the second order factors, the artists are assessed as being slightly introverted though there is evidence of some contradiction, strongly anxious, experimenting, non‐moralistic, and slightly sensitive (CROSS, CATTELL and BUTCHER, 1967).

Two directions of my question :

One is to help to reduce a ‘psychological gap’. How can I reduce Art students’ psychological gap when they face employment problems. This direction is more about how to tell students not to fantasize too much about an unrealistic future. (not everyone can become a famous, self-supporting artist)

The other direction is to help art students start their own businesses. I prefer to study the direction of creating personal IP.

How can I help art students build personal IP in the Internet era? This direction is mainly for those students who want to be freelance artists, illustrators, designers etc.

Project 5- The change I want to see

My general research area is about the employment situation of art students. Eleanor (2018) said that the watchdog found that many colleges collected little data about the destinations of their students. Where data was available it was found that arts and media courses scored low in terms of employment prospects. Eva A (1993) stated that many of the respondents were expecting to have a difficult time after graduation, trying to accomplish multiple goals of getting admitted to a Graduate Art program, becoming a practicing artist, and finding a survival job.

For my primary research, I investigated the employment situation of my fine art classmates. The data shows that only 4% of people are doing an art-related job, while 17% have jobs entirely unrelated to their majors. 37% of them choose to be a teacher, and 15% of people are designers now.

In the beginning, my research data made me think that there are two main reasons for the difficult employment of art students. One is the nature of the major. Art major is a creative major and does not have a solid professional attribute. Kobe (2015) said that in uncertain economic times, any student graduating from university is no longer guaranteed a job. If this is true of students graduating with degrees in such career fields as business, law, and teaching, it is even truer in the creative field. The other reason is that some students don’t like this major, so it’s hard for them to stick with it and become an artist, and they change careers.

Subsequently, I questioned that whether there are any other reasons. After reading a few more articles about it, I came up with a few different reasons.
1) There is a mismatch between the number of art students and the number of jobs available. Eleanor (2018) argued that Arts and media does stand out as the area where there is the greatest mismatch between the numbers of students taking the courses and their future employment in the industry.
2) Art students lack of career counseling in their university. 82% of the art students felt that they had had inadequate career counseling in their schools, as compared with only 59% of the English students and 68% of the psychology students (Whitesel, 1980). Eva A (1993) said that having career information available in Art department offices and offering career-oriented Art courses to tell the student about what to do with a major in Art and how to prepare for that is essential. However, I think this point is a little outdated since these two articles were published 30 or 40 years ago. Nowadays, many universities set up career service centers for students to prepare their CVs or interviews.
3) Students who choose fine arts majors are mainly motivated by their interests, not by their future careers. Student interest in the subject is an important influence on major choice. Passion drive students’ lives and tastes for majors are a dominant factor in choosing specific majors by students (Jaradat, 2015). They had chosen their particular area of concentration in Art because of enjoyment in working with that medium, skill or familiarity with the medium, preference for the type of Art product created, better rapport with the professors, or preferences for the social structure in that area (Eva A, 1993).
4) The personality of art students leads to their limited choice of jobs. Eva (1993) claimed that the literature showed that Art students tended to have values systems and personality traits that might make working at certain jobs more difficult. Examples were not like a job that involved a boring routine or not liking to be a ‘pushy salesperson.’

Having analysed all of the points above, I now feel my topic is a complex topic with different reasons. My potential change has two directions. One is to make college students aware of choosing a major carefully by presenting employment problems. The other is to integrate resources to provide college students with a more comprehensive understanding—for example, the foundation course of UAL. But foundation courses are mainly for students who can afford it and are willing to spend a year exploring it. I would pay more attention to other student groups. Of the two directions, I personally prefer the first one. Because awakening students’ awareness is more valuable than providing information directly, if they have this awareness and are more careful and rational in their choice of major, they will always have a way to find relevant information.

Bibliography

Eva A, T., 1993. Program and Career Perceptions of Undergraduate Students Majoring in Fine Art. Ph.D. The University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Whitesel, L., 1980. Career Attitudes of Art Students. Studies in Art Education, 22(1), p.36.

Eleanor, H., 2018. Arts students given ‘false jobs hope’ by colleges. Daily Mail, p.21.

Jaradat, M., 2015. What’s Really Matter When Choosing a College Major!. International Journal of Arts and Commerce, 4(2), p.94.

Bonita M, K., 2015. Entrepreneurship for the Creative and Cultural Industries. Abingdon, Oxon : Routledge.