My model iterated many times, from triangle to heptagon. And the definition of each ability is getting richer and richer. I think this model and the process of exploring this model is the biggest thing that I learned from this MA course.
Most notably, I explored this career model with the methodology I had learned (planning-acting-observing-reflecting-planning) and through the reflection of myself. Besides, I tried to use this model to solve the problems that I met in this project, which is also a way to test it. I am happy I choose this project since it makes this MA journey more like knowing myself. I keep reminiscing and reflecting on my past, and I try to find out the shortcomings that I didn’t realize before. Now, I know which ability I need to strengthen and what I should do for my future career after leaving CSM. In addition, I will keep reflecting on myself and iteration of this model. As I said before, this model is not perfect nor the end, and it should be iterated constantly. And when it exposes to the world, it might bring some thoughts to the new art graduates and more people; it has the potential change.
version 1version 2version 3version 4version 5version 6
Conclusion: this primary research made me realize that I need to specify my audience from fine art graduates to fine art graduates who want to be a freelancer or wear more than one hat. This process also helped me to enrich the definition of my model, for example, I put ‘the ability to be humble’ to the ‘self-control ability’. This also verifies the feasibility and credibility of the test I designed to a certain extent.
Career model iteration – version 5
online talk with Yigao (fine art background, currently working in a film company )
offline talk with Chery (fine art backgroud, currently studying fine art PhD)
I talked with two stakeholders about my project and my career model as my primary research to acquire more opinions and fine art background students’ suggestions.
1. Talking with Yigao (fine art background, currently working in a film company)
Before talking to Yigao, I ask her to test the organisation’s ability, the sequencing question of intervention 6. Surprisingly, her answer was the closest to the correct answer. (Her answer is 5-2-4-1-3, and the correct answer is 2-5-4-1-3.) Then we talked about whether she is an organised person. Both she and I think she is a well-organised person, whether in life or study or work. So I guess, to some extent, this result shows the feasibility of this organization ability test.
After that, I introduced my career model, and we discussed her changes in these abilities before and after graduation. The conclusion is that, except for cooperating ability, the rest improved a lot after entering the workforce. Because when she works in a company, she has to undertake her tasks and responsibilities that she should complete. Every link has a corresponding person in charge, so there is no need to coordinate the process of cooperation. The whole collaboration is conducted under specific procedures.
I think it depends a lot on what she does and how the company works. For those fine art students who want to be freelancers, cooperation ability is vital since they need to actively seek cooperation to get more job opportunities. Then I realized that I needed to specify the audience of this career model. This model is more suitable for those who want to be freelancers/start their own business,/wish to do multiple jobs.
2. Talking with Chery (fine art background currently studying fine art PhD)
I was talking to Chery about his experience of selling paintings. He said that when he is doing his bachelors degree, he doesn’t like selling his work since he thinks art is the art that cannot be valued by money. In addition, his parents believe that it is tough for this subject to find a job(compared with design subjects and science and technology, finance etc.). So his father worried about it and tried to sell his paintings at that time. ‘I hated it,’ he says. ‘I didn’t want to sell my work, and I certainly didn’t want it to be bought by people who couldn’t read it. But I don’t think so anymore. You know, most of the fine art students are a bit self-glorification. Ummm, it’s a good thing to sell paintings, you know, I found that It’s even harder for me to sell paintings by myself without my father’s help, and I have to face reality, I want to earn money.’
Although it’s a single case, it can illustrate some phenomena. Self-glorification, too confident, could be the label of most fine art students. Going back to what I did in unit 2- help fine art student to sell their artworks through synaesthesia. After finding a relatively effective way to combine sound and paintings, I realized that it is hard to sell this idea to fine art students because of their personalities, their typical temperament. This point is also one of the main reasons for art students’ problematic employment. So I added the ability to be hambling in my model.
Conclusion: In this intervention, I found and verified the difference/gap between art practitioners and students. People have better interpersonal skills, cooperation skills, and independent thinking skills after work. In addition, because of the specificity of students’ identities (innocence, ego mentality, not having experienced the cruelty of society), it isn’t easy to make them realize the importance of other abilities in the development model. It’s hard to change them (this is also where this intervention failed.) But this failure made me think about this model’s place, before graduation, after graduation or after work.I failed in changing the student participants, but this model gave two other (art practitioners) more thought about their ability development, which I did not expect.In addition, the sample size of this workshop is relatively small, which cannot fully explain the problem. This needs to be further studied by enlarging the sample size. At the same time, I found a new ability that I could consider adding to my model: endurance/tolerance.
Career model iteration – version 5
Introduction: I designed a series of multiple task based on my career model. Each question has one correct choice which represents one ability. I plan to ask participants these questions and ask them to answer them and explain why. Also observe how they answer the questions to find out the differences between them. And try to make student participants aware of the differences between themselves and art practitioners and think about those differences.
Audience: I invited two art practitioners who has fine art background and one fine art background student who study in Italy right now.
My goal: 1) to verify the difference between art practitioners and students. 2) to change student’s thought about develop other abilities in a all around way. 3) to discover other abilities that I didn’t notice before and develop my career model.
Muzi
Yuchen
Sirui
Host-Sidi
Record:
Participant’s answers:
1.Organization ability
Please give your answer after carefully considering the logic and possible consequences.Imagine you are painting at home and the following things happen at the same time. In what order would you tackle them?
1)The doorbell rings.
2)Two cats next to you suddenly fight, and it is hard to separate.
3)The phone rings.
4)The bathtub is about to overflow.
5)You’ve spilled your paint and it’s about to spill on the floor.
correct answer: 2-5-4-1-3
Sirui: 5-1-4-3-2, I am not a organized people.
Yuchen: : 5-3-1-2-4, I think I am more organized at work than in life.
Muzi: 5-4-1-2-5, I’m an impulsive person.
2. Interpersonal skills/communication ability
Suppose you commission a gallery/institution to sell your work and they tell you that five copies were sold last week, you will…..
A. Feel happy and keep working on it.
B. Ask the gallery for a list of buyers.
C. Ask the gallery for a list of buyers, and try to contact them when appropriate.
correct answer: C
Sirui: A
Yuchen: C
Muzi: C
3. Cooperative ability
Suppose you need to select a project. One is to complete a painting project independently, the other is to work as a team. These two projects require the same amount of time and energy for you. Which one would you prefer?
A. Independent project, reason…
B. Team project, reason…
Correct answer:B
Sirui: A, I don’t like to socialize. I just want to do my thing.
Yuchen: A, I don’t want to spend time and energy communicating with others, and I want to minimize unnecessary misunderstandings.
Muzi: A/B, I can’t decide. On the one hand, I don’t like to communicate with others. On the other hand, I think team work can expand my network and help me in my future work.
4. Independent thinking
You are drawing a painting to be marked at the end of the term. Your teacher, whom you like and admire very much, gives you some suggestions, but you are not sure whether the teacher’s suggestions are right. What will you do?
A. Continue to work on your original idea
B.Try to revise it as the teacher suggested
C.Seek other people’s suggestions and revise them after comprehensive consideration
Correct answer: C
Sirui: B, If I have no idea, I will certainly listen to the teacher, after all, I don’t want to fail.
Yuchen: B, If the revision is not too complicated, I will follow the teacher’s advice.
Muzi: C, When I was a student, I chose A, but now I choose C.
5. A Commitment to Curiosity
Imagine that your friend has created a new piece of work to share with you, this is the style that you don’t like. How would you respond?
A.Give a false compliment.
B. Directly express that you don’t like the work.
C. Although I don’t like this style, I still try to see the advantages of others and give affirmation.
Correct answer: C
Sirui: A, As long as it is my good friend, no matter how he draws, I will praise him.
Yuchen: C, I think there must be something I can learn, like composition, color, whatever.
Muzi: A, I’m going to go for A.
Q：What do you think has changed the most between your student years and now?
Muzi: I think my tolerance has gotten better. I used to be more intuitive and impulsive. But now I’m more patient.
Yuchen: I work in a game company, and I think I’ve also improved my tolerance, as well as my ability to cooperate and communicate
Q：I have just interpreted my model, and you can also see the difference between you and the other two participants in the process of the workshop. Would you consider developing more of your other abilities now?
Sirui: I’m not going to develop anything else right now. I think I’m still focus on myself.
Q: For example, you and the other two participants gave different answers to the second question about the gallery helping you sell your paintings. Will you still choose A without contacting the buyers?
Sirui: Yes, I was afraid of offending the gallery, and there was no point contacting the buyer. The gallery is in charge of selling, they are more professional,I think it’s enough that I just paint.
After talking to Cai in her bookable tutorial, she suggested I change this word to committed curiosity since appreciate ability is not that correct in English.
I checked the meaning of it and try to redefine this ability with more aspects.
McREL International (2020). Curiosity and Committing to Learning. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTagAoP3E0A [Accessed 3 Nov. 2021].
thebrainscoop (2016). A Commitment to Curiosity. [online] www.youtube.com. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbf8nqMh0R0 [Accessed 3 Nov. 2021].
After I did intervention 6, I admitted that there are some problems in my intervention, and I will redesign it and conduct my next intervention. But this intervention is not totally useless. The feedbacks showed art students lack organizational ability. The problem is it’s not powerful enough to persuade them. In addition, I also think the organizational ability is related to the ability to have multiple identities, so I put it under the ability to have multiple identities as a sub-ability.
And I add one more ability which is accountability. I found it from the reflection of myself. This ability contains 1) the ability to think independently 2) self-motivation. I noticed that I like to acquire the permission of my tutor before I make an action. And I also like to believe what the tutor said because I believe they have more experience and knowledge that is much beyond myself. This is a challenge for me. But now I realized it through my reflection. I believe there are some people like me who need to develop accountability as well, so I add it.
Conclusion: after I talk to this expert and did some research, I decided to combine her opinions and my original opinions to iterate my career model. Both of our opinions are right in their own way. But it also shows that each of us has our own positionality. So I think combining these two is a better way since this model is neither perfect nor the end, but a reference for my audiences, like giving the light in the dark, and an inspiration for them to think about their own personalized models.
Apart from that, she mentioned the ability to appreciate others, and be interested in others work and be kind. I think that is a great point, especially for art students, most of them are too confident and need to be humble. So I’ll iterate my career model by adding it.
I sent this email to ten UAL Fine Art staff and I received three replies. Although the quantity is not very large, I think the quality is good. Because two of the responses are the Fine Art course leaders. And I also had a deeper conversation with Patricia.
The result of the average rating is:
Organized ability: 5 stars
Communication ability: 5 stars
Cooperative ability: 4.3 stars
Business ability: 3 stars
After I got the questionnaire results and did research about those three artists, I am thinking about my definition of business ability.
Before art students graduate, they can freely pursue their own painting styles and favourite theme in universities studio. But when they need to face the problem of supporting themselves after graduation, maybe their personality style can’t make money quickly. So I think they need to have the ability to produce profitable commercial work which they may not like. But at the same time, art graduates can continue to pursue what they are really interested in.
It might work for some art graduates. But they need to be careful to balance the critical practice and commercial practices.
Like what Patricia said, 1. Artists should always focus on making their work in a way that is most interesting for them. If you’re trying to appeal to the market for the sake of making money your practice likely won’t get very far (and you’ll lose interest). 2. The market is hard to predict and trying to please someone else is no way to live.
I don’t mean to throw out my original definition, I think it’s worth being. At least it could give some art graduates new thought when they face problematic employment. But Patricia’s opinion also makes sense. I will combine it together and evaluate my model.
In addition, I also noticed her positionality.
Those who can pursue their art regardless of financial considerations, and those who are extremely talented enough to wear several hats and combine their artistic pursuits with other work, are a minority.
But her opinion also makes sense. When the path of art is narrow, art graduates need to be able to deal with multiple identities. And, how to balance those different identities really depends on different individuals.
In order to improve my career model, I contacted the Fine art teachers of UAL. The following are the two teachers who have replied so far. One is the course leader of Chelsea Fine Arts, and the other is the course leader of CSM Fine Arts.
The survey link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-KD7QLYD29/
Patricia’s opinion
1)I’ve rated Business ability as 1 — because the definition is a bit confusing: Artists should always focus on making their work in a way that is most interesting for them. If you’re trying to appeal to the market for the sake of making money your practice likely won’t get very far (and you’ll lose interest). This is because it shows more about your understanding of the market (which might not be an expert) than your commitment to your practice. And trying to please someone else is no way to live — in art or for anything else… And also if the market was possible to predict we would all be very rich! There isn’t one market — there are many and they are in constant motion. Instead, it’s about making connections and finding like-minded people who connect with your ideas and work. Collectors + institutions invest in work that is critically important — so it should be every artist’s priority, to make work that is genuinely critically interesting. It’s important to be aware of current trends in art — but also culture at large and how your work contributes to progressing these. Artists do however need ‘business sense’ — but not really in relation to the market. By the time your career gets to the stage where you are making reasonable money, you will likely have gained enough personal experience to effectively deal with your situation, and have assistance from people who are more expert. When you’re starting out, you will likely be earning small amounts of money periodically — and will likely make some small money mistakes! But these usually don’t have serious consequences, and you learn from your mistakes so you are able to confidently deal with larger money situations when they eventually happen. It is far more important to be good with money — ie. know how to make savings, when to invest in your practice for important opportunities, and how to manage the budgets for the projects you are working on. 2) YES!!! Communication is super-important! 3) Cooperative ability, I didn’t understand the definition so rated it as 3 for the part I agreed with: YES — to cooperating with institutions etc. (5) NO — “The ability to create works that fit the theme of exhibitions even if you’re not interested.” (0) You should only ever do things that you find interesting. And work with like-minded people who you find interesting. This is where Cooperation is extremely important: you need to make connections with people who have similar interests and ambitions and help each other to accomplish your goals. Cooperation is super important so should be 5+ — but perhaps consider the definition? 4) Organisation — I’ve rated this 5, but perhaps should be more than 5! Being organised is extremely important. But not just in doing one thing — most artists have many different projects or activities running simultaneously. So you need to be organised to balance and accomplish many things at the same time! It is extremely important to finish projects as this is what develops your portfolio, and to always meet your commitments to prove you are reliable — your reputation is your “track record”. Attention to detail is also extremely important. Also, there are a few other things that are perhaps as or even more important than the categories listed: Self-Confidence Commitment Self-Motivation Self-Reliance Agility— Life as an artist can be very unpredictable — you need to be very flexible and agile to manage your continuous practice — to recognise opportunities when they happen and make opportunities for yourself if they don’t. Being Helpful + Friendly — Help other people as much as possible and people, in turn, will help you. Also if you are a nice and kind person, people will enjoy working with you! This sounds really basic, but a lot of artists don’t think about this. And most important: BE INTERESTED IN OTHER PEOPLE!!! Take a genuine interest in what other people are doing, and they will likely take interest in you. You have to be interested to be interesting!
My reply:
Then she replied to me again and share her opinions and experiences. She also recommends me some artists to me.
Another expert’s reply
I would like to say that this is not quite positive feedback. But I realized that it could be a misunderstanding since I didn’t mention clearly each ability’s definition. It is also because this is a very early stage of the model. Again, reflect it to my model, I need to improve my communication ability, especially when I reach out to experts and predecessors. In addition, I also realized that I need to point out the differences between my model and the existing model. Both my model and the existing model should not be the only ones, it all needs to be iterated.
Conclusion: I decided to add the organisation ability to my career model. So far I got: business ability, communication ability, cooperative ability and organization ability.
Career model – version 2
Now I am thinking logical ability can be added to my career model.
Some people think that when you draw a beautiful painting, it is your natural talent, but there is some logical ability and organization ability behind it.
I got this idea from my own experience. When I was an undergraduate in China, I often watch my teacher painting. (I can say that they are mature and well-rounded practitioners of the arts because they not only teach in universities but also work in the commercial field and so on.) And I found that they have strong logic and organization ability.
The way they painted, the order in which they painted, the arrangement of the objects on the table as they painted, they were all organized. You can also see in the painting that they know exactly what to do next to control the picture.
On the contrary, comparing students, sometimes draw an excellent picture, there is a bit of luck. Without a certain degree of organization and logic, I will suddenly lose control of the picture.
Based on this point, I wanna test whether art students lack logical ability and organization ability.
There were 10 questions, and two of them got 8 correctly, while the rest got 7, 6 and 9 correctly. From this small test I can see, their correct rate is quite high. It also made me think that maybe logical ability is not the missing link.
Then I found another psychological test which is about organization ability;
Question: What is the first thing you see in the picture?
Answer 1: Tree
Meaning: You are full of energy and love new things, and you can’t accept being stuck in a rut.
Answer 2: Human face
Meaning: You are very organized and methodical, and it is reassuring to have things planned in advance.
I sent it to those 5 students as well. 4 of them said they noticed Tree at first sight, while only one found a human face. Indeed, the friend who found the face likes to have a plan before she does it.
From last tutorial, Jasminka gave me a good suggestion. My project now is related to two group, newly graduates group and mature artists group. And I need to match them.
So my plan is :
Through watching artists’ documentaries and interview some artistes to find what professional abilities that the artists have. (Finding)
Test whether this is the ability that art graduates don’t have, but artists do.(Matching)
This finding and matching process is not intervention, but also a way to acquire new knowledge. So I have to experience it.
After I come up with a complete model, I need to create something as intervention to change newly art graduates’ mind, to help them realize the gap between themselves and mature artists and let them know that they need to develop other abilities in the model.
