redefine research question

Reanalyze and review the question

This diary is mainly to sort out the logic behind my project, and to reconfirm the purpose of the project. The original goal of my project is to solve the problematic employment of art students. Especially for those art students who want to support themselves by selling their artworks.

I thought the first reason that the audience won’t buy art paintings is that they don’t have resonance. So my intervention 2 and 3 is to combine other senses to help audiences to understand the meaning behind artworks and have more resonance.

However, for the audience, there is no direct connection between resonating and buying behaviour. I need to find other resonances that can resonate with the purchase behaviour.

I reanalyze the reason behind this question from different aspects (audiences, artists, exhibition, social, education and application), and I am trying to design my next intervention from a different angle.

For example, I can look for a special group as my potential customers, and try to establish the demand for buying art among them. This idea made me think about those people who need art therapy.

Or I can use an exhibition perspective as an entry point. For instance, the popularity of commercial exhibitions created for social media has led to more and more behaviours using exhibitions as background boards for photographing. People don’t want to immerse themselves in and admire a painting, let alone resonate and generate buying behaviour.

But I found that changing from another angle would deviate from my original purpose.

Maybe the problem is that the question I asked is not good enough. ‘How can I strengthen the connection between the audience and the artworks so that the audience will have the desire to buy? ’

Through my interventions 2 and 3, I verified that there is no direct connection between connection and purchase behaviour. Buying behaviour is a very complex behaviour, involving many complex factors, and resonance is only one of them.

In addition, it is too commercial to make buying behaviour the goal of my research. If art is just for buying and selling, this is not what I want.

So, based on the intervention I did before and some thoughts, I decided to optimize my question into: How can I increase the audience’s participation and interaction when visiting the exhibition so that the audience can have more understanding and connection with the artwork?

Of course, this project is not aimed at all art students. First of all, I am aimed at art students who are willing to add other factors to their works, so that the relationship between me and these creators is a cooperative relationship, rather than relying on my own understanding to modify their works. Secondly, as an art student and illustrator myself, I am willing to use my own work to do such experiments.

My snail and my map

This snail records the eight stages of my problem development.

From anonymous magazines for unknown artists, to helping art students choose the right professional information platform, to reducing the anxiety of art students facing employment problems, to helping art students to create personal IP, to creating a Concept to expand the demand for art purchase, and then to explore the relationship between the artist and the buyer.

Now my question seems to go back to the first initial question, which is all about artists/art students and selling their work. But now my question goes much deeper than the question I asked in the first step.

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.

Redefine research question

My previous question is :

How can art graduates develop their careers in the Internet age?

At first, I’d like to help these creative people to develop their careers. For instance, I can create a platform that could be a free magazine or a website to promote their artworks.

Then I interviewed some fine art background friends. I try to know how they think about this idea and the employment problem of fine art students. After talking to them, I realized that supporting ourselves by selling artworks is not that hard, especially in this internet age. We can post our work online and acquire our audiences. The only difficulty is persistence, and lots of people gave up before the chance comes to them.

But why is it hard for them to persist? The reason is that they don’t like their major. Why they choose a major that they dislike? Because they didn’t fully understand this major when they make a choice.

Then they spent four years learning a course they dislike and developing their career which has no relative to their background.

Based on all of this, my question evolved into:

How can art students choose the right major to help them define themselves and find suitable jobs after they graduate?