unit 1 – Sidi's Journey

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.

Career attitude of art students

_{Whitesel, L.S. (1980). Career Attitudes of Art Students. Studies in Art Education, [online] 22(1), p.36. Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00393541.1980.11650270?needAccess=true [Accessed 8 Apr. 2021].}

1. Woman art students rated their commitment to a career at the very highest level and also claimed that their schools had provided them with inadequate career counselling.

2. More male art students, than male psychology students, felt that they would not be able to earn a living in their field of study.

3. Woman art students expressed concern that they had been inadequately counselled to function in those careers.

4. The male art students’ negative responses about earning a living in their field might reflect a similar lack of career information.

5. 97% of the woman claimed they already thought of themselves as artists, while just 79% of the men did.

6. Only 62% of the art students felt able to earn a living in art, while 66% of the English and 88% of the psychology students felt able to earn a living in their fields.

7. 82% of the art students felt that they had had inadequate career counselling in their schools, as compared with only 59% of the English students and 68% of the psychology students.

Program and Career perceptions of undergraduate students majoring in Fine Art

Thaller, E.A. (1993). Program and Career Perceptions of Undergraduate Students Majoring in Fine Art. [Doctoral Dissertation] pp.1–343. Available at: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED368280.pdf [Accessed 5 Apr. 2021].

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 practising artist, and finding a survival job.

Although many described negative past experiences in jobs that were unsuitable for them, 50% were expecting to support themselves after graduation through ”menial jobs,” ”odd jobs,” ”anything that won’t degrade” themselves, and any kind of work ”that pays a half-way decent wage.”

Perceptions of Art and Art Courses

1.1 Art was extremely important to them. Some said Art was the most important thing in their life.

1.2 Most of the informants said that their decision to major in Art was the result of a lifelong interest or desire to study Art.

1.3 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.

1.4 Many were actually ”generalists” because of the ”creative freedom” to mix Art media together.

2. Future Goals and Expectations

2.1 Many of them seemed unsure about the means to achieve their goals, since achieving them depended greatly on circumstances and on other people.

2.2 Their responses often indicated multiple goals, and often their Art career goals involved some Art-related way to support themselves such as teaching or museum work.

2.3 Their answers about what they were most likely to do indicated a variety of activities or a somewhat complex career path – to work and to do artwork equally.

3. Job plans and financial expectations

77% said they would consider at working a full-time Art-related job (which is sometimes hard to find).

32% indicated that they would consider a full-time job not related to Art.

55% did say they would consider working at a part-time job not related to art and working part-time at their artwork.

32% said it was likely that they would work part-time to full-time at a job not related to Art after graduation.

4. Specific suggestions by informants

4.1 having career information available in Art department offices and offering career-oriented Art courses to tell student about what to do with a major in Art and how to prepare for that.

4.2 one informant wished for a course in economics or money management specially designed for art majors.

5. Other factors

5.1 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.”

5.2 The problem with taking any jobs available without analyzing and choosing jobs carefully is that they might risk getting more disillusioned by trying to do jobs for which they are unsuited in personality and values.

5.3 It is important for everyone to learn to understand their personality traits and learn to compare those to what is needed for particular jobs before they attempt them.