Final Presentation
Tag: unit 3
The iteration of my career model
The logic diagram of My Journey: https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_lnOw1NQ=/?invite_link_id=848950447699
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.
Potential Changes – Call Back
Unfortunately, I failed to change the student’s minds as planned for the last intervention, but when this model exposes to them, it has the potential changes. And in the last tutorial with Minka, she suggested calling back to the participants to see some potential changes.
I sent messages to the workshop group to ask participants whether they have some thoughts after the last workshop, no matter the career model that I showed them or their own career model.
Yuchen (art practitioner) said that she is thinking about the balance between the critical path and the commercial path, which I mentioned in the multiple identities ability. Apart from that, she also thinking about her own communication ability. Since she always works with interdisciplinary workers, she thinks she needs to strengthen her communication ability with them, and think about how to translate interdisciplinary jargon into visual language.
I think she start to think about her own career model based on her personal experience. That is the thing I want to see, and I believe there are more potencial change.
Yuchen’s reply Yuchen’s reply Yuchen’s reply
Here is the answers from Muzi and Sirui:
Muzi (art practitioner) said that she is thinking about the sence of value. She also mentioned some abilities in my career model becomes to must-have ability. life will push you to grow up and develop it. But she is greatful that I conducted this workshop, since she is too busy to think and talk like this for a long time.
But her reply reminds me again that my career model is not the only and perfect answer. What I want to change is not let all the fine art student follow my career moodel. My model is just a reference, and I am trying to give the light in the dark, since this model was missing from my previous education. The real change is let them thinking about their own model, rather than only focus on studio skills. As what Muzi said, the ability in my model is the must-have ability for her, so how about her own model? Is there are other special abilities for her?I think that’s the potential change, and it needs time.
While Sirui (student) still have no thoughts. She only care about the recent exam. I think the difference is really depends on the status. Students do not know the cruelty of the society. But I still believe it has potencial change after she graduate and experiences some setbacks in the future.
Muzi’s reply Sirui’s reply
Intervention 7-A workshop-Plan
This series of questions is designed around my current career model (As shown above). I want to discuss the test below in the workshop to find out 1)if the participants have the capabilities that lie beneath the problem. 2)what’s the difference between the student group and the art practitioners group. 3) Change students’ minds.
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
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
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
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
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
Try to contact the Blogger – Sophia
I found a Blogger who interviewed 100 artists and share her story and insights on social media. Then I tried to contact her and ask some advice. Alought she refused my request for an interview online, I still found some information valuable in her blog.
One point she mentioned make sense:
A lot of artists are shy and not good at talking about money, thinking that focus on creation is more pure. But every artist has the right to know where his work has gone and who has collected it. You should not be afraid to communicate with collectors, and ask galleries and partner institutions for the list of collections. It’s not necessary but it shouldn’t be avoided. Both galleries and artists are mobile and two-way. Both parties should cooperate professionally and protect yourselves.
Sophia said
What she said inspired me to design the test about communication ability. I design the quiz like this:
Q: 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
So, if they chose C, which means they have good communication abilities, and vice versa.
Reflective Journal – Talk with Dragons
Last Tuesday, I talked about my project with dragons in 2 mins. I think it’s an excellent opportunity to test whether I understand my project and express it clearly. However, I remember I am too nervous about speaking at a suitable speed. When I reflect on the process, I think I need to strengthen my communication ability, especially with experts and predecessors.
They approved the gap that I identified and gave me some good suggestions. For example, Clare mentioned business ability and advertising ability, and Marie suggested that I consider physical ability, such as the ability to decompress. Artists and designers, especially freelancers, will face more pressure because of the instability of the job and so on.
In addition, in the bookable tutorial with Cai, she suggested I think about this model’s position. For example, before/during/ after the University education.
Career model iteration – a commitment to curiosity
Now, my model iterate to this:
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.
Career Model iteration – Version 4 – Accountability
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.
Intervention 6 – organisation ability test: process, feedback and reflection
At first, I am trying to design a board game that combines and connect all of these abilities, and then invite art student and art practitioners to play it together. Then I can observe the difference between the two groups and let the art student group realize the gap between themselves and the other group. I tried to find some board games, but I didn’t find a suitable one, and it’s hard to design a board game that meets my requirements and expectations. So I think maybe testing each ability one by one is also a good choice. and I would like to start with ‘organization ability’.
I am thinking about in what situation, people could realize that they lack some ability. I think there are two ways. One is comparing with others, and the other is being pointed out by others.
So, for me, I have two ways to design my intervention.
1) inviting mature art practitioners and art students to do/play sth together.
2)using a quiz/test to test art students and point out their shortcomings.
Since I didn’t find a suitable art practitioner now, and I can not make sure the art practitioner has the ability that the art student has not. So I wanna start my next intervention from the second way.
Then I design a quiz which is about organization ability, after they finished, I will show them the right answer and tell them that the more similar to the right answer the more organized people they are. My goal is to test 1) whether fine art students lack organization ability 2) whether I can make them realize it and change their minds about becoming more organized people.
https://www.wjx.cn/wjx/design/previewmobile.aspx?activity=135690783&s=1
The right answer should be 2-5-4-1-3, and the more similar to the right answer the more organised they are.
Reasons:
1) Two cats next to you are engaged in a fierce fight that is hard to stop. It is very dangerous for your artworks when you are painting, and the cat next to you is fighting because they might destroy your paintings. So the first thing is to divide them.
2) Your paint has tipped over. Usually, the paint is right next to you, so simply bending down to pick it up can prevent worse things from happening in a second. It also prevents fighting cats from stepping paint elsewhere.
3）The bathtub is about to overflow. Here I said ‘about‘, which means you still have time to turn it off. So it’s not too late to pick up a cat, pick up a paint can, and run to turn it off.
4) The doorbell is ringing. You can tell the person at the door to wait for two minutes when you deal with the previous things. And you don’t know what the guy at the door wants from you. If he takes a long time, by the time you get back, the cat may have destroyed your work, trampled paint all over the place, and the bathroom is also flooded.
5)The mobile phone is ringing. You can call back later, so the priority is the lowest.
Uncomfortable zone: I didn’t find people I was already familiar with this time, and I sent it to 6 fine art students. I also try to contact some Fine art students in UAL that I don’t know through the WeChat group of the university student Union. There are only six people so far, but at least compared to previous ones, This time I tried to find a target audience I didn’t know.
Their answers of question one:
A: 2-5-4-3-1
B: 1-5-4-2-3
C: 2-5-1-3-4
D: 3-5-4-2-1
E: 3-5-2-1-4
F: 2-5-1-3-4
Their answers to question two:
The more similar it is to ‘5-2-4-1-3’, the more organized you are. If your answer is far from this one, you need to work on your organizational skills! Do you think you are an organized person? What do you think of this statement?
A: I don’t think I am an organized person, but I will try my best to keep things under control.
B: I don’t think the order can explain the ability of organization.
C: I am more organized. Everyone’s understanding of organization is different. I sorted things according to their urgency. Everyone has different views on these things.
D: Maybe
E:/
F: It depends on the situation. Sometimes when doing travel strategy, I will be more organized, but in daily life, it seems that it is not good.
Analyze and reflection:
- All these participant didn’t answer the right answers that I design. I think their some problems in my test. I need told them this test is about organization ability at the beginning, and remind them that before they make chose they should consider the potential outcomes and the logical order.
- I think maybe I should try test this through online workshop. Since some participants just fill this randomly rather than tell me their true thoughts. And the online workshop allows me to better observe the participants and judge whether the answers they give are not completely true.
- At the end of this test, I should have told them the reasons of right answers, which will be more convincing.
- I would say that this is a failed intervention. My goal is using this test as a intervention to 1) verify my assumption-they lack of organization ability. 2)help them realize it and try to develop it.
Reflection, Positionality and career model – version 3 – Appreciate ability
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.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-KD7QLYD29/
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.