.ART SCHOOL

After finishing college in Brighton, I attended Falmouth University to study BA(HONS) Photography and I was really looking forward to it. My peers and teacher liked my work and I was happy with what I was producing and I couldn’t wait to spend the next 3 years studying with like-minded people and see what other people were creating.

Within the first week I became extremely good friends with a girl who had come straight from college (like myself) rather than doing a foundation degree first. We felt like the underlings. Everyone knew how to use the studios, lighting & equipment, whereas my college course was entirely black and white darkroom and 35mm film and I always used natural lighting and location shoots. This quickly made me doubt myself, which I learnt when I graduated that I shouldn’t have at all because photographers and artists all have a unique style and shouldn’t let other people get you down.

The excitement of university started to dwindle when the work load started increasing. I time manage better when I’m under stress so I have always tended to leave things to the last minute, but this didn’t mean my work was coming out how I wanted it to. I wasn’t creating work that I was happy with because of my own time management so I wouldn’t recommend leaving projects until the last minute, you are given a time period for a reason so use the time to your advantage. The sketch books take up the majority of your time because of the levels of research that needs to be done. Sketch books are a good way to show your personality and how your thought process works, which can be really interesting. Since starting university I been a fan of using sketch books as ‘creative notebooks’ and literally cutting and sticking things in that I find interesting and in note form and doodles, random ideas, colour charts, and anything I thought of that would help my thought process would just go into a book that I kept on my person. Ideas can strike at any point, even on a night out you can quickly (but not always fully understandably) into your phone so you don’t forget. I started to believe that a sketch book IS personal and that the notes only need to make sense to you as its your project and you know how you work. That’s one of the things that used to irritate me at university was that the sketch books were marked, and as a large chunk of creatives are dyslexic, the written stuff isn’t always on top form, but the outcome of the physical photography work could be spot on.

CRITIQUES

At university you will have to attend critiques, which are obviously there to get critiques about your own works. These are normally in groups of your classmates so that other people in the same course but with different ways of thinking are able to help in the process of your project. I found that I really didn’t gain anything from going to critiques, no one thought in the same way that I did, and I wanted to create work that I was happy with and that meant something to me, especially being on a Fine Art Photography course.

In my second year of uni I found that critiques were making me feel bad about myself and making me second think my skills. I was once asked “why are you even here?” (in respect of being at university full stop) by one of the tutors. All of the projects I was coming up with were being morphed into something that the tutor wanted me to do rather than my own project that I had created and built up on. This, from then, ruined critiques fully for me, I stopped going and started running projects on my own without any guidance and started getting a much better quality of work and stuff that I was actually happy with. I don’t have many projects that I created at university that I would put into my portfolio, but the ones that I did off my own back without help are the ones that I have had good feedback on from viewers and also exhibited in London & Cornwall. Critiques can be helpful if they are done properly and that you know you are getting something out of them, whereas I was left feeling shit about myself most weeks and losing all confidence and creativity which was putting me down even more.

I would recommend going to them as getting advice from other creatives can be really helpful at times, but if you do find that you aren’t gaining anything from them and feeling deflated, then talk to the course leader for your year and see what can be arranged. I ended up having one on one tutorials with my course leader (until they began to irrirate me too).

FUNDING

Being at an arts university is expensive as hell! It is one of the most expensive courses that can be taken (just below medicine) so your university experience may not end up how you expect. Me and best friend on my course lived off minimal sums of money and our overdrafts. We had a budget of about £20 a week or less, and that included bus fairs, tobacco, printing credit, and food. Neither of us had jobs at uni, but worked as much as we could when back at our homes to bring in the pennies for the next semester. For people wanting to do an arts course, yes it may seem like a good idea to have a job at uni to have some more money, but you need to make sure that you have the time to put into your work as jobs normally ask you to do extra shifts and when deadlines are looming, it sucks!

The loan that the government gives isn’t always enough to cover the rent for accommodation. I had to top my loan up by about £700 per semester in first year to be able to pay for halls. It was also the same in the second year as I stayed in a one person studio apartment with a stunning view, but again, it was very expensive. In my third year, I was given a grant by the government as my parents didn’t earn over the certain amount of money and being self employed. If you are unable to pay for immportant things like food, rent, and course equipment then talk to someone at the student base and see what can be done. There is always someone that can help and there are always ways around things in means of help. Here are a few types of grants/funds that may be helpful:

• Hardship fund
• Maintenance Grant
• DSA (Disabled Student Allowance inc. Dyslexia)

There are also scholarships for various things that may be worth looking into before going to university, but if all of these fail then university can be done on a very tight budget if needs be. Pasta will become your friend and you will learn to appreciate the smaller things in life.

MOTIVATION

You may find yourself feeling less and less motivated and not feeling creative in any way, shape, or form from time to time, but this is very normal for any creative anway. The more that you force it, the more you fall into it. I used to find if I was in one of these moods (sometimes lasting a few weeks, or even a month) and just used to submerge myself with art/photography magazines (I highly recommend buying them, I always buy new magazines when I go to London and ones I have never heard of so I have a range of works to look at). Going to exhibitions, reading articles, just sitting infront of the computer for a few hours each day reading about artists/photographers that interest you. Sometimes the smallest of things can spur a whole project like a colour in a photo, the way someone is dressed in the street, or lighting in a shop. Inspiration can come from anywhere.

To keep yourself motivated, give yourself small insentives like ‘if I work solidly for the next few days then I will treat myself to a day off/movie day/bottle of wine’. Im a HUGE fan of lists, there is something satisfying about crossing something off it, and also it means you are visually keeping track of what you still have to do/have already done.

WORK & PLAY

It is important to give yourself ‘down time’ so that you don’t get too bogged down with work or you will find yourself not enjoying the course at all. Set up your coursework like a 9–5 job (I wish I took my dads advice when he told me this) so that you have your evenings to yourself. This isn’t always possible, especially around deadlines or if you are in a good flow, but give yourself the time off to do things for yourself. I used to go for a walk along the beach in Falmouth every evening or go to Tesco and get something yummy to eat while watching films with my friend. It doesn’t have to be in the evening of course, but you aren’t a university robot, you have your own life too. It is difficult right at the beginning of uni to work out a good work and play relationship because you are a fresher and its all new and fun being away from home and having your own rules.

Create a routine and set certain days aside for shooting (weather depending or whether you can get studio bookings), this will help you to keep to deadlines, but also make your life much easier. I normally sat down on a weekend and worked out what I was going to do on each day for the next week so that I could make use of the entire week and know that things would get done. Im no saint, I never fully stuck the plan, but I knew what had to be done and would eventually get it all done. Cigarettes and coffee were a major contributor to my working life at uni, you need to find something that keeps you going and works for you. The industry runs on caffeine, and after finishing uni I now fully understand why!