Portfolio Development Day – Careers in the Arts

On the 2/11/2015, I delivered a talk discussing my textiles portfolio to a group of FE Students at The Whitworth. Within these talks I was the only textiles artist, the majority of speakers were in graphic design. And so I bought along with sketchbook, samples and my online portfolio which were distinctive.

I firstly talked about I came from Cheadle and Marple Sixth Form College completed double award in Art & Design, yet still unsure of which art department I belong to.

So I have took a Foundation Year at Stockport College and how I was introduce to Textiles.

I shared my thought of completed a year in foundation has helped me to be independent on my own development and independent on my own textiles journey.

Figure 1: Discussing my textiles portfolio to a group of Students at Whitworth

Secondly, I covered the Course Content on Textiles in Practice in 3 years; Year one would be thinking outside of the box and learn about transforming different contents into Textiles.

For example, I did a project on Drawings and Films. Based on the title, I would never imagine film making could link onto to Textiles.

In Year two: specialising different pathways. In Textiles there are embroidery, print, knit, weave and mixed media.

Also collaboration project on working with different course students. Learning their ways of working.

Onto Final year, would be understanding where I put myself as an artist.

Towards the end, I had questions from the FE students asking me about careers.

Questions such as: Have I thought about finding textiles related jobs.

My answer to that was: I have applied and done placement in textiles related industry, I worked in a family company called QPrint, however, the expectation and the actual experience was different. The experience had made me rethink about which market of textiles I want to go into.

Also, I was in no rush of looking into textiles related jobs, for in the past I have always had unrelated textiles jobs, most recently, I was working with Home Fundraising as a door to door fundraiser.

After the talk, there were individual discussions with students who were interested in textiles and fashion. I advised that they should look at the information about learning and course content to understand the differences.  Also I advised they speak to their tutors for advice about the natural link within their work.

I was asked; which artist inspires me. ‘Tilleke Schwarz’ uses textiles as a hobby rather than her career and experiments with scale and timing. This offered me fresh insight into what can be achieved away from the demands of a client.

The experience has helped me to develop myself as a character.