Five tips for life after graduation

Are you a soon-to-be art graduate wondering what’s waiting for you on the other side of education? Enjoy these top tips from somebody who’s been there, done that and got the (fine art degree certified) t-shirt.

By MOLLIE BALSHAW

1. Embrace learning

Your degree has helped to lay the groundwork for your creative career and send you on your way, but as you gain experience and come into your own, you’ll find there’s a lot of learning left to be done. There’s no denying most university courses do not teach you everything there is to know about entering the industry, and this is because much of your journey postgraduation will centre around figuring out what direction you want to take for yourself, forging your own path. There is no one correct or linear journey. Make mistakes, try new things, take risks, learn! Great things can happen outside of the lines.

2. Drop the things that do not serve you

You don’t need to cling to everything university or industry professionals have told you to do to be successful. Nobody can do everything. In identifying the things that are important to you, it’s also useful to identify the things that aren’t. There are lots of elements to a creative career that can feel like signifiers of being on it – a nice studio, lots of followers on social media, a slick website, industry connections – but do these things serve you? Do they mean anything to what you’re trying to achieve? Maybe they do, but if they don’t, drop ‘em!

3. Keep in touch

“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” is a phrase most of us are familiar with, but it’s commonly misconstrued to mean “you have to know the big shots in the industry to be successful”. Since I left university in

2019, that isn’t my take. You may think you don’t know anybody ‘important’, but if you shift your thinking you’ll see how important the people around you actually are. Pester your tutors, get your mates on your mailing list, invite the people who already love and support you to your openings. You don’t need to see networking as this big, scary thing that requires smooth talking at private views. We all have people around us that we can turn to for support, and we can be that person for others too.

4. What have you already got?

Don’t waste precious time or energy obsessing over things you don’t have. Maybe you don’t have a connection at an amazing art gallery that you want to exhibit in, but you work in a pub with a really good wall that might show your art for a month. Maybe you have a friend in a band who needs some cool t-shirt designs. Aim for the sky if you want to, but the road getting there is slow and paved with things that are right under your nose. Eyes forward – what have you got?

5. There’s always disappointment (and why that’s okay)

Pandemic or not, there will always be disappointment. University fills you with so many expectations, and you fill yourself with them too. You put a huge amount of work in, you want to feel like it paid off, but if you’re anything like me, there’s always going to be this niggling little voice saying “was that it?” To combat this, I focused on the things that made me angry, the things I felt I had the energy to change, and tackled them. Embrace those niggling thoughts, call them out and use the energy they give you to power you forwards.

If you take nothing else from these tips, in my view, the most crucial part of sustaining yourself after graduation is to find what lights a fire under you, and hold onto that energy. Every graduate’s path is their own. Nobody else is on your journey, even if some of the stops along the way seem familiar. Trust the process, and trust yourself. You’ll get there.

Mollie Balshaw is an artist, curator and director of Short Supply, a bridge between emerging artists and art organisations and organiser of the annual Made It exhibition for new graduates in the North West of England. Mollie is also a member of the a-n Artists Council