PROMOTING YOUR WORK NATHALIEKELLY
PRIOR RESEARCH
THEOLDREDBUSSTATION. Built in 1936, The Old Red Bus Station sat forlornly as the buses moved to another station over 20 years ago. It has recently been redone, refurbished and been transformed into a food, drink and music venue. Having hosted exhibition events before, this venue could potentially home our exhibition.
WHITECLOTHGALLERY Having opened in April 2012, the W hite Cloth Gallery offers drinks, pizza and Tapas whilst providing one of the UK?s most creative cities with a space to display and showcase exciting exhibitions. W ith a 250 person capacity this could be a great venue, however it has hosted a previous years' Photographic Journalism Exhibition.
SETTHECONTROLSFOR THEHEARTOFTHESUN Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun is an artist led not-for-profit organisation that aims to develop and support emerging artists. Located at 18 East Parade it?s in the heart of the Leeds City Centre. This venue offers a large clean space which could easily accommodate 27 students. It?s ran many exhibitions since its opening in 2014, however all the past exhibitions have been very subjective art and sculptures as opposed to photography exhibitions. However I believe this should be a venue we debate looking into as it?s a very unusual place.
THEVILLAGE Village bookshop is an independent store based in the Leeds City Centre. They offer a curated section of contemporary art design, fashion and photography books and magazines. In the upstairs of the store is an exhibition space, this venue is good as it would attract the right audience who would be interested in our exhibition. However this venue is very small and probably couldn?t accommodate 27 students work.
WEEKONE.
W eek One involved an introduction to the module and what will be expected of the class. As I wasn?t able to attend this session, I took my own initiative to look at previous years modules as the exhibition module has been running for a few years. Having helped out at the previous two exhibitions I picked up some helpful ideas.
Capture 27 ran in May 2015 at the W hite Cloth Gallery in the Leeds City Centre. Being in a gallery and running for over a week, the exhibition gained interest from members of public. Having an exhibition at a place where it is open to the public eye could benefit the students for professional opportunities or selling their work. However, renting/ hiring a private/ public gallery can be very expensive. W ith this, Capture 27 made money back from raffles, selling tickets etc? The only criticism I had of their event was the expenditure seemed a little excessive with prizes being of a very high quality, like a helicopter ride. Due to the expenditure volunteers at the event were pressured to sell and persuade people to buy the raffle tickets as they were struggling to make back the money they had spent. I believe we can take on both negative and positive aspects of this exhibition to take into consideration for our own.
Collection Seventeen ran for five days in May 2016 at the Hilton Court in Hyde Park, Leeds. I also helped out at this event to gain even more insight to what an exhibition conducted by students should look like. Taking Polaroids of people who paid ÂŁ2 to keep the photo was a great idea which proved to also be very popular. The event was very successful and took in a lot of money. I believe we should definitely take on a similar venue and offer free drink and food for our opening night. I would also suggest a Polaroid feature for our own exhibition night as it could bring in money to reimburse ourselves.
WEEKTWO. This week dates and primary location was confirmed and the working groups for the exhibition was decided, but not completed. Futhermore, a student contribuation of ÂŁ50 each was to be expected at a later date.
Leeds Beckett decided that they had a massive interest in the exhibition being held at the University as opposed to an outside venue. This was due to another Arts, environment and technology course/ courses having an exhibition in the great hall. They gave us the option of two rooms, the Acre and/ or the Jubilee room. Although we saw it as a good opportunity to be involved closely with the University ? it did also dampen things as we were very keen on the Old Red Bus station and didn?t have a choice of holding it there. The Acre room and Jubilee are fairly large spaces and with boards put up it would be able to hold 27 students work. The showcase will be between the 15th-30th of May.
Unfortunately due to events back home, this was another session I was unable to attend. But gathering information on MyBeckett, I was able to see what the session entailed and what I had missed out on, prepared for the next week.
W orking groups decided: - Accounts: Kate Finnerty - W ebsite: Adam W right, Josh W hittaker - Book: Alex Tomlinson - Venue Team: Rachel Kenyon, Alex Koscian, Maisie Coulbert, and Kate Finnerty - Social Media: Oliver Jackson, Rebecca Heyes - Design: Ella Sedman, Harriet Skinner, Simon Reddington, Daniel Pinnington, Rebecca Clayton, Lucie W aldron, Roseanne Gyles, Jemma Armitage - Sponsorship: Jenna Scott, Maisie Coulbert TO BE ADDED: Macey Smales, Luke Hannaford, Nathalie Kelly, Aran W halley, Connor Griffin, Mell Pye, Gabbi Parker.
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ROUGH EXHIBITION SCHEDULE: - DAY 1 A.M. ? SET UP - DAY 1 P.M. ? FRIENDS/ FAMILY ? DRINKS ETC DAY 2 P.M. ? INDUSTRY ATTENDANCE / STUDENT ATTENDANCE.
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INFORMATION TO BE CONFIRMED: - EXACT DATES - EXACT DURATION (OFFICIAL) - EXTENDABLE DURATION LOCATION ? JUBILEE OR ACRE OR BOTH ALL CONTACTS FOR W ORKING GROUPS
WEEKTHREE. Being in attendance, I asked to be put in the website group as I'm confident on web design sites such as W IX and feel I could make a great contribution in this area. Having previous experience with web design I will be able to utilise my assets best in this team.
This week we confirmed that the exhibition will be held on the 22nd and 23rd of May, the 22nd of May will be the open evening for friends and family and the 23rd will be for industry. It was also confirmed that each person will be putting in £50 which will roughly be £1300 from students, which means we get the same amount from the University which will overall give us around £2600 for our exhibition. Any money made on our exhibition night will be split and given back to students. We also decided to merge with the Leeds Big Screen showreel event so we could have our work on the Big Screen in Millennium Square. Jemma Povey is in charge of this so we will have to correspond further with her. Furthermore, we played around with name ideas and were given a Google form to decide on a name for our exhibition, and Google drive folders were also set up where everyone in the module could access and upload work/ information to help each others teams:
In the seminar, my group decided that we would use W IX to create the website. As a class we were also given the task to put together a First Draft of a biography/ artists statement of our work and to include 3 of your photographs (if we have them shot already).
WEEKFOUR. This week we narrowed down the names to Archive, C3 and Underline ? however the final exhibition name was still undecided. The design team mocked up some logo designs but an decision is yet to be made.
The design team did consult members of the class on their favourite logos. Above are my favourites. We were also all given a sheet of A1 paper to start a small mind map of what we wanted and should do in our teams. The website team looked at previous years websites to gain an understanding of what was expected (main page, portfolio pages etc? ) and decided that the photos used for the artist/ portfolio pages should look like a set as previous years work did appear a slight mish-mash. Layout and design is an essential part in website making so we all agreed on this. We also wanted 3 photos minimum from each exhibitor by the 1st of march so we could begin mocking up layouts. We also thought about the artist bios which will feature in the exhibition, but on the website too. We thought 250 word max would be a good idea to keep it fairly short but enough words for detail, but requested this to be done in third person to keep it professional. We decided to also request a black and white selfie from each exhibitor as people are more likely to enjoy taking a selfie as opposed to a professional photo as it?s more comfortable, and by having in black and white we can keep the tonal range similar throughout artist pages. We also thought about aspects such as expenditure on the domain and decided it would be smartest not to buy our domain until the website is fully created. Later it was confirmed UNDERLINE was a class favourite so we began basing the website around this name.
Furthermore, we also created an outlook account so we could create the W IX website. We created a temporary domain which is undaline.wixsite.com/ underline but once the domain is bought, we will incorporate either PJor LBU into the domain of underline. We also debated on website templates as we wanted something user friendly and easy to navigate.
We looked into the Photography, Portfolio & CV and Design categories and looked at several website templates so we could then use one as a base and make it our own.There were various good templates, however one specific template reached out to me and I thought it would be a good design for our exhibition website.
The template is named Graffiti Artist on W IX and looking into the design I could picture how we could layout our exhibition website with this design.
The website is a scrolldown theme with clickable links which I thought was user friendly, and the tags at the top would quick-scroll you to the relevant page. the welcome page we a GIF which I thought we could easily turn into a group photo or a GIF of the James Graham Building at Headingley campus.
The next scroll down part was a ?projects?page which I saw as an opportunity to turn into Artist/ portfolio pages which takes you to a new page for each artist.
The ?about?section could easily be turned into an about section of the exhibition giving relevant details regarding the exhibition. Josh, Oli, Adam, Euan and I decided this would work best and created it so we could later begin editing.
TO BE ACOMPLISHED: -
POSTER TEMPLATE IN GOOGLE DRIVE FOLDER - DESIGN TEAM TO MOCK UP POSTERS USING THE IMAGES UPLOADED - 3 PHOTOS MINIMUM @72DPI UPLOADED TO THE GOOGLE DRIVE FOLDER BY 1ST OF MARCH FOR W EBSITE - ARTIST STATEMENT IN THIRD PERSON - SELFIE UPLOADED BY THE 3RD OF MARCH FOR W EBSITE TEAM TO MOCK UP ARTIST PAGE - TW ITTER, INSTAGRAM AND FACEBOOK EVENT TO BE ONLINE BY APRIL
During our 1:30pm seminar, Gemma Povey from the Leeds Beckett Marketing Team came in to talk to us about the Leeds Big Screen Takeover. The Takeover would entail having not just the work of other students at Leeds Beckett having their work put on the "Big Screen" at Millennium Square, but the opportunity that if we put together a showreel of our work, and details of our exhibition it will be put onto the Big Screen to promote our work and event. Gemma answered various questions but also gave us the guideline to what was and wasn't allowed to be involved on the Big Screen. We also discussed how it should possibly all themed work with a LBU Rose on the name band, and the video had to be 1024×576. We also debated how we could go facebook live for the launch.
WEEKFIVE. During the seminar where website work takes place, I was the only one from my team in attendance. I decided to take my own initiative and carry on creating the website and uploading content.
The lecture today was relevant in promoting our own work in how we will get a job after university and what companies will seek from potential workers. We were shown how to tailor our portfolio for various employers and how we should make a few CVs relevant to different employers as opposed to one lengthy CV which may not get read properly. We were shown how you should pick out keywords in a job application and put this into your cover letter to make yourself seem more relevant and keen. Ensure your portfolio stands out and is unique, as it will give them insight about you. We were also told how important it is to do the relevant research into a job before applying, ensuring you have background knowledge of a company to show your interest. We were also given a job advert each to review and think about how we could tailor our CV?s/ portfolios towards this job.
I began by looking at the projects page which I would develop into the artist pages. I changed ?projects?into ?exhibitors" and then began the exhibitors process.
I began by taking names of everyone who is in the class and creating a page for them, this involved adding 27 pages of exhibitors in first name alphabetical order.
Once each page was complete the user will be able to hover over an image and see an exhibitor?s name, the image will be replaced with one of their own and it will take them to their artist/ portfolio page.
I then began editing individual artist pages, adding in relevant names and artist bios which were done.
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W hat was required from the artist bio is: - W ho they are? W hat they are?(photographer, writer, graphic designer etc.) - W hat they did - W hy they did it - W hen they did it (Limited to250 words)
WEEKSIX. During the seminar where website work takes place, I was the only one from my team in attendance. I decided to take my own initiative and carry on creating the website and uploading content.
During the lecture this week each team gave a presentation on what they had done in their team as a progress report and so the class could also provide feedback and what else could be done. The website team showed the design and how I had began adding in artist pages and the response was positive, people liked the design. However, there was some speculation on the idea of a selfie as the artist image, some people thought a headshot would look more professional and relevant for the website. We discussed how we wanted them black and white so there would be no colour variations and to keep a tonal theme, however different lighting and quality in selfies could affect this so we debated more on the idea of headshots. We also decided that the 24th of March will be the deadline for the ÂŁ50 (however if some people are unable to get that money they will be able to get an extension until student loan comes through). It will also be the deadline for Artist Bios and Selfies (so we could do a comparison to gain an idea of what a selfie could look like) as well as a deadline for receiving 3 pictures for a mock up. In the seminar I finalised my Artist Bio which I decided I would do before I had actually taken the images I wanted for my exhibition. I have plans in the Easter holidays to shoot portrait images regarding mental health and to use Photoshop to manipulate these images to show a visual representation to how mental health can feel.
WEEKSEVEN. Engaging with the venue team, I set up a Behance portfolio page for them to show the Village Bookstore in hopes we could have work hung in their exhibition space.
This week involved ensuring everyone was getting organised within their groups and making sure everyone knew the deadlines. My group made further edits to the website, posting artist bios which had been uploaded to the Google Drive and we also took one of Adam W right's Facebook photos to put in black and white and then mock up what it would look like on the Artist Page.
After a bit of debate, it was decided that "selfies" were probably not the best way to introduce our Artist Pages, and came to the decision that we would do headshots next week instead. W ith further discussion from the group it was confirmed that: - Roseanna would be in charge of the exhibition instead of Alex T as his attendance was unreliable. - Oliver was put in charge of creating the showreel for the Big Screen Takeover - Euan would be taking the headshots next week - Kate would be creating a list of the expenditures we would need As a group we also discussed the possibility of having an extended exhibition at the Village bookshop in the City Centre as they had exhibition space available from the 7th of May
After having discussed a proposal with the Village Bookshop, Maisie asked if the website was finished. As not enough people had uploaded their final images, I was reluctant to send them that link so we discussed creating a new site with the images from people who had uploaded.
Maisie suggested making a Behance page to send to the Village, so I took it upon myself to create a page with images from those on the course.
After creating a page, I began uploading names and 3 images per person.
WEEKEIGHT. Confirmation on the date of our exhibition amongst other things, as well having our headshots taken.
This week we confirmed that our exhibition will be held on the 22nd of May, with the Industry being able to come in during the day, and friends and family that evening, this was confirmed by Hugo. It was also confirmed that only people from our course will be presenting in the Acre room as other courses such as Broadcast Media will have the Assembly Hall. He also said that Leeds Beckett will pay and supply the Gantry and MDF boards, all we will have to do is paint them white to make for a clean appearance to hang our images on. Peter Defty would be able to print of some or all of our images, granted it was given to him with enough time. However it would be expected for us to edit the images into both CMYK and RGB formats as there are two different printers that could be used.
During the seminar, most people continued working on their Artist Bios and Euan set up the studio so he could shoot everyones headshots for the website and their Artist Bios. Euan decided how the lighting would look and the posing would be, so everyone had the same style portrait.
WEEKNINE As the exhibition date comes closer, we organise the layout of the Acre room and sort out the book of images from those in the exhibition.
This week we received confirmation on what the Acre room will look like with the Gantry put out. Seth showed us the layout which is in a zig zag form to ensure theres enough space for movement and for everyones work. However some peoples work will have to be displayed in the crevices in the Acre room - this will be decided by people volunteering or those who've lacked attendance will receive these spaces.
The design team also created a sheet of paper which had the MDF board sizing laid out and asked us to create a rough template of what we want our images to look like on the board and what genre our images were so they could create a layout of who goes where on the gantry laid out above. I decided I wanted to do around six images and my theme would be wildlife and landscape. Having originally planned a photo series around mental health, I realised it wasn't it wouldn't be possible for me to get the images which I wanted. I will have to change my artist bio and notify the design team of the change of biography.
WEEKTEN. W ith the change of artist bio and the images for the book uploaded and the domain name for the website bought, we are almost ready.
This week the venue team confirmed who would be placed where in the exhibition room, having received everyones layouts. The venue team requested genres and layout so no two peoples work would clash together, similar work could be placed together to look smart, or further away to not clash. These are the allocated spaces.
Furthermore, the domain "https:/ / www.lbu-underline.co.uk/ " was purchased for the website. W ith only a few more final touches to go as Euan had edited and uploaded the headshots to the website, we didn't have much more to do. The domain of two years came at a cost of ÂŁ217.
This week I emailed Ella to let her know the changes of my Artist Bio and uploaded it onto Google Drive. My final artist bio says: "Nathalie Kelly is a blogger and photojournalist from London. Her main photographic genres are wildlife, landscape, and sports and she also has a keen interest in videography. The photographs within this exhibition were taken during her volunteering experiences in different countries, and explore conservation through wildlife and nature. Nathalie uses various photographic techniques to illustrate the beauty of animals that have been threatened by urbanisation to create empathy and compassion towards them. Nathalie also has experience in event photography, image retouching, and graphic design within Photoshop."
Here are the images that will be posted in the Photo book for Roseanna, 6 of which I will use for my exhibition.
WEEKELEVEN. This week I decided I would only use 5 images for my exhibition and sent them to Peter to be printed, whilst also ordering my frames having decided what sizes I wanted for my prints. I also changed the design layout of my exhibition.
Here are the final images which I'll be using for my exhibition, and the image sizes that they will be printed. Having confirmed my images and layout, I uploaded them onto the Final Prints folder on Google Drive for Peter Defty to print.
Here are the frames which I purchased, three 30x40cm which will be used landscape, and two 50x70cm. This was an expensive purchase but I believe my prints will look professional and clean in these frames.
WEEKTWELVE. More edits on the website have been made. Having viewed the mobile site, I took it upon myself to make some changes.
Having opened the website from the event page on Facebook, I noticed some major bugs within the website, first off the GIF which works flawlessly on the website had gone blurry and didn't move. The exhibitors part was fine, but when you scrolled down to the "About" the background had gone blue, which paired with white writing - made it pretty much impossible to read. Unfortunately no one else on the team had noticed this mistake either, so I hastily went on the laptop to make mobile edits to fix these errors.
Unfortunately, the mobile editing area made it impossible to change the background colour so the pale blue had to stay. However I made sure to change the colour of the writing to black to ensure it was legible .
The mobile editing on W IX also made it impossible to fix the broken GIF when you first enter the site, however it did give me the option to move up the exhibitors section so more of it was covered, making it look slightly less faulty. This was a frustrating task to do on my own, when I consulted other members about this they were also unable to fix it so we had to leave it.
WEEKTHIRTEEN. THE FINAL EDITS.
This week our group made some final edits to the website, such as the about section which was my responsibility to edit as the previous wording wasn't deemed professional enough. I changed the writing to something a little more suited and added in a maps of there the exhibition would also be held.
Euan was initially given the role of adding in the sponsorship logos, however after two days of him being unable to do it due to over commitments, I added them in for him as I believed the website should have been complete.
WORKPRIORTO THEEXHIBITION.
I thought it would be a good idea to include contact emails on each Artist page in case potential buyers/ industry members wish to contact an individual. I posted on the Facebook group chat asking for everyones personal emails (as university emails will eventually be deleted). Once people had responded with their emails, Euan put them onto each Artist page.
W hen looking through the completed website, I began going onto artist pages and noticing that the URL would say "project-0" as opposed the the artist name. After playing about on the website for a while I discovered how to change this, and changed each Artists URL to their first name, hyphen, last name.
A week prior to the exhibition my frames arrived and I had collected my prints from Peter Defty. I was pleased with the quality of the prints and the frames were pretty good quality also, leaving me very satisfied with the overall look.
THEDAYBEFORE...
Unfortunately, due to the gap between the boards I couldn't hang up the fifth image which I wanted to involve. However, I was still happy with how it looked, it was just a shame that I couldn't find a layout that I liked where I could also involve that image.
ONTHEDAY... In the morning I helped Mell take all the glasses to the university by offering to take a load in my car as well. W ith the help of Macey as well, we carried all the crates of glasses and unloaded them in the Acre room in preparation for the evening.
The evening was definitely a success. W ith it starting at 7pm, there was a large number of people there by 7:15 and the number grew throughout the evening. The atmosphere was buzzing and everyone stayed to listen to Sarah and Maisie's speeches, giving a large congratulations to how much hard work the majority of people had put in, and a thanks to our tutors as well. Not as many people participated in the raffle as we had hoped, a fair few people on the course participated and actually won some of the prizes which was great, but also disappointing as it meant we definitely hadn't made back a lot of what we had paid towards the exhibition. All in all, it was a great night and a great send off to the three years we had spent growing and learning on the course.
EVALUATION. I was very happy in the team I was put in, I think we worked well together as we all got in and made an effort as a group to ensure the website came together nicely. However I did feel that Josh lacked in effort at some points, however his attendance in class was usually quite good and made a fair input in the seminars - but outside of university it did lack. We put together what I believe was a very successful and user friendly website which showed effort from each member. The Promoting Your W ork module was an interesting one. I did enjoy it as it gave insight as to what it would be like to create your own exhibition and the hardships that came with it. The majority of the class was professional about it, however leadership was shown to go some peoples heads. Kate was a great member of the team as she was incredibly organised, however the behavior was shown to be more bossy than working together as a team at some points. Furthermore, I understand the money which we had to put into the exhibition, and the fact the university matched our contributions was great, but the matter of the students now being out of pocket is a huge downfall. The university should have provided the majority of the funding, as they do for many of the sports courses. However, it did give an insight to what the expenditure for an exhibition would be like, and that was a great insight in itself.