Guest Lectures 

Denise courcoux

Through the careers department Denise Got her first job at an art gallery, as an information assistant, she would deal with the public as her job role, selling the tickets, making sure the art work was safe, and talking about the art work to visitors. Working in shops and bars, all these smaller jobs as a teenager was really useful for her, she felt as though this really helped with her first job, that the most important thing was to have this experience. After about a year she got her first job in the exhibitions team, first as gallery coordinator, then exhibition officer a more enhanced role, working apart of a small team. They organised exhibitions for 6 years, with a variety of different projects,  a range of different experiences working part time on a permanent basis, her role was doing the practical stuff to make them happen, communicating emerging artists and established artists, understanding a range of creative community’s, working with contractors, and managing these exhibition projects, helping an all-round experience and what makes these exhibitions so special. Studying her masters at Manchester, and how she could level up and progress her career. Taking a specific route on her skill, opening her eyes to different practises. Her time as an undergraduate was really valuable to her and her growth.

Taking a job at Nantwich museum, local history museum, a change for her and completely out of her comfort zone, really helped her discovery completely new things she loves. She then goes on to work in the wired ariel theatre, the ‘curveball’ as a company administer, too manage there account. Process the bookings, to market the performances, and this wasn’t what she wanted to be doing, but was lots of fun. With valuable things to take from this, that doing a job you don’t want to be doing can still help gain value, with communication skills, these are things everyone needs for any job. She then got back into her role of working in galleries, working at the science and industry museum for a year, as a productions coordinator, a huge museum. Her role was to work with the permanent displays, that hadn’t been updated, or needed maintenances. Booking specialist contractors to carry out specific work, whilst also working on smaller projects. This overall helped get her currant role at Tate Liverpool, her role there is the assistant exhibition register, basically making exhibitions happen. She makes sure the art has the correct conditions to be displayed, responsible for a range of different roles in which are very similar to the work experience she’s endured during other jobs in the past. She’s been on a huge journey through work and gained so much experience. She’s helped me realise how important this can be to develop specific skills, and challenge myself to do things outside of my comfort zone, for this can be so important when discovering things we may enjoy and benefit from. Inspiring my understanding with information about how work experience can benefit my learning, that doing the things I love is very important. Overall she has helped comfort my understanding about the outside world, and how her journey has overcome boundaries that come along the way.   

Scott Duffy

Scott Duffy a Graphic designer, who once studied at Chester university is a creative director at ‘listen’ who specialise in food packaging, a company based in Liverpool. They work with the likes of john west, have just re-designed the packaging for greeters chutney, creating animations, and design for a variety of brands. Toucan Tango a brand created by Scott and his wife, Scott met his wife luce a photographer, working in pizza express, they both really enjoyed art, they make prints of gift cards and greeting cards online. Scott started screen printing gig posters for his mates band, and was approached by more established bands within the near future, something he loves doing. From visiting the music festivals he’s met loads of people around Europe and America. These people are also creative designers, all different poster makers from around the world, who come together and sell their work, sharing tips, and understanding methods of screen printing. Gaining recognition from this work Scott’s been capable of working with bigger brands like Dr martins. He’s recently opened a shop in new Brighton called sup, the shops purpose is to present and sell his work, to create events, and bring a community together.

Where Scott started after university. Attempting to get jobs in design studios, he worked in pizza express to begin with, but believes there is no shame in struggling to find a job after just finishing university, for this can be a difficult task. He took the time during working at pizza express to learn how to screen print, learning this process has helped gain design skills, Scott also taught himself how to code, so he could create a webpage. Scott’s inspired my understanding, helping improve my confidence and I’ve come to the conclusion that even after university, I will begin to expand my skills and knowledge, doing so by meeting new people and trying new things. Going to creative meetings during his free time would allow Scott to meet other designers and make new friends, the meetings would allow designers to discover and expand their learning, find useful skills, and maybe collaborate with what could potentially be future colleagues. Scott explains getting yourself out there is very important, that social experiences are very useful to help grow our overall knowledge within specific aspects of design.

Aimee Grundell

She is a founder, creative director, production director, finance director, marketing director, managing director, head of HR, head of communications, health and safety officer, tea maker, painter decorator, toilet fixer and much much more of AG studios. AG studios design, build, consult, install, they are a team of artists, engineers, programmers, printers, designers and doers who solve problems in a creative way and sometimes create problems in order to find creative solutions. To put that into context, Aimee completely runs her own individual business, alongside other colleges, a team of people who come and go, some core workers, who all work on projects together, usually interesting jobs, for everyone to get involved. Aimee’s first job was to create the interior for someone’s lounge, creating a cartoon style lounge. She creates exhibitions, someone who likes to accept the majority of job offers, her team are open to achieving anything creative in any particular way, sometimes helping communities. Aimee creates her own art work for projects, sometimes with collaboration’s, or individually, these collaborations have helped gain work, allowed Aimee to meet new artists and designers, allowing her to experience new things and gain confidence as an artist. She promoters her work using her website, posting on social media is also very beneficial, something Aimee inspires to continue in the near future. Aimee is very open to any job opportunity, essentially accepting specific jobs outside her comfort zone, she’s helped inspire my overall thinking towards creatively working outside my comfort zone. The majority of Aimee’s work has come later on in life, comforting my understanding towards my future, helping me realise its never too late, encouraging me to keep designing and being creative, for success may take time.     

12 days of Christmas. Her first job as a freelancer, the brief was to create 12 interactive pieces along a woodland track, that tell the story of the 12 days of Christmas. She would discuss what the client would like, then create a pitch document presenting ideas, against other competitors. Choosing the 9 dancing ladies for this specific job, a fun project. She would create initial sketches, to understand how the mechanics would work, how the pieces would look visually, what materials were needed and the overall budget for the project. Problem solving and creative solutions, would ensure the project was a success, this was a very important aspect in this specific job. With a narrative drive towards the way Aimee conceives the project, has helped inspire me to ensure I create a purpose, an aspect of importance that I want to include, to present meaning towards my own creative projects. Aimee has learnt to say yes to things from the beginning, for a job opportunity, can become opportunities for other jobs. Worried about saying yes to specific jobs, Aimee has learnt to understand, saying yes is the best way to success. Saying yes can always be a difficult task in itself, but most people regret the things they haven’t done. In the future I want to be more open to job opportunities outside of my comfort zone, for Aimee has helped me understand the positive outcomes when saying yes.

Wynne McCoy

Wynne starts off by explain its important when making a career you must Take the opportunities, take the chances and don’t be daunted by attempting to do something big, to believe you have the necessary skills required. Explained its important to create a portfolio to be prepared for job opportunities, even attempting to cold call people in search for jobs, but using Instagram and other social media to ensure you contact the correct people. A particular photo of a building under construction, a photograph taken for Liverpool vision, employed to photograph the building for marketing purposes, then employed by the new owners once the building had been complete. From one major development corporation to another has created a positive chain of events, for a wider range of job opportunities, completing one job has essentially helped gain recognition from other companies. Job opportunities can be a way to advertise your work, this advise is very important and has helped me understand, that if a jobs worth doing its worth doing properly, to ensure the possibility for more job opportunities, its important to say yes. Its important to stay in contact with people, for sometimes its not what you know, it’s who you know.

Wynne explains its important to license photographs, a photograph taken by Wynne himself has been used by a variety of different people, essentially sharing advice for copyrighting your work. Its important to ensure anyone using your work will contact and pay, for without copyrighting your work, problems may occur, and can be very time consuming to prevent. Wynne has shared a variety of photographs, inspiring me to take up photography in the future. Wynne has also shared some valuable information, to ensure I copyright my work, explaining the positives and importance of doing so. Wynne explains its important to be flexible with specific jobs, having more than one skill set, its important staying open minded and positive when doing jobs outside your comfort zone. When taking a photograph, its important to consider the space, to find an interesting angel, understanding the height of the camera, lighting, detail. Most importantly knowing who you are working for and what is suitable for the company, but to ensure the photograph looks good, for the composition is the most important aspect to photography.

Dr Austin Houldsworth

Austin started out doing a course called interactive arts, with a lot of freedom within the course, writing your own briefs, an education when you sit in the driver’s seat. Austin sees himself as more of a designer, someone who likes to create purpose within his work. Austin has also formed a small company creating design competitions. Austin Explains all design is speculative, showing a video from 'futurama' a particular company who would envision a future for a highway, and a year or two later the first highway was completed. Continuing to explain how these speculations exist in many different forms. A smart city was another speculation Austin continues to explain, and how a company would speculate the positives and negatives within a smart city. Austin explains there is speculations everywhere, that we should speculate about our career and the future we endure for this is normal. Austin then talks about his work and starts with a quote “we’re all toast in the end, but only a few will become fossils” I’m fairly found of this quote, for only some will be remembered for the greatness they achieve. Austin works on a variety of different projects with no correlation, he doesn’t necessarily have a size or scale on the projects he creates, he believes its more important to create a portfolio that can express skill, rather than a specific stylized correlation between your work. A project Austin created is called the relativist clock, you place your date of birth into the machine, an archive from all the points in age that people historically have achieved fantastic things, the machine then compares your age with the ages of these people. Austin was trying to explain that everyone has time, it’s never too late to achieve greatness, for the concern and tension time brings may decide the risks and decisions we make.   

Austin also shares a quote from (Lietaer 1997) “money is like an iron ring we’ve put through our noses, we’ve forgotten that we designed it, and its now leading us around. I think its time to figure out where we want to go – in my opinion toward sustainability and community – and then design a money system that get us there” we are so busy attempting to get money, we don’t think about the reason we do so. For you can be anything you want to be by pushing boundaries with no limits and doing things radically different. Austin has attempted to create a solution to solve this problem, For this project led him to a question, ‘what caricaturizes the underlining assumptions that heavily inform that design and development of money.’ In context why do we feel so limited, when money can have any function, to enable or disable the society we build. Within the project the solutions Austin discovers include, identifying underlying and foundational axioms, assumptions and beliefs. Although Austin’s work doesn’t necessarily relate to mine, the thoughts that sit behind his work have really inspired my understanding, for Austin takes a deep thought and meaning to the projects he produces, something I now aspire more to also include within my own work.    

Heinrich and Palmer

Heinrich and Palmer both Manchester school of arts students, they have both been collaborating since 1975. They talked about a first project they worked on. Taking inspiration from a pond, and the illusions from some grass, they created a kaleidoscopic room. The ideas and concepts they developed, on a wider scale, are a process of learning, for every adventure throughout each project, helps grow your understanding, essentially the negative outcomes are just as important as the positive outcomes from each project. Another project they worked on was a ship, creating this vessel that could move and transport itself, the gods and their equipment. The vessel could be folded up to fit inside your pocket. They created the project using laser scanners to essentially map the co-ordinates of the ship. This specific project was like no other, I was really interested in the unique projects they have produced, they have inspired my overall thoughts towards the work I produce in the future.

Callum Peters

Callum studied at Chester university, listening to Callum’s story was up lifting, understanding the journey from start to now. Callum explains that working hard is the most important aspect, that no specific journey or perfect path is the correct way to success. Callum explains the difficulties he has endured, for finding work isn’t necessarily easy, his journey has put me at ease for the future, for trusting the progress and development of our success is very important. Not every journey is completely perfect, landing a career related to our course may be difficult, but Callum has helped me understand the importance, each and every step will help grow my confidence as a designer. Callum works for the BBC apart of the design team. They work on a range of different projects, working on apps, designing for tv sets etc. Cullum specifically worked on the first version of the bite size app.