Today, as I sip my tea and contemplate my sketchbook, thoughts turn to the realistic, to the root of all evil. Money.Changing career direction in your mid 40's is many things; it is brave, it is exciting, it is admirable, bold and bohemian. It is also pretty scary.
Actually, to be fair, I'm not sure it's a change in career direction, it's a very heavy focus shift onto the thing that makes my heart beat. I've always drawn, and nobody can take away the other skills that I have accumulated over the years. However, this needs thinking about.
Funding my study is taken care of by a combination of careful planning (I've saved for a long time with this goal in mind), hard work (I worked through my first year) and good old Student Finance - I hadn't been to University before and so, luckily, qualified for this. Paying the mortgage post degree will be a different matter.
But it's not just about money. One thing I've discovered about myself on this life journey is that I need a purpose, a role, a place to be. I need to use the skills I have. I have a passion for learning and love to teach, to support, to mentor, to share. At the risk of sounding like a badly worded CV, I am organised, great at translating the requirements of others into clear, deliverable outcomes, budgeting, negotiating and a myriad other skills that I need and want to use. Creating art is incredible, but I don't want to work alone, every day.
Some of the need to maintain the professionalism I have had to have thus far in my life has been satisfied by my setting up my own studio. The studio is situated in the heart of the Eastwood Craft Centres and so I am surrounded by other creatives, but I have the luxury of space - four desks, dedicated to creative work (paint, cutting etc), tech work (digital illustration, with the iMac and the Cintiq), mess (heat press, screen printing) and other creative work (sewing machine, clay etc). I have all of my equipment and tools in one place. It is large enough to invite guest artists or other students to work alongside me for collaborative work, and smart enough to invite potential clients.
But what else might be out there?
Many illustrators have a portfolio career, offering freedom and flexibility. A Mix of 'pay the rent' work, which may or may not be in the creative industries, paid professional work - commissions, jobs 'won' either through an agent or independently, lecturing or teaching and time unpaid for developing their own practice. For the last twenty years I have run my own business and operated as a Freelance and so this appeals to me much more than having a 9-5 in house (employed and salaried) creative job. Of course, with flexibility can come financial instability, hence the 'pay the rent' roles often undertaken.
Last year at the Hay festival, I queued in line with my daughter, for the Author / Illustrator / about-to-be-appointed Children's Laureate and all round art hero and nice guy Chris Riddell to get her copy of his latest book signed by the man himself. Edie was too shy to ask Chris any questions herself and so I shamefully interrogated him on illustration techniques. He gave me lots of tips (which I will share later) and I told him that I have written two children's novels, from a planned series of seven, that I want to illustrate myself. That, agreed Chris, is the way to go - I can't remember the exact phrase he used but it was along the lines of go and do it, because generally, you don't find people knocking on your door begging you to illustrate their work (unless they want you to do it for free, which is another often asked story). I daresay Chris does now spend his time responding to lots of people knocking on his door wanting to pay him handsomely for his wonderful work, but he is a little more established than I... so far.
Check out Chris's amazing work here and here
Procrastination is, of course, the downside of working for oneself - ahem - now that I've just spent a good 15 minutes looking at Chris's work, where else am I going?
So, in order to support my goal of a portfolio career, we can put a big tick in the studio box. Here I can develop my own work, and also work on professional commissions where on client site presence is not required, or collaboration projects. Of course running a studio and a business comes at a cost, so what else is out there in terms of creative opportunities?
Being in a University affords all kind of Internship and Graduate opportunities - but many of these are either not available or not suitable for those over 25 and with family responsibilities as they involve travel or are funded through schemes only available to certain age groups. Certainly for a young person, venturing out into the world there are fantastic opportunities with Camp America, internships available globally or in London here in the UK.
Some great website are available to check out these opportunities:-
http://creativeopportunities.arts.ac.uk - mainly London based
www.indeed.co.uk - filter for creative roles in selected area
www.inspiringinterns.com - intern roles
www.jobserve.co.uk - filter by design and location
These are just a very few of the job search sites available. I also searched for keywords such as Creative Nottingham, Creative Derby, Creative Leicester, which brought up a whole bunch of websites showing how the creative communities link in each area.
One of my passions if for teaching, I have always undertaken leadership and mentoring roles including many in the voluntary sector. The perfect balance for me would be to be able to combine my own practice with lecturing, teaching or mentoring in some capacity.
The challenge for now is to find that path.
H. x
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