I have decided to be apart of the Symposium organisation this year for the 203 modules alongside Mia, Jaymee, Harry and Kieran. I have not been apart of running a symposia event before so this will be a new experience.
The initial idea is to hold 2 events. One being when we bring in one or two photographers to discuss a topic that the cohort is interested in. The other being an event where everyone one the course has the time to give an artist talk about themselves. The point of this will be to develop everyone’s skills of talking about themselves and the work they are working on. I think that this will be a good exercise for people to build confidence in talking about themselves and what they want to achieve in the future.
Our Event
A few days ago we ran our student symposium event which was a success. The motive behind the session was to get everyone on the course to talk about themselves. This would open everyone’s minds to understanding what photography meant to everyone on the course. I think that this was much needed for everyone on our course and has brought us all closure together knowing what we want out of our degree and into our futures. We took it in turns to answer the questions above and after everyone’s talk, we gave each other feedback. It was a positive place and nice to see what people were working on outside of the degree as well as what we have done before it. Mohini and Martina gave everyone some nice feedback and the overall attitude was that it was a successful session for everyone.
Rob Darch's Instagram
The South West Collective's Instagram
The Main Event
For our main symposia event, we have asked Rob Darch and the co-founders of the South West Collective to come and talk to us about their careers. The aim of this event is to get some more information about what these photographers have done since they graduated university to help us gain a better understanding of where we can point ourselves int the future. Rob Darch is a friend of mine and is starting to get a well-recognised name for himself with his beautiful social documentary and fine art photographic projects. It is going to be interesting to learn more about his career and the steps that he has done in order to put himself in the position that he is in now. For me personally, I would like to go down a similar route that Rob has gone down with his practice, as I am more interested in taking photographs for myself and not for commercial gain.
The planning of the event is in place. We are going to be holding the symposia event on the 5th of February at 10am. Unfortunately due to Covid-19 we are going to have to hold the event online. This is a shame as it would have been nice to all be in the same room and run a smoother conversation about art practive. However, some things are just our of our control and we will work around that.
The Order/ Plan for the Event
“A Conversation with Robert Darch and The South West Collective - How to build a photography career”
Symposia event - Fri 5th Feb 2021
10:00 am - 12:30 pm
Dan - Intro to symposia event
Intro from Rob Darch- 40 minutes
Rob to pass conversation onto the collective
Intro from SWC- 20 mins
11-12 Questions - Mia mediating
Mia- What advice can you give now that you wish you had during your time at university?
Kieran- How much collaboration do you find yourself doing within your practice?
Harry- How do you fund personal projects?
Jaymee - What has been a highlight in your career and why?
Kieran- What is the best way to approach building an audience around yourself?
Harry - How do you approach entering work into competitions and getting work into galleries?
Jaymee- What challenges do you face being a photographer? Do you think there are limitations in the South West?
Mia - Was there anything you did in particular during your final year of university that prepared you for life after graduation?
Dan - (12:15) Open the floor for questions people may have collected
Mia - Wrap up the event and thank Rob and SWC for joining us.
A couple of days have passed since our symposia event and I can quite happily say that it was a massive success. Before the event, we gave Rob Darch and the Collective the list of questions that we wanted to discuss once they had introduced themselves and their practices. This gave them a chance to think about the answers, but also gave us a chance to really get the most out of the event and get questions answered that we wanted.
On the morning of the event, we logged onto Google meet half an hour before the event was due to begin. We did this so that we could make sure everyone knew how to share their computer screens, to have a quick catch up and go over the running of the event once more. This made everyone feel comfortable and confident about what was going to start at 10 am when everyone else joined the event.
We used the event as an opportunity to hold it as the debut event for the new Photographic Society which opened out audience up wider and allowed more people in to engage. We also had students join from outside of PCA to listen in on the event that we hosted. The turn out was great, I think there were about 40 people logged onto the event and stayed throughout the whole event which is a sign that people were engaged with the topics of discussion.
Once the event was over, the feedback we were given was really positive. We had students emailing to thank us for organising the event and commenting on how much they enjoyed it. This was a real high for us as we all thought that the event ran smoothly and the content was engaging and not dry.
Overall, I am pleased with the outcome of the event. It ran well with critical conversation. This was one thing that I was worried about, sometimes on an online chat the dialogue can seem broken and awkward between people. However, with the structured questions, I think this helped keep us on track which also kept people engaged. I Learnt quite a bit when being part of organising the event. It was good to see what other people wanted out of the event and then apply that to the planning. I also learnt that it was never wrong to over-prepare and go over the event before we ran it live. I think doing this, it made everyone comfortable and happy with the running of it.
Link to the recording
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o4r_YLc0ZTWlDpewvMWmD70X2Hx0-F-7/view