Thank you very much for coming out, saying. I know that it's been an want to know hopefully in a few hours.
But we're talking about the end stage of the process. I know this is a time of year where we're stuck into essays and getting into
the rhythm of the academic world again as I sometimes step back and think,
I wonder what happens after the degree.
So my plan for today, I'll plan for today is a little wittering for me to start out with some thinking about what history about graduates do,
things that I know from a career service point of view. And then we'll talk about how to draw some conclusions about that.
And then we're really lucky to have four great speakers for this today. So before we break for tea and coffee, we have reached Millington.
He's the education officer at extrication. And tell us about that.
And then we have Holly Harris, who is a freelance arson design, research and writer.
I'm reading out the BNA. So we've got some fantastic stuff to come.
An even more brilliant things after that. For further ado, I want to bring this big question to kick us off today.
What do history graduates do? There are big statistics on the statistics fiend.
So I'm sorry, I'm going to have to indulge me, but there's lots of big conclusions that we can draw.
So this is all gathered from a survey that you're going to be asked to fill in, repeatedly asked to fill in.
And once you graduate, we are mandated by the government to find 80 percent of our students once they leave
and ask them on a magic date exactly six months after the end of their course.
This year was January the 12th, I believe. What were you doing on January the 12th?
That's the magic date. We've been asking this for a number of years and for the last three years, a date affected here.
So hopefully this puts some context around the majority of history of students went into work or
they're actually forty percent going into studies higher than nearly any other humanity subject.
And both work and study is nine percent less.
There's a lot of people that are combining things, and that's often a group that are looking at a master's course,
maybe taking it part time, was working for less study and a full 25 percent unemployed.
It's amazing for Oxford. You guys are clearly really,
really employable on National are Oxford wide average has been at six percent unemployment for the last 25 years come hell or high water.
And history has reliably bucked the trend. So will the new kind of anticipations.
And no, people didn't respond to the survey. This is my subtle hit response to this stuff.
It's really useful because we get to tell you a little bit more about this big statistic here.
So we think things in two ways. It creates. We think about the sectors, the kind of workplace that you're in.
So museums might be a sector. And then we kind of think about the kind of work that you do.
So education might be a role within the museum sector.
So we've asked about sectors and you can see, obviously, culture is going to be a hugely dominant one.
And people are working at the British Museum. And the metaphor.
And what's the manner, which is an amazing national trust property in books and find out.
And then there were people doing things that people don't expect. History of art students to do so.
One of your compatriots from I think it was two years ago, six months out, was working for Apple.
And there was people who were setting up independently and going for self employment.
There are people who are working within the public sector. The charities face and more than I can see it on here, too.
And if you expand it out to cover things like the Ruskin School,
maybe even the history department, you find people doing a plethora of interesting things.
So graduate Rose then. So bear in mind, most people are in the culture sector.
What kind of stuff are they doing? Again, more than you might suspect.
There's some people that are going into what I would call strategic or development roles.
So that might be things around fundraising. It might be things around business planning or strategy if it's in the private sector.
It might be things around sales. As people who are in research, there are people who are very hands on making things happen,
people who are in archives and loan library work and social guidance,
community support, teaching and things that you might not expect, including finance.
So what conclusions can we draw from all this data? And before we do it, I always get ask what kind of further study?
And this is what kind of Friendster. So a lot of people are thinking of professional qualifications.
And out of that group, I had your sneaky look at them.
And there are a few that are doing things that are very squarely related to the study at the moment.
But there are those two people who went on to do a low conversion course. There was one who said the accountancy exams.
So, again, confusion's forgive me, I need exercise.
I got too excited about the statistics, the average salary at twenty two thousand one hundred pounds a year on average.
Remember, big rate nonetheless beats lots and lots of other humanities departments.
So if you meet an English student, feel very, very smug because they're average, average salary is only nineteen thousand a year as a starting point.
And if anyone is a data junkie like to mine this, for what it's worth, all the data is in the public domain.
There's a. Yes. Yes. I was sorry before. That's before tax.
Before tax. So what you're your employer is paying you? Yes.
And it was calculated only based on those that were working in the UK.
So it wasn't adjusted so possible. So there you go.
Conclusions. First thing, it's a reassuring one. Not pigeonholed.
So although we've signed us up today to appeal to things to ask for particular interests of this department.
Things that you might not otherwise have been able to access from the courier service, which is trying to save lots and lots of different people.
At the same time, if things today don't seem to rock your vote and you're just thinking, I'm not sure that's me.
Don't worry at all. You are not pigeonholed. People do radically different things with absolutely no effect on their career whatsoever.
However, this is another good one, too. So when I was talking to some alumni and we fill in the service, we kind of get to know people.
And they were really stressing this,
that sometimes it can feel like the first step you make outside of your degree is one that defined in a quite scary kind of way.
And they really reassured that it's not it's the first step, not the only step.
And hopefully our alumni that are here today will be as to how their career paths kind of developed over time.
I've seen nothing. Not a good gig. And this is the last point.
And if you were with me at the induction way back, your mechanist,
you might remember me talking about this is about you, not the degree you've done, not the department that you're in.
It's about you.
It's your unique set of interests, a unique set of values and skills and career drivers where you'd like to be, what you'd like to be doing.
And that underpins your actions, which means that we start to revise this model that we talked about for you, Michalis.
This is how to do a career in Four Easy Steps is something that we rehearse and we reiterate every point lo our journey.
Have one thing to think about today. It's time to flag up when our speakers talk about things and they really resonate with you.
Do you think that sounds awesome? Try and figure out why that is.
What is the criterion that you can add to your mental perfect job list?
Try and do that list as detailed as you can. If someone saying interesting stuff about working with children work out,
is it the children or is it just being helpful that appeals to you to write down these criteria that underpin your thinking?
And then the other thing that is sometimes tricky to do is building your occupational awareness.
So knowing what is out there and helping yourself visualise doing those kind of roles.
So we've got four amazing speakers that can help you do that today and share their journey or insight into their world.
There are other ways to do this to the festival. We have these briefings that we produce.
They're all on our website. I've got a few with me today, if you would like to. Kind of an overview document to Virge, Occupational Awareness.
Look in here. It's got some great Web links there, too. And then there are more people.
This is an example of Hannah who and very, very sweetly would love to have been here today.
But she did mention, however, that she's really, really happy to be contacted.
And she left a lot of other very interesting and useful people in the sector is
on our career connect bit of our website to find the careers service website,
looking to create that with your single sign. And you get an alumni account after you graduate.
And if you go to the Oxford Careers Network, you'll see two thousand three hundred people like Hannah were written about what they do.
The good things. The bad things. How they got into it.
And most of them, I'd say over 95 percent of them have it all contact mentor a button at the top Hanada.
Certainly she has no limits on the amount of people that can contact her every month.
So feel free to send her an email. If Heritage, for example, which isn't represented today, is something that's really useful and interesting to.
That's my brief overview. So will have any burning questions with a kind of big picture.
Careers adviser Tom. It's lovely.
Excellent. In which case, should we book your first feature? Thank you. And I'll set up your talk, for example, leads me back here.
Say, I've just recognised a face from someone who did work experience at the airstrip.
So I work as the education officer at the airstrip collection, the historic houses, modern Italian from the 20th century.
And it's known mainly for its futurist art and my role as the education officer.
Guys, talk to you about how I got into this work, what a typical day would be like for me, the kinds of things I've done.
And I'll just start by giving you a brief overview of the collection at the historic as well.
So, as I said, we're known for futurist works. We have here a painting by Ballah and then on the far side.
But Cheney used to have a video, Liani. So a lot of my work revolves around this permanent collection.
But we also have temporary shows. So four times a year we have separate shows coming in.
Works are on loan to us. And I've left some leaflets on the corner that you're interested in our collection.
So as an education officer, I was asked to talk about what a what I would do in a typical day.
And it was it's quite hard for me to do that, which is one of the reasons why I like my job, because I do so many different things.
So, for example, yesterday I had a school group coming in their primary school children.
And so I arrived at the gallery at nine thirty in the morning, sets up, which took quite a long time.
About 20 minutes. Then they arrived and I did a workshop with them for two hours.
Now, the workshop, I had to liaise with the teacher and talk to them about what they wanted.
It really depends on the age of the children, what they've been studying at school, and they always want it to be linked to the national curriculum.
So this is something you have to really know about if you want to go into education.
So I'll give you an overview of the kind of things I do. So first thing is I give talks and tools in the gallery so this can be for a range of groups.
I've had school groups coming in, primary secondary school groups, universities in my second week at the gallery.
Sothebys Modern and Impressionist department came in, which is quite scary.
There were 40 of them and I had to show them around for an hour or.
And then on first as days of the month, I gave a special talk in the evening as well.
So I would say with this kind of education role, you do work some kind of unsociable hours.
I work weekends sometimes and evenings as well. Second thing I do is creative workshops.
So as I said, it's based around both a permanent and temporary shows and these kinds of things.
There's a whole range of workshops, which I do mostly there. They're quite often crafty.
But recently I've been setting up adult art workshops, which are more.
We have an introduction to the art history and then maybe a painting workshop.
As a part of these workshops, I have to do bookings. And there's a lot more admon in my role than I thought there would be.
I think this is true for a lot of art history kind of careers. I thought, oh, education, I'll be making things.
It's 50 percent of my job is doing that and doing the talks. And I'd say 50 percent is sitting at a computer doing bookings, writing confirmation.
That's for schools, invoices and putting things on the database.
Another part is stuffing envelopes.
Every time we have a temporary shower, I have to sit down and stuff a thousand envelopes and send out all the material to everybody.
So that's also tedious parts of the job. But I would say that's probably true of most jobs with these workshops and the tour.
So I'll I'll lead these. But often I get volunteers to help me and we have a lot of volunteers.
And this is gonna be true with all museums and galleries. They really rely on volunteers.
So I liaise with them and I have a kind of bank of volunteers who want to do education things.
So they will probably help me be on hand to help work alongside me,
but also with some of the talks now, I'm giving over some of the talks to the volunteers.
So I'm more kind of managing and I'm doing more of the admin.
They're doing more of the actual talks also because we have Italian art.
Sometimes people ask for talks in Italian, and I can't do that.
So do creative works. Up next to the family art days.
So lots of museums and galleries do this kind of thing.
We have a drop in session where families come in. There's children and the adults have to stay with them.
And we set up maybe about three or four activities in the gallery space.
And they come and they they have a go at these activities. And I'm kind of there overseeing it again with volunteers.
And these are quite fun. We try to theme them. So, for example, we had a Halloween themed one looking at pumpkins and cats and things like that.
As part of this, again, going back to add me again with, say, your family all day.
I have to market that myself. So you have to produce promotional material.
And this goes out in the form of leaflets, posters and then also online.
So there's Web sites in the local area. So we post them the opportunities on there.
Also, there's a BBC things to do page. There's a Web site called Coacher 24.
So all these platforms, we have to use these to market the events. And that is down to me.
As I said again with the workshops, I've just set up an adult arts class series, Save for every temporary show.
So four times a year, we'll have an adult art class. Now, this I don't need this.
We get artists in and they will leave the workshop for this.
And they last about two hours. Normally, I'll just introduce the artists and then I'm on hand again.
One of the things I like most about my job is creating resources because I miss studying.
I miss research. And if every show I have to research the artist, the exhibition and then create a PAC for teachers,
telling them about the exhibition, about the artists and then possible themes for workshops and talks if they come in.
Another thing which I do is activity trails. So. If you've seen if you've been to a museum now for kids, they have trails.
They have little backpacks so the kids can go around with them. Education is a kind of growing sector now in museums.
And this is really fun. It's very creative. So it's a really fun thing to be doing.
Back to another more admen thing, fundraising. So we are applying for funding at the moment for separate projects.
One is for primary school projects. And so with this, I have to write the funding application, which takes a really long time.
And then also with the fundraising, it's really good to collaborate so often.
I'll have meetings with charities and I'm trying to work with them.
This feeds into the collaborative and outreach work. So I've been working with lots of different charities, including of people's charities like Age.
UK does pensioner's form in the borough. I've been to them, so I will go out to them with this outreach work and instead of talking in the gallery,
I'll take images and talk to them about our collection, perhaps to people who can't actually physically come into the gallery.
Outreach also includes I've been to a nursery, so I've worked with really,
really nice ones, making clay animals and trying to think, oh, youth groups as well.
That's another big area.
So I've been working with local youth groups and with them we put on an exhibition and I went and helped put up the exhibition.
I did all the labels for them and help them run the evening. Finally, education evening.
So for every temporary show,
I hold a special evening for teachers and educators and they come along and I talk to them about the exhibition and there's refreshments.
And again, that's something which you do in the evening. So, again, it's kind of unsociable working hours.
But I say I quite enjoyed this. You meet some really interesting people from the last one.
I met a lady who is an etching teacher and I'm going along on Fridays, her acting class.
So good things come out of these things. So I don't whole range of things in my job.
And as you can see, I work with under fives all up to the old age pensioners.
But that's not I don't think that's quite normal. This is a family day.
I've got some Moines's that's the adult art class or the art has brought in her her work.
And then we set up some tables in the gallery space. So they've got the artwork around, which is lovely.
During our family out day, the last one,
a bunch of students came along as well from a nearby college and they they had to go and it was a real buzz in the gallery.
This is really fun to family out. They said one things I liked the most.
And yeah, this group, they made a tree based on the work of an artist called Bruno Nari.
This tree was massive. We kept in our office for ages and these leaks about size and the local newspaper
came along and they took pictures and interview does and was a good day. So that is my job.
I do all sorts. But I don't think that's quite normal for museum education.
You'll probably be asked to pick one of these areas.
So family in areas that would be nurseries, family holidays, that kind of thing.
Then you've got adults and young people with this.
This might be youth groups working again with charities like HBK, that kind of thing.
And you might be helping people who are not in employment might be more building up their savings and skills they can use for employment.
Schools is a big one. Primary and secondary.
And you might be asked to specialise in one of one or the other outreach.
That's more kind of youth groups. Again, I know someone at the British Museum.
She goes into hospitals and talks to them. And then the final one is special educational needs.
So maybe blind people came into our gallery once that had a touching session.
That's quite a specific area. So I think it's pretty useful for me to tell you how I got into this.
So like Lizzie was saying, I think it's really important to think about your individual skills and what you value.
So before I went to university, I did a foundation course in art and design.
I'm quite creative. So I knew I definitely wanted to use that.
And what I was doing then at RMIT is classics, English and history of art, because I can never decide what I wanted to study.
It's killing racial lines. But during that time, it was the history of arts.
Part of the degree I liked the most. So that's what I thought. Right. Maybe I need to specialise in this.
And I thought especially if I want to work in the art world. I think I need specialised.
So that's what I came here. Did the amnesty and specialise in the modern art option.
It was during the year here that I thought. Right. I've really got to get some work experience.
This is the key thing I'd say everybody needs so much work experience to work in the art world.
So while I was here, I worked at the Ashmolean Museum for the whole year.
And that's when I worked in their education departments. And that's when I knew.
Okay. This is what I want to do. I also did two weeks work experience at Christie's over the Christmas holidays.
I worked for a charity during the year as well.
Could Dakari and they send people to teach English to students who don't speak English as their first language.
And I really enjoyed that. And again, that kind of show me that I want to work in education.
Strangio also went to Spain and worked in a wine cellar during the summer.
And it's always good to have something a bit different because in my interview,
the SRF, this is something I talked about and they really like the interview yesterday.
It only lasted 15 minutes and it was more like a chat than an interview.
And they told me they gave me the job mainly based on my personality, which I found.
So I say I've done all this stuff for my series.
And they told me they gave it to me because they thought that they would get on with me.
So maybe it's good to have something as well just to show that you're a normal person.
I also I went I went for an interview before or before the air strike at another gallery.
And this interview was really intense.
So if you read, some of them can be they asked me to devise a whole learning programme for their new exhibition.
On the day they gave me the test and they asked me to make up an hour lesson and then show them the plan for this.
And then I has a board of three people interviewing me.
And during the interview, they asked me what marketing experience I had and I didn't know what marketing was.
So after this, I then went and did some experience with marketing company for two weeks.
And I said, the marketing company, why I was doing it.
And they gave me tasks that then I could talk about in interviews to say, I've done this, I've done kind of online marketing, which now I am using.
So it was really useful. I also worked at a prep school as a classroom assistant for a while.
And during my undergrad, I went to offer Watermann.
There are modern British art dealers and they do take people long for work experience.
So this might be good for you to know. So I did quite a lot of work experience during my studies.
When I came to completing my amnesty, I thought rights once I get a job, and I knew that to work in the art world,
I would probably have to do unpaid internships or unpaid work experience for quite a long time.
And I couldn't afford to do that.
So I had a chat with the head of family education at the Ashmolean and she told me the best thing to do would be get some teaching experience.
So you might not necessarily work straight in a museum or gallery, but maybe it's better about building up your skills before you go.
It's about taking the boxes for some things.
So I worked as a graduate teaching assistant school and I taught art history, which was really great in itself.
I got to go on a week long trip to Florence and we had an art history or Cheesa for the whole time.
You get really long holidays. And during that year,
I carried on volunteering at the Ashmolean Museum as well to keep up my link with them and just show that I was really committed to doing this.
Halfway through the year, I started applying for jobs in museums and galleries.
I knew it was too soon, but it's really good experience to get your CV out there, get some feedback and give interviews.
That's when it came up, this marketing thing. I didn't even know what it was.
But then by the later interviews, then I was more prepared. So I think that's about it.
So anybody have any questions? Yes. Yeah. I was just like I just wanted to say that you are a really good connexion of work experience.
Personally, I'm just finding that my work experience is so quite disheartening sometimes.
So say I mean, you go to Christie's.
Yes. I was wondering, did you sort of did you do your applications or did you get specific advice?
How did your house exist? Okay, so there's an awful Wartman.
They had an exhibition on which someone told me about because I was at Trevelyan
College in Durham who had they had a collection of Julian Trevelyan paintings.
And then we got chatting and then they said, oh, there's an exhibition on at of Oarsman.
So I called up and said, I really want to come to your exhibition.
And then I didn't even know what came because my head I said, could I come and do some work experience?
And they said, yes. So over the phone is a little better than email.
I didn't even know who I sent it on the phone. I just did so. So over the phone, they could get so many emails.
So I think I know yesterday we had those emails and they they tend to get ignored more than you actually find out.
You got to be a bit pushy. Yes, Marian.
They're they're part of the Oxford museums and they always are looking for volunteers so that I'm sure that they'll still be looking now.
Christie's I find chairs in a row and I didn't get anything.
And then I was at a party and I was talking someone and I just said, oh, I've been applying.
And then she said, oh, my sister in law works the same as my application.
Then went again. Then I got it. But I didn't know. I didn't know anybody there.
That's the thing is just because I got talking someone a party and you've got to be really pushy and just them.
This is what I want to do. I didn't have any contacts at all. And I was really worried about that.
But it doesn't make a difference. Dakari is the tutoring thing.
So that's I guess not a museum or a gallery. But again, it's building up your skills.
The one thing I thought that yes, I was a parent somewhere and then they said, oh this person is an English teacher.
So I went to be an English teacher but actually ends up working the lines. And then the marketing.
Yeah. With them, I just email them and they said, fine, coming on. But they weren't based.
They were based up in the Midlands, which is where my family is from. So I lived at home during that.
I get things and maybe in London not it might be more competitive.
Yeah. Most my weight experience was for me just asking, saying what comes up.
Yeah, I got some rejections face but he being persistent. Can I jump jump on your point?
Is a really well-made one. If you've got things that are advertised, there could be so much more competitive.
So the unappetising market, particularly in this field, is fast? Yeah, definitely.
You're right. If you're thinking about that party, I mean, first of all, you probably are more connected than you think.
You talk to people at college, be really open vocal about what you're looking for.
You never know when someone is like emendations. And then there's there's also the alumni on the Oxford Careers Network.
They're fantastic sources. They really want to try to be helpful. So if they're not exactly doing what you like to be doing.
Again, they're people you can pass it on because it's getting is the difference between an e-mail in your inbox
from someone you've never met with no credibility to you necessarily or having someone we respect say.
I think it's worth you responding to this. It's just getting that seal of approval almost to get you.
Yeah. The street does take people on to work experience, serve your interests.
Come talk to me at the end. And I was lost leapers without my emails on on the education email.
Ask questions. I have one question for you.
And we talked a lot about working since you've been mentioned to to make things better.
What do you think about things like shadowing just for like a day or an afternoon?
Is that done? I had a girl, actually, Kate. She came in.
Yes, I can shadow me for a day. It was part of the state would take her the day when young people go in and take home for organisations for a day.
So maybe you could do that and see. Have a look at that. She was she's only 16.
I think it was worthwhile for her. She definitely was starting to think, yeah, this is something I'm interested in.
Yeah. And if someone was to e-mail you and hypothetically advising you.
But I see what you do just enough to do. It would be valuable to.
Oh yeah. Definitely more for you. Just seeing if you want to do that job, because like I said, there's a lot more admon to my job than I thought.
Maybe for Charles Adams at my desk day e-mails, which I didn't realise and say.
It's no. Fantastic. Yes. Massive example was very.
And lots of roofs suffice.
It fit well with things that I've heard from that sneaky conversations with people in the industry, particularly museums and public funded galleries.
But they've been really stressing that sometimes coming in with a skill set is more than work.
Yeah, although when I got the job at the Astros, they said they gave it to me because they were looking for someone who works in schools specifically.
And if you were thinking about going into the museum education,
I know there's any courses out there for museum studies, but they quite like you have a PGC.
And sometimes I see in the museum education bracket, the M.A. in museums is not necessary.
No, you've got to see. It's rarely I know they would provide these other PGC def definitely testing the wonderful.
Take a look. Thanks. These cuts by everyone.
Real pleasure to be back. It hasn't actually been long since I left.
I graduated from the B.A. in 2011. So it's only been about two years since.
But so what I do at the minute is I'm a I'm a research assistant for exhibitions within the Victorian Albert Museum.
And by the majority of my work I do is with the theatre department.
So that's what I'm going to be talking about today. So I just want to talk about what exactly the theatre department in the DNA is.
You may have been to the V.A. and you've seen the metalwork collection.
I have seen the mediaeval renaissance galleries, but the theatre collection is slightly different.
It's actually called the theatre collections at the BNA.
And that's because we were a separate museum completely up until 2007 when we moved from our location in Covent Garden to the two the main galleries,
and opened up this main space within the Victoria and Albert Museum here.
So my work that I do works within the permanent galleries.
These are photographs from them. We have a touring exhibition space in our galleries, and that's because we are a national collection.
And so we have an obligation to our UK public to tour our collections around the UK as much as possible.
And because we are a separate collection, we and we are allowed to have our own temporary exhibition space.
So those are the exhibitions that I have been working on and researching over the past year and a bit.
And I'm just going to talk about what researching exhibitions actually is.
At first glance, researching exhibitions is actually quite similar to what you might be doing for an essay.
It's very academic. You work mainly in music, in within your own permanent collection and within libraries and archives,
as you would be doing if you're starting out your thesis.
However, the main difference between researching exhibitions and then researching for your essays is that at the end of the day,
the product that you are producing is mainly being engaged with by people on a purely visual level.
And we have next to no text along with our exhibitions.
So it's incredibly object centred. And so from the moment you enter into exhibition research,
you have to be aware of the fact that your interpretive measurement methods are quite different to what you'd be doing if you're working with text.
So probably the main thing I would emphasise with my role is that my role is not to be creative with my own ideas about about art and art history.
I know that might sound slightly demeaning.
But at the end of the day, you are researching on behalf of a curator who has been working with them with the permanent collection,
which, of course, in the in the Victorian Museum is absolutely vast.
And so you're working with a lot of archival databases and a lot of objects and a lot of museum academics,
which is fantastic because I'm learning all the time as I'm going along.
And in fact, it was this experience that has made me realise that I would actually like to be an exhibition curator.
Further down the line. And so a part of my role with them with exhibitions is not purely researching exhibition content,
but also it's a lot of liaison between different internal departments within the museum.
And so these are some of my main things that I'm doing here.
I am I've already talked about the curator, James, but I'm a big part.
My job is making sure that is this fourth point here, ensuring that the exhibition content is managed properly.
And what that means is ensuring that objects when they have been found, are being looked after by conservation departments appropriately.
I am the point of liaison between the framing and mounting department.
We actually have a department that is specifically for framing a mountain because we've got so many exhibitions turning turning over various sizes.
So I liaise with them to ensure that our objects are mounted and framed properly according to what the conservation requirements are.
All of our objects and we'll have a conservation assessment before they actually go into exhibition.
And so, yeah, as I mentioned, my role is ensuring that those objects actually are looked after as best as possible.
So not only that, if we are, I'll be liaising quite a lot with internal and external lenders as well.
If we're bringing in an object that is from another gallery within within the UK,
I have an obligation and the museum has an obligation to ensure that that object and
the display requirements for that object are absolutely maintained to the letter.
As a public institution, these are absolutely vital. And so my role is to.
Kate, to the requirements to from registar registrar to register.
From these interviews, one to two to give you a case study of an exhibition.
I've been working on for the past year and sort of explain a little bit about the processes that I've gone to actually bring this exhibition to life.
This is called Music Hall, CEQA and the Three Graces.
It's a little bit of an odd exhibition because of we've this within this exhibition, we've commissioned a play.
Now, this is the first time that a museum has commissioned commissioned work.
So within this exhibition, we're dealing not only with factual information, but we're also dealing with fiction.
And we have to ensure that on those two halves of our exhibition actually marry up quite closely together.
So from beginning to from beginning to end the premise of this exhibition by focussing on Walter Scott's paintings of the Bedford Music Hall.
And so our prime task was obviously to go out and find out where these paintings are.
And some of lots of Walter Circuit's paintings are in private collections.
And so when you are beginning to think about what objects you like in your exhibition,
you have to think about your exhibition budget, whether you actually can transport those those objects from private collections.
There was one painting that I really wanted to include, which is actually in a private collection in Monte Carlo.
So but that was way too far afield.
And then you have the additional costs of creating it, insuring it and making sure that you can financially look after it.
And so all of our three paintings that we've learnt from national museums are within the UK.
So this is this exhibition brings together for the first time Walter Scott's paintings of the Bedford,
which is, as I mentioned, it's the first time it's ever been that it had happened.
And we're displaying the paintings alongside other ephemeral objects from our own collections and are there to department.
This is a court to visit. And actually this slide show is really not representative of its size.
In reality, they're sort of like collector's cards, like Pokémon cards.
If you are young, when I was there, usually about that size and they sort of sit on your seats on your mantelpiece.
This is a this is a music song sheet. This the seeds of the Victorian era.
And the aim of this exhibition is to bring to life a popular entertainment genre called Music Hall,
which was popular during the Edwardian period and was quite well was incredibly inspirational to the second.
And so together these. I just wanted to use this to illustrate the type of objects that you would end up researching this.
This is actually a still from a video clip here called London that nobody knows,
which is from nineteen sixty two, was a documentary by someone called James Mason.
And so part of my role as well is liaising with the copyright holders for more recent material like that, negotiating rights terms.
And that is quite a lot of actually what I do.
Maintaining copyright spreadsheets. If we're going to publish material which has been produced post 1950 like this, like this still from London.
Nobody knows. We have to seek permission in order to do that. And as I mentioned,
my role is making sure that we know exactly who owns the rights to be publishing
what images and intellectual property law is a whole new area of interest,
which I'll get on to slightly later. As I mentioned, quite a lot of what I do is I'm liaising with conservation departments.
These are some photos that I took of our Music Hall exhibition, Objects in Conservation to show you.
So these are the planners of the Bedford musical.
This shiny stuff here is Melnick's and everything when it's being transported from archives to conservation
departments has to be stored in Melnick's because we obviously have to handle the objects as little as possible.
This is an example of another solution. They prove the process of conserving paper is incredibly fascinating.
If you have any practical experience and are interested in conservation, I can definitely put you in touch with people who know about conservation.
You actually am. This is after the paper's been actually stretched out.
When you apply water to paper during conservation, scrunch up like a little ball and then they come back and come back again.
I always find it very weird that in order to. To preserve an object that is, you have to measure it so much.
This is a lithograph from our from our prints and collections.
This is a little dot heatherington. You can see there's a performer there.
She's pointing into the spotlight in the Bedford Music Hall, as I mentioned, which is the subject of the exhibition.
And here this is the person with the pink pink dress.
Here is the exhibition curator in this person.
Their hand is the conservator and they're discussing the positioning of these photographs here, which will go into this frame.
Each of these photographs actually has individual archival record numbers, which I, as the researcher, keep track of.
And so I update are vast and BNA archive archival content management system to say where they are.
Because the moment that one object moves from place to place, it has to be locked.
So that's actually quite time considering it's sitting down in front of her in front of a database and making sure that everything's up to date.
So here's what I did earlier. Music hasn't opened yet, so I haven't got any photographs of it to show you.
But this is actually the exhibition that I worked on before. It's in the same space.
Musical will open in the same space. Look very radically different to this.
This is halfway to paradise. They're both the British Rock, which is photographed by Harry Hammond, who was a rock rock'n'roll roll photographer.
And I actually think that erm the arrival of this exhibition and also David Bowie is,
which is the big exhibition opening after Hollywood costumes, leaves the main space in the Vienna.
I think the reason why I started work in the Vienna is because of my thesis total.
I worked on a 19 for my thesis. I worked on a 1971 photograph from Rolling Stone magazine.
And so I had previous knowledge of the history of rock and roll photography in magazines,
which the Harry Hammond collection is pretty much all of that.
Harry Hammond worked very closely with Melody Maker and also the enemy in London whilst he was photographing.
So that was quite important for me.
I was connecting my and my specific interest that I had to be a level with the research that I was going to be undertaking at the museum.
I sought a practical level. Another one of my jobs is to ensure that all of these tax panels and labels are proofread, checked and according.
And according to our stylesheet at the V.A., we have our own particular way that we use punctuation.
So we have to make sure that all of the tax panels are actually in keeping with that to make sure that the BNA brand,
if you like, is upheld to a very, very high standard.
And so and I mentioned a little bit about copyright.
This is a this wallpapered background, underwent a little bit of a copy.
Interesting story with copyright with them.
With all of these photos, the BNA owns the copyright to the Harry Hammond collection, which has over 120000 photographs that Harry took.
And because we own the copyright, we're able to blow the images up, make them into wallpapers,
and then liaise with the designers to ensure that our content can be used in a creative way for exhibitions.
If we didn't own the copyright to this image, it would be a far, far more complicated issue.
And then you'd have to get exhibition departments in to essentially organise that, which I don't do,
because this is a small touring display that would happen with any of our large exhibitions that go into the main space.
I'm sorry. I know we're running out of time, sadly, but I'm also a freelance writer for a graphic design journal.
This is a magazine.
I don't know if any of you are interested in the history of graphic design, but it is an international quarterly graphic design review.
And a lot of research and content development that I do there is quite similar to what I do at the BNA for its text panel.
So it's to do with transcribing interviews, which is very, very interesting because all the time you're hearing new interviews,
learning new things that you previously wouldn't have actually engaged with before.
I do a lot of blog maintenance as well. So this is this page is open on our current issue.
Eighty four, which is which looks at the history of Monotype Industries,
very important type design firm, which has been working in sulphides in the U.K. since 1982.
And so our blog here I am.
Update the content management system again, Richard, which is sort of a specialist graphic design Web site and Web site system.
So I followed lots of HMO and coding, which I learn I want.
Miskin is also embarrassing, but through MySpace, you had to change your backgrounds on your MySpace profile.
That's how I learn HDMI. I didn't go on a course or anything, but that's how I did it.
And it's old. I phoned up. I phoned up the editor of this magazine.
I wanted to go a bit more publication experience. And he asked me what I knew about managing websites.
And that's actually what I said over the phone, which he laughed at. So then I think I went in for an interview and managed to speak a little bit more
eloquently about stuff I actually really knew about the previous experience.
I've been out of university since 2011. I've worked it quite a few different places.
I really had no clue what I wanted to do when I came out. I knew that I wanted to be promoting exhibitions in the arts.
With the pub for the public. That's such a broad title where you can do that in so many places.
So I went about trying to find as much varied experience as I possibly could.
My first job was at a small start up charity called QCA House,
which I actually got because my father works at a school that this is the this is based up and he's a music teacher there.
And they were starting up a project for their homeless six formers.
And I got involved in that on the fundraising side of things.
So at that point, I learnt quite a lot about budget management, event promotion and marketing because I was working with a group of fulltime teachers.
Obviously, they've got a very demanding job, 9:00 to 5:00, working with quite disadvantaged young people in in London school.
So my job was to push them to sort of enable sort of fundraising really to happen.
I had to make sure that I was gazing quite closely with them, have been quite sensitive towards school timetables.
So it was my first job then alongside and working at Kuka House.
All of these would have overlapped because they were all part time work, which I was getting involved with at different times in.
The Intellectual Property Institute is an institute that promotes the discussion of intellectual property law.
I'm the director of the Intellectual Property Institute, is a lady called Johanna Gibson,
and she is a the Herschel press over intellectual property law at Queen Mary.
She actually gave a talk here, and that's when I started to become interested in the creative industries and how intellectual
property reform can affect the creative industry can can affect the creative industries.
So I spoke to her a little bit about about that.
And then I went to do some work experience as a researcher and developed a report of six thousand
word long essay on how proposed intellectual property reforms could affect small small businesses.
And again, that was that was a huge, huge learning curve for me. I was very aware of the fact I was delving into an area that I had no experience on.
But I was able to talk with the professors and they helped me quite a lot in developing some of my work alongside this.
I started working at the V.A. as an archivist, as a volunteer archivist and then as an intern.
And now I am currently doing my, um, my current job. So I have had three different job titles within the V.A.
I got interested in archive work, actually, you know, is here for two weeks digging with Mark over with his wife Vicki in this line library.
I really enjoyed doing that for two weeks because I was just looking at so many different artworks that I previously hadn't seen before,
and that was the point at which I realised I could be interested in things which I hadn't actually studied or I came out of
university and no thought because I had done a lot of my modules in the Renaissance and mediaeval and Renaissance studies,
but then missed out a great big chunk of history that I couldn't interact with that chunk of history, whereas actually it was the complete opposite.
It was my skills as a researcher and my sort of attention to detail that ended up being my strength with a lot of my work.
I think at the end of the day, if you go into this kind of exhibitions research area,
you're always going to be confronted with topics that you have previously no experience of.
And that's something to be aware of if you want to go into this.
But don't be afraid of it.
And just because you haven't studied or written an essay on it, that doesn't mean that you won't be fantastic at researching it.
So I think my last night is any advice for working in a big museum in big museums?
Definitely. Make sure you're researching the aims of the of the institution.
My interview with the with the Vienna, it was quite. It's quite actually my um,
the first thing my the director of the theatre and performance department asked me was if you were curating an exhibition on David Bowie,
what would you do? I the most I knew about David Bowie was the fact that he did a song called Let's Dance in 1983.
I knew absolutely nothing about him off of him. Other than that.
But. So that was I should have probably researched that they were going to do an exhibition or David Bowie before I actually went there.
In the end, I think managed to get through it and convince the most critical person.
And the reason that they asked me to come and do the internship was because of my approach to exhibition interpretation.
I started talking in my interview a little bit about the creative process and how if I was curating an exhibition,
I'd start off with the beginnings of how a song sort of got made with the lyrics.
These more and these more social context related related things definitely stay positive.
I can speak for someone who's coming out would be a cause. I haven't done any postgraduate qualifications, but I must be a student.
I'm coming out into the quite difficult world of work.
You are highly likely to get not quite a lot of rejections, but it's very, very difficult to get work.
And I think similar to what Ruth said, just stay positive and absolutely stay positive.
Understand your own skill sets and what makes you you.
At the end of the day, it is your interests which absolutely define you and your USP unique selling point, as I think.
I think it's gonna get involved in a lot of extra curricular stuff.
I worked in the other reason why I got interested in working in theatres, because I've done quite a lot of theatre with the drama society here.
And if it wasn't for that experience and if it wasn't for that production experience, I don't think that I'd be doing what I'm doing today.
I also was involved with the Ed Goodwin society when it first started, and that was quite important in my interview as well,
sort of talking about what had in society does and why we decided to start it up and be open minded.
I think my made my mistake that I made when I came out of uni was pigeonholing myself and only wanting to work in the creative arts.
And at the end of the day, my work experience was in a school, was a legal research institute, and through working in those various fields.
I sort of found out what I was actually interested in, what specific tasks I liked undertaking.
And yes, I said finally, you know your interest. No, we won't be confident in yourself.
Any questions? OK.
OK. So how is it how markets and how high did you think it was like to acquire work experience, which you not only paid?
Like it just internships while you know, why not?
Sarah. Nothing upside. Yeah, this is some, I think, quite a difficult thing, which actually I didn't mention,
but I was very lucky because I already lived in London and so I was able to live at home and complete these unpaid work.
And what experience placements, which I think is inevitable.
But one thing that I have learnt, if you live out of London,
I think a lot of museums in London quite respect your work that you're undertaking within your local museums and galleries.
If you have to move back home, I understand that that's not necessarily the case for some people.
I think working in local museums, local collections, getting involved in charity work,
showing that you're being proactive all the time is is really quite helpful when
you then get to the stage where you feel as though you can be applying for jobs, you know, going go local.
London was local for me. Why? It's. You mentioned that you feel Virginia as well.
Do you have any advice? Yeah, I'm I called up similar to Ruth.
I think being pushy in the media, direct, direct interaction with whoever is going to be employing you definitely sets a lot better than an email.
Email can be not necessarily passive, but you definitely, definitely need to push.
I would call up. That's my one big advice.
Go to actually some if you're able to as well may maybe trying to find out the offices and actually go though with your CV and give them to someone.
Might it help having that? That's an extra bit further, I think with the media sometimes.
Sometimes that helps. Yeah. He sticks to his if we have a small break now and he still back here at ten past three.
That's okay for everybody. And then we put his cigar speakers before we invite the whole panel of terrorism questions.
And I think you ties funding this. OK.
Thank you so much for coming back in. We really have to see.
Three amazing speakers. So we got to start with Katherine and Toby from Christie.
Their work is getting in and ways to do it. And I believe that needs to be this from a father, the ultimate official development agency.
He'll be talking about her work locally in the public sector, volunteering opportunity and our entire panel.
Back to you. Everyone, a lot of comments.
So, Katherine and I wish you would do everything differently to try and play for money saving money on the recruitment manager for Christie in Europe.
This is my colleague, Catherine Arnold. She's an associate specialist with the Post One Contemporary Department in London.
And I just wanted to talk to you briefly today about Christie's briefly and then obviously some
weeks when three of four when you're either in your summer holidays or once you've graduated.
So for those of you who don't know, Chris, these are the world's largest art business.
And to give you an idea of the scale, we're about 2400 people across 50 offices in 30 countries.
Last year, our revenues were about three point six billion pounds.
So it's quite a big enterprise, as you can see. And in terms of the business, we have quite a few weeks of entry for graduates.
We operate a work experience scheme, which is two weeks experience in any given department across Christie's.
It's an unpaid work experience, but it gives you gives you the department.
It gives you an opportunity to meet people and just get your name out there on a more formal level.
I guess we have a six month paid internship programme. So I guess this is more appropriate once he graduates it.
That's a great route of entry. I mean, you've got quite a few interns and you could start within the department at the moment.
It. Again, a much more embedded programme.
And you really get to see what the auction business is all around and obviously hopefully end up with a with a
longer term career that will take on about two thirds of our interns into a long term role within Christie's,
whether it be a fixed term contract or indeed, of course, a permanent role with us.
And I guess the other thing I wanted to highlight was we don't just have careers in the art departments.
Obviously, there are careers along, especially as varied as companies or highlight to you.
But there are numerous other areas of the business where you can have a really rewarding career
coming from an art history background that might well be focussed or touching our day to day,
but certainly supporting the business. So we have business managers.
I know that works in departments.
Who do you know, kind of a very beautiful trail involving, you know, planning for the sales strategy, human resources for the department.
There's a bit of fine arts in there. So an extremely broad road and one for which you don't have to have any commercial background necessarily.
There are many people who are business minded at Christie's who have come from a history of art background.
I just wanted to say, obviously, I'm here today to briefly speak to you,
but obviously take any questions you have on the day when this session's over.
I'm more than happy to have kind of one-to-one conversations about anything that might interest you or reach into Christie's.
So I guess if I had that discussion now for her to take a bit more about the actual auction department,
then we can field any questions from you after that. Okay, so, yeah, I'm Catherine.
I did I studied to Oxford, but it wasn't part of our history school because it wasn't around when I was here.
I graduated in 2006. It started 2004. So I studied social sciences to geography as an undergrad at Teddi Hall and
then went on to did my postgrad and international relations at the court hold.
And then, as I say to UCLA, I went to the dark side and they went and worked in finance for two years.
Which was, yeah, really interesting. And learning experience, but ultimately not the one that I really wanted to follow.
And I guess, yeah, as you all have, I'm sure, a real interest in a certain specific period of time in our history.
I had you know, I would. I'd always kind of followed the post-war immediate post-war 1960s art and then straight through to the contemporary.
And I kind of thought that maybe 2009 was a good time to really go back and study again and then kind of take a path will
take a career down a path that I thought that I would really love and therefore maybe at some point really excel at.
So I went to the court old did my master's degree that in contemporary art and yeah,
finally found my way into Kristie's through sort of a quite Securitas route, trying out the galleries.
First I went to the guys in gallery for a short while.
Then went to Sotheby's as an intern and then finally got offered a job at Christie's and then made the jump.
So I think as to who was saying, like the most conventional route into an auction house and suddenly to us is to kind of follow the internship path.
And I guess this is something that everyone is increasingly familiar with now because, you know, the job market is quite difficult.
Right. So the thing that is growing at the moment is contemporary art, where we've seen that in the last year.
We've had record sales both in New York in May and then again in November.
And then we had record sales in June in London. And essentially our department has really, really grown some of the other departments.
You know, the old Masters, Impressionist and modern,
they're also very large departments and have a real requirement for very skilled graduates and undergraduates like you guys, really.
So people that come in, it's not for us at the auction house.
But if you come in as an intern, you're not someone who's sitting there making coffee. That's absolutely not what we're interested in.
We don't need people to make coffee. Ever ask themselves really what we need is support, you know, pricing.
So that means going to a kind of big art prise databases and helping us sort of prepare comparative work so that we can help price things.
Valuations support sort of when we go and look at an art collection,
a large collection with lots of different artists and artworks to know kind of what the price points really should be for these artworks.
So we have our interns really like learn as they're working with us and then by process and by function of that, helping us with what we do as a job.
I guess the most essential thing, I guess as an intern and then thereafter, if you follow the specialist route, is the preparation for the auction.
Obviously, that's the kind of imitators of our business or the private sellers is becoming increasingly important.
But essentially, for me in my job on a day to day basis,
what we're kind of concerned with is finding consignments and then that whole road from guessing an artwork consigned to the sale,
then to bringing it to auction. So that really entails an awful lot of work in producing these kind of really hefty terms, these auction catalogues.
I only bought one because, frankly, I couldn't carry more than one. So that plus my other private sale catalogue.
I'm going to leave these with you guys.
But essentially what interns do then, what the junior specialists do and what you know, as you go off in your specialist.
Everyone is very busy working out the story of a painting.
So, you know, we're selling this beautiful piece, Joik, which is on the front the catalogue, but I don't know if particular easy picture to see.
That's kind of it. It's a really spectacular work, kind of estimates in the range of well, for six million pounds.
And it's, you know, the story of it.
You know who it's been affirmed by certain at a certain point this particular what was owned by Saatchi.
And then each line of provenance as you go through its history is essential to a purchaser.
So these sort of things, researching which exhibitions it's been and you can't miss an exhibition,
you need to give all the facts as they are to the person who's actually going to buy it.
And then obviously, the art history bit the bit where you're actually engaging with an artwork and explaining to a potential patch.
So why something is really as special as it is. So that's really how I started at Christie's.
I came in kind of and sort of was a bit of a new role that I'd undertaken, which was to look after all of the kind of art,
historical and I guess marketing content of these big books, if you like.
So I've worked on all the really major high value lots producing these, cataloguing extra.
And sitting there with my boss and I poring over the details of which exhibition the bacon was in in 1954 and going through old catalogues in the.
And it's really almost like you're back at school again, which is kind of funny. And yet, obviously you're telling a commercial story.
So I guess from my perspective,
why I would say it's a good option sort of going down the specialist route is that if you love the kind of smarts that you get to do,
what's your hair and what's your studying? And if you love it at Masters level and all of that kind of thing,
then you can kind of apply it to something which actually is commercial and fundamentally may give you a wonderful career,
but you still get to retain that kind of historical integrity. So to that end, because I couldn't put together a PowerPoint, saved my life,
I've put together or sort of set up some links to some of the videos we kind of do every season for the big, big lots.
It's one of the ways we secure major paintings is to provide these sort of firm special marketing materials.
So we do these fantastic films,
which really kind of if I've kind of undertaken a lot of research for something they often build into this great film story.
So I've basically pulled up a couple.
There's one Statue of Liberty by Andy Warhol, which is one of the only 3-D works which we sold in New York just recently in November.
And then the David Hockney, which is coming up. It's an early work from 1963.
So I just thought that would be quite a fun thing to look at. Plus, we have the majority of it is, as I say, like putting together this catalogue.
It takes us probably I mean, the best part of two or three, we are two or three months, less than two or three weeks, two or three months.
And it's really like it's long hours. And when if you do do an internship with us,
basically you get assigned to a sale and you become like a really key point of support for all of the team working on that sale.
So rather than making the coffee or kind of, as I said, like doing all this kind of valuations and pricing research,
but then when it comes down to capital, it also means that you're rifling through the books, trying to find these exhibitions.
You're kind of doing a bit of investigation, as it were. And once that whole process is done, lots of capital to them.
That has now been like a mini hiatus, like a tiny one week breath.
And then we really start building towards the auction, which means we start doing all of this research into who potentially might buy and who
actually has the capability of buying some of our top lots as well as the wholesalers.
So that's fair to say. You know, the different facets of our business,
you can come down the specialist room like I have and end up doing the kind of real hands on art stuff.
Or there are some roles within the department like client development,
where you become really fluent in who it is that's looking for certain paintings and you become that point of advice for the department.
And then so once we've done this bit of market research about who might have who might possibly buy a painting,
we then go to the next stage, which is really the immediate build up to the sale.
Everyone from all the international offices descends upon London or New York, as it may be.
And we sit down and really discuss like, are people really going to come through on the night?
Are they actually going to be spending that kind of money? You know, it's sort of it's it's a really it's almost like a circus atmosphere.
It's got a lot of energy. It's actually it's a lot of fun like these kind of like mini productions.
It's like we don't actually do that in-house. We have a fantastic team with peak films to come and work with us.
But all of the concepts are ours.
And like a lot of the time, I mean, you do the voiceovers for them as well if you're a specialist and you come up with the concept for it.
This one was, you know, supercold out. Jeff Koons and Debbie Harry, they do the voiceovers for us.
So that was really fun. And we did a big launch party for it. Yeah.
So I guess with our department, what's quite nice there's one company does get a lot of really great budget opportunities to do really fun
things with a great party and actually maybe in New York and there's a lot of really cool stuff that happens.
But equally, if there's one temporary is not your thing. The beauty of working in the auction house is that, you know, if you're into antique clocks.
To find watches, fine jewellery, you know, ancient manuscripts,
there are these out there are all these very sort of bespoke specialist departments with people who are completely absorbed and consumed by the work.
So they look out. So for any kind of avenue of interest, there's really kind of a place because it's not.
And we really take interns across pretty much all those departments.
Some of the very, very small ones might not. But in general, we have 99 percent of them would take internships.
So it really does cover a very broad range of interests.
So I don't know, maybe maybe everyone, if anyone has any questions or maybe I just I don't if I see these on the scientific panel and at some point.
Does anyone have any questions that we can answer for you? Yes. And ask as an intern without any training.
I mean, it is a it is a structured programme and.
You're with one department for six months.
It's not structured in the sense of following any kind of modules or having any particular steps along along that way.
You are a master in the auction process from from day one,
which I personally think is actually a better way of learning the auction business
than if you were doing some kind of modular course or some kind of exam at the end.
It is very much business as usual, and I cannot stress enough or confidence that you really are thrown in the deep end in a positive sense.
You know, you're not there doing photocopies. You're doing research or talking to the business managers, you know, is that you?
Yes. And you've got the full gamut of the auction. It's definitely a baptism by fire.
Yeah. Yeah. And our expectations of what you do if you come in.
I mean, obviously, internships are really coveted and very oversubscribed for a lot of depends on a single department.
So it's for a and it's very oversubscribed. And so when people come, we do really want them to fully engage what they're doing.
I think what's really important, though, is that so of saying we're seeing this,
the idea was that ultimately, you know, what seems to be quite siloed?
You know, you go down a curating path or a commercial path or an academic path that very rarely do people intermix.
And I think before you commit to one particular avenue, it's very sensible to kind of have an experience and see whether the auction houses for you,
see whether galleries for you curating, you know, kind of come with an informed decision.
So I think that that's quite important. Certainly, I would say by having been an intern, I learnt more on the job and nothing more subsequently.
Now, every day and every week, every auction season that I did, honestly.
I mean, the foundations and the sort of the way of thinking, if you like, was what I'd learnt from being at university.
Like that sassily gave me a very, very important framework for gay and then approaching other subjects.
But I think what you learn on the job in many ways can be just as great, if you like.
Yeah, I think I was really quite confused about what's to do, to be honest.
And I think this is not a problem for any of you see well studied art history.
I think for me, trying to become a specialist, having never studied art history, would have been a problem.
I think, you know, some people grow up with their whole lives and that maybe their parents work not and then they're very familiar with it.
But my family wasn't that way. And when I went and did my masters in our history, that was really my first degree in the was.
So I think that was quite important prerequisite.
Having said that, you know, I think that that's I mean, having studied art as an undergrad is, you know, more than enough.
And in fact, there are often places for people who haven't studied art at all.
I think, you know, it depends on your character as well.
Like, I always needed to have like a proper sounds grounding in something before I felt that I was then entitled to be able to speak about it,
if you like. So that was probably the reason I ended up doing so many degrees with people from a wide range of different subject Republican
business graduates who are pursuing business manager careers or internships and indeed is tough and said some people,
you know, have money from going to university that I've done some work. But I mean, it's it's a very broad range.
But as I said, you know, the audience we have today, obviously you guys are studying history, but that's that's obviously a great start.
Actually, we just hired a guy who was taken over my old role and who graduated from here.
In fact, she went on and did a masters at the courthouse, but only after she'd done three years in finance first.
And so, honestly, it's kind of you know, it's a very mixed bag.
Another girl that we we've taken on for our fixed term contract. She was a lawyer and has done smart history as well as I'd say that, you know,
really do say quite broadly about what it is you think you might like to do, because, you know, it's not.
It's not. You go to another career outside of art and then you can have met your way back or something.
That's not the case for a prestigious higher. Bilingual, the TV is is a rolling programme.
So there are no kind of intake periods. We'll take about 550 people in the course of a year in London for two weeks.
And that's in any given department.
And obviously, that's that's a good one for undergraduates because obviously it can be accommodated within your academic year.
There are no real pretty well, because it's you know, if you've got an interest in art, then obviously that's that's great.
But there's there's no kind of, you know, criteria that we take off against what work experience is a very open programme.
Whereas for internships we do obviously look for history.
Barbara, for example, for an auction department or business graduate for for the for the finance team.
So it's a very open programme. I mean, for us, we prefer to have people who are there for three months or four months rather than two weeks.
But by the very nature of what we do, a lot of the material that's going around that you get access to and look at is confidential.
If you're only there for two weeks,
there's every chance that after two weeks you're going to say it's on there and go off to Sotheby's to be with everything.
You've just seen our place. So that's a little bit tricky.
But of course, that means across the board and the people we take on, we trust that have you know, we trust them and that's how it goes.
I think what's really special, actually, we have an amazing group of interns now, like there's probably five or six of them.
Some of them have been now taken on to graduate trainee programmes and some of them have had their
internships extended or they've turned into paid internships and there's really college atmosphere.
So I don't know. The thing that I find so nice about being a Christi's is that it reminds me very much of having that kind of group.
I don't know. You always have it in your college or in your department or whatever it is.
It's that sense of of everyone, like helping helping each other out.
And I know it sounds a bit extreme, but when we go to print with these catalogues, it is a late night process.
We're all there like working until midnight and we work over the weekend is not this kind of thing.
And a lady who just started as my boss's assistant said it was a bit like, you know,
we were down on the beaches during the war, was like trying to get across in the rainbow.
And suppose it seems like a bit of an extreme analogy, but we are quite we're all quite close and the interns are very much part of that.
So, yeah. And you mentioned about PFC Pierce.
I mean, we might look for that if something's particularly neat.
For example, maybe working in our restitution department where early background and research is is is required,
but certainly across the business in general. I mean, obviously, it's fantastic if you've got one,
but it's certainly not something that we would ever particularly, you know, put down as a must have.
And just to clarify, something can be said to say, you know,
let's be clear or the would say in general, all out in terms all paid, we do pay our interns.
Let's just say you're I know a lot of intensive programmes on pace,
but we do have a small group of what we call research in, though, isn't unpaid interns, some of which captain referred to.
I'm in the post department. So, yeah, we try.
I mean, ultimately, like, we try and keep people on so that they don't. Yeah.
Then for the top bracket. I would say about APHC thing is that you don't need a picture to cover life as a specialist.
You don't need that if it's your own ambition and it's your desire to do that and to get further into your subject.
That's an amazing thing. You know, that's wonderful. But it's not it's certainly not needed in the commercial environment.
But I do have we have been doing what I was doing, which my girlfriend has just come from, from Oxford, has just taken on that role or whatever.
She's working with another girl that we've kind of got as a part time basis who is studying her now.
And so she's she does six weeks on deadline with us and then she goes back to the hotel and does her day in between.
But obviously, your supervisor would not be thrilled about that.
Well, I guess one last thing that's worth pointing out is obviously you've talked about the what we call programme intakes.
I work experience and internships.
But of course, you know, we take on a whole host of undergraduates every year into full time permanent roles as well.
So it's worth mentioning that obviously, you know, undergraduates can constrain to a permanent role within the business,
usually as administrator within one of the awesome departments, which sounds very generic and boring, but actually they get exposed to an awful lot.
So it's actually quite, quite good.
Well, they're the first people I was supposed to be on the way up, one of our super administrators and business managers.
She's the first person if anyone's going to be even set up a gallery,
she's the first person they take with them because she's on, you know, about all of the transport, logistics, tax implications.
I mean, she's she is the person that you need to you have any number of people who think they know a lot about it,
but not many people who are actually properly down on their skills. So also definitely not to be undervalued.
So what do to think of that, roughly how many there are four in Tennessee.
And I was also wondering, I'm guessing that the application process is quite rigorous because it of the nature.
If anything makes people stand out. Or what not to do is generally so.
So we'll take unpaid interns. We take on twice a year.
We'll take on about January and March in July.
For six months. And they tend to take on roughly 40 in those two intakes.
40. Later in a year. And for those 80 rows,
we would probably have somewhere in the region about four thousand one hundred applications in terms of the application process.
I personally don't think it is particularly rigorous. I mean, it really is just your profile and obviously an experience we have.
And then we ask you to write a personal statement about what particular interest to
you and obviously what perhaps in department you particularly like to be aligned to.
So you've got a choice of putting down three or four. Obviously with a with a first preference in terms of what makes individual stand out.
I mean, it's hard, obviously, when you're looking at things within such volumes.
I mean, the classic things are obviously, you know, people who are taking time out in the summer to go and get, you know,
even if it's just unpaid work experience in a gallery and any anything that demonstrates that they're not just pursuing an academic qualification,
that they're clearly demonstrating that this is a this is a passion and, you know, they want to get somewhere in that given industry.
So really going, you know, going outside your comfort zone and really getting any kind of experience you can.
And I'm representing that on your CV.
I think a lot of people actually will put on one kind of sentence about what I had worked Espenson last summer in a gallery.
Obviously, if we're looking for 100 cities in a given day and that's all you see,
I mean, you know, somebody else has put you know, I assisted with the cataloguing.
I have researched this. I you know, I helped with a sale.
I did sign it.
Then obviously, you're going to gravitate towards the one, as I indicated, the depth of their experience rather than just I've worked in a gallery.
So it's really kind of the way you present your experience as much as anything.
I never at least is is just great institution that as well.
Like I was looking after the first one in Tempe, internships and seeing the applications and things to that department.
And also occasionally there are jobs that are just posted up online and you're invited to apply for them without being an intern.
That's absolutely fine. And we just did that. And we had 135 applicants for one position in the end that we went through.
And I bet a lot a lot of people and read every single application.
And for me, like the things that matter to me, I mean, certainly Dadri work is wonderful.
But, you know, sometimes there is also the practicality of it.
Some people have to go. You have to go and work in a in a shop because you need to earn a salary.
And then, you know, these things are realities and totally sensitive to that, too.
And, you know, also wants to young that you also want to find out whether maybe you want to go and do be a lawyer or be a you know,
you know, an accountant or whatever it is that you want to try a few of those things out.
The fact you've got those on your CV, just because you're applying to Christi's, it's an art to leave those things off,
because ultimately, just the ability to apply yourself in a professional setting for me is really, really important.
And now, obviously, after that, you know, doing well, doing well at university,
like getting good grades did not mean writing interesting dissertation, things like that.
Like because obviously I have an interest in art. Like, I'm interested to know what you were studying and why you're passionate about it.
So there's sort of things that also jump off a senior behind us.
That's very true, because obviously we could be needing to hire somebody to work within the business is that if you have,
for argument's sake, had some kind of exposure to accountancy or whatever.
Again, that's going to stand out and say, yes, I include all professional experiences.
There's value, doesn't have to just be government. We can have a TV interview.
That can be more questions. Thank you very much, Amanda. And during that last, we shall see these new things.
It does not support here. They do feed up to the courier service.
You give me an appointment to see if we can get your CV looking like this was just described.
I don't suppose it's here on your doorstep. And this is from the Oxford Visual Arts Department agent.
Yeah. You tell him a bit more about what that is your path and thinks that they could do was physically hitting Kenya.
And it's really interesting to follow because it's kind of the extremes. I'm talking from a non-profit organisation, very artists led and voluntary.
But there's a lot of similarities in the past to get to that point and touch upon the and that kind of thing.
But just to give you a bit of background as to where I've come from.
So I studied fine arts at Oxford University and I graduate in two thousand eight.
And while I was at uni, a kind of just took as many opportunities as possible to get involved with everything that's going on.
And I can't emphasise that enough is just to get so much variance outside of university, outside the Crows.
So I'd go and find out what events were happening in Australia and kind of ask if I could work as artist assistant.
And kind of shadow the project manager.
And there's loads going on, so cheque everything out. But it does tend to be a lot more voluntary.
But just in terms of building up your CV, you're saying it's just it's really important to the final year of my course.
I took an informal internship with AVADO, which is where I am now.
And it was quite intense, arresting two full days a week for about three months.
And it was just absolute amazing because it opens your eyes up to the real world, really.
And, you know, you can hear about what's happening and hear about what these organisations do, but just to see it firsthand.
And the other big thing I'd say is it's just meeting people so important to kind of build up your contacts and create a network around you.
And then also maintain those contacts. So I don't want to state the obvious, but just, you know,
keep everyone's business card and stay in touch and just ask to be put on their mailing lists,
sign up to later mailing list, say, you know, what's going on.
I've been twice and there's someone, a website who might be helpful, which I can read at the end.
So that's how I kind of got to this point and started as a kind of project manager.
And now the arts coordinator, which is a massive growing centre, it's a bit of I.
When we were hit really badly by the funding cuts in the past two years, we lost the director's post.
So it's now predominantly managed by a board of voluntary directors,
many of whom are artists and arts professionals and also a business sentiment since I was the treasurer.
And yeah, so it's it's quite, quite a lot of every element in terms of my role.
But I was just gonna sort of run through a general statement of the organisation.
So about as a sort of umbrella organisation, I would work in for some land projects, but also in partnership with others.
So we've done a lot with the university and particularly Ruskin's students will not Oxford.
More recently, National Trust. So we kind of work on a broad range.
We've been Oxford and beyond. And we were established in 2005.
Some of you might have known that we were previously based in a gathering in
Gloucester Green when we left there in 2010 to move to a new warehouse space.
And it was just saying, yeah,
it's just a complete contrast because we've gone from this wiki purpose-built space is lighting to a really rough and ready warehouse.
And it's just absolutely incredible. Actually, what we're settling in is that when you moved in property in June,
but we've been able to just open up to many more opportunities in terms of what we're putting on for a programme and events.
We're doing lots of workshops and kind of getting artists in to take part in professional development activities as well.
So just to touch on that, I was going to refer up. Ms.
Excuse me for reading off the list.
But our main objective is to facilitate and promote access to high quality visual arts for all the residents and visitors to Oxford about poets,
artists in the development of that practise and that successful promotion to audience.
At the heart of our work. So a huge thing for us is commissioning innovative new work.
A lot of which wouldn't be artists wouldn't have the opportunity to make elsewhere in terms of physically or cost.
And we really encourage creative risk taking. Working with a really broad discipline, kind of working across different areas.
So Arts and Science Dance, Novar aims is just for artists to succeed, for professional development opportunities.
So, as I said, lots of talks, workshops, and we've got a website with references and resources on exhibiting work in galleries
and other offsite locations supported by events and related education programmes.
So going back to that site,
we worked with the foundation chieftains from the local colleges got them into the warehouse to make some site specific work,
and they had a kind of many private view at the end of that really intense
long in Coday creating and supporting artists network in the area and beyond.
And I think that's a really important thing as well as the.
It is quite easy to become very insular within Oxford and creating these links with London and seeing the bigger picture is really important.
And we we try and bring links into Oxford as well.
So we invite professional speakers to come and to give workshops and not just professional development in terms of artists,
but also ask professionals.
And we I've got a emerging curators programme, which I'd really like to if I've got time very quickly, like let's introduce,
which I hope you'd be interested in and encouraging a vibrant arts community in Oxfordshire, say,
stimulating kind of cross-fertilisation of ideas, skills sharing, knowledge, exchange and the warehouse.
You know, it's our plan to have a big hub where we have resources and space, where people can just come together and kind of share and.
Yeah, sort of experience it and learn. So, yeah,
I talked about briefly about the funding cuts and how that's quite difficult
given the current climate really being funded by Oxfordshire County Council.
That's our core funding for staff costs. The rest is or project funding and income from events.
So it's it's it's tough.
I do not want to put you off, but it's it's very tough at the moment as a lot of competition for grants and sponsorship and of the streams of income.
So it's. Which is why we're seeing a lot more kind of voluntary like groups forming some very sort of grass roots in itself.
And I feel at the moment and kind of brings me in to the nation about voluntary placements.
So I talked about myself doing an internship. We still running into a programme.
It don't link to Brooks, but we're hoping to expand so before we can talk a bit more.
But we want to do more informal kind of work experience or voluntary placements.
There's loads of areas that you get involved in.
Again, as the finances, the coming to hang show, helping to organise an event, all the professional development opportunities.
Updating the website and maintaining that resource. So there's kind of a massive range of areas to get involved if anyone was interested.
And I wanted to say too much about Programme Bullis things on our website, which people could look at to see what we're talking about to this year.
And. Just Panopto, so what does he kind of tips?
I think I've kind of gone a bit myself again just to network attend or the private is just
make sure you signed up to everything and make your connexions within Oxford and beyond.
Does it yet again? First, the Web sites on Mars, which is a really good Arts Council website,
which you're probably aware of jobs and not just send out information about jobs, internships, voluntary placements.
And it just also gives you a big overview of what's going on, what organisations are kind of out there.
And just, again, take part in as many activities outside of being as you can and really strengthen that CV.
So much experience as possible. I think it's the key that I think that's it for that moment.
But if I can just say up a pile of artist briefs for our May project,
which is a collaboration for parties art weeks, and we're opening up the warehouse for two weeks,
and we're hoping that emerging curators who kind of submit a proposal idea for an exhibition of contemporary art within the warehouse,
and we're hoping before kind of mini exhibitions, we've been one. We've got various spaces that will be open, including outdoors.
There's a massive range of work that we'd like to accept as well.
Keatings performance and sound. So if I keep that pile with me and come and see me if you're interested, or that would be great.
All right. Right. Could you put these just right up here from getting to do a set project where she volunteers at your part time alongside?
Yeah. Kind of sums up the. So the states at the moment is a part time work for bodysuits as a sustainable income.
They work elsewhere. So a portfolio which with the exact question for about things, go locally.
Indeed. The immersion curators. Yes.
Yes. You know, I was going to say that if I like to go and do like kind of a stint doing like
a volunteer curator kind of security space like that would be fantastic.
Like any job that you got to do later on, taking the opportunity and putting something together like that.
It's like, OK, it's not it's not paid work. It may not be.
You know what you may want to be be wanting to be a curator or whatever.
But then for a commercial line as well, like showing doing it organisation or something like that,
thinking about how you put together an exhibition is really essential skills, whatever you might want to do.
So whether you want to become a galleries, knowing how to put words together so that they,
you know, often an artist will dictate if you're in a gallery space how that works together.
But galleries have really fundamental parts in helping to assist with that.
And then the auction exhibition. My boss, actually, France's future. This was a curator before.
And so for him, curating the auction exhibition is so vital and will end up doing that in two weeks time over Friday night's disaster.
And Saturday morning will come in and continue tweaking it and things like that.
Expenses like that on your CV, things like endorsing it.
I mean, my personal background in this chemical sector and from our point of view, people who come in with not just ideas and academic passion,
but with real practical experience and haven't done stuff up against at short notice, an independent, it looks.
And you, sir? Join us for any last questions. We have a limited resource for any life we would like to ask.
The. Conservation. Conservation work at Christie's got to stop, it especially ends up doing just reporting on the works.
It's not a specific conservation department as such.
To be a conservator, you actually need to go through a really long and very detailed process of training.
And in fact, if you do a conservation degree,
you're not really ever going to work on a acted like on a piece of art, as it were, until probably your third year.
You'll be doing lots of practise runs that you should really be looking out like at all Boston cleaning it for dirt or something like that.
So we have external supply conservationists who come in and look at really high value works for each of us.
That's a specialist is trained to do a condition reporting to sort of troubleshoot different words,
to sort of be able to see on TV, like whether there's been restoration done, things like that.
Good in terms of active conserve conservation on the works. We would never even dare get an old ultimately where we're custodians.
Right. Like, these works passed through our hands and they do not belong to us.
So actually, without a client's consent, that something is going to go off to a real expert to get cleaned.
We're not going to be doing anything. And you just said if you can research those kind of organisations, those external conservative,
so that big names that also that we've got a lot of Birken services that we use are actually very small, independent.
You know who you've trained. And I know if what they put themselves in the industry and I use on the basis of their reputation.
So it's not that there's a big company that you could approach that they're going to freeze out this year.
And each person has its own their own speciality. So we work gives the same person for a canvas and we will do for work on paper.
You know, we will give same person for sculptures. We will do all on canvas.
You know, it's each person has their own distinct things. Same photograph photographs you can do.
Just extend that. I mean, Holly, for the PNH, you have a team in hell.
So do you use an extra freelancers? Yeah, we do. We have a we have an in-house conservation team, which I absolutely love going into.
I loved making artworks before I came to university. And going into a conservation department is like going into an art studio that's clean.
I you it to really you know, we have already an in-house conservation team that we range from.
Textile conservation is an enormous department of the V.A. because we've obviously got one of
the biggest collections of textiles within within the U.K. and within each specific department.
They range from textiles to metal work to sculpture to pay per two books to painting.
And the list goes on and on. But within those separate departments, they've also got mounting departments.
So I don't know. I keep on going on about what it will cost you because that's just been obsessed with the last year.
But each week, I don't know if anyone's managed to go to see a Hollywood costume,
but each one of the about one hundred and twenty costumes that we've got in there has been individually
mounted specifically and tailored towards the conservation needs of that individual costumes.
There is an absolutely massive amount of work that goes into each one.
So I spoke to someone in textile conservation. Each each costume takes about to mount about four days.
So it's a very, very long process. So you coming back to what you are saying about the specific sort of specialist training?
It is a quite a long process of training. You go to do the questions you have with her.
Give me that. You said you had the concept.
It's an independent it's an independent film team. It's called Peak Films.
That really fantastic. They did was the Channel four.
And they did work for the teams, the two girls.
And they take actually they take interns as researchers and kind enough planning.
So they really are so fantastic.
And it's not very easy if you don't work in a specific field of art to kind of necessarily get a concept of a painting.
And these guys just do seamlessly. And that translates to.
So, yeah, that's kind of if that kind of idea is interesting to you, that I would suggest you let them off the show.
And that's quite a good strategy, actually, when you're looking at.
We really love to work in the mind that website and see who are these names that they're using.
I'll take this. There's a whole peripheral industry attached to where you want to be.
There could be. I mean, once we looked at it, it's just it's fun.
There's more to come. Well, the specialist, you see, that's the thing, is that so for my job, I'm sure.
I think this is the most your job in the BNA are actually mine.
My job started out as being that research person, the kind of research specialist who would go back to first principles,
knowing about being been educated in our history, to then think about the story and of each painting.
And it's really out of like, for example, the David Hockney, which I had a link to, as you can see on our website.
It's a really, really cool painting from 1963, which was actually on Long-Term Loan, Five Years of the Tate.
And that's now coming to auction. And it's a really fun story.
I mean, Hockney had been obsessed with ancient Egypt and Egyptian and, you know, 1963 was on his Taylor Ditto Cleopatra film.
And, you know, it was really of the moment, you know, it was liquid jack, black eyeliner, all that kind of stuff.
And he kind of been obsessed with that since the early 60s. And at the Royal College of Art.
And so he he was reading the poetry of Constantine Gadhafi.
He was he had gone to the parking lot museum, was obsessed with the freeze there.
And he came and he started doing these very expressionist style paintings of Egypt and mummies, things like this.
And then he got commissioned by David Silvester to go with the Sunday Times to
Egypt to go and undertake these these drawings of Egypt for the first one.
The first colour suppliments the Sunday Times. And he came back with his whole suite of drawings and then JFK got assassinated.
And so none of them actually made it into the newspaper or into the magazine, in fact, because, you know, the news is all over the place.
And so he then increased his one big canvas, which is the one that we're selling.
And it was with the proceeds of that first major show, Kasman Gathering, that he then made it to California,
which is the beginning of the story there, the big splash like all of this kind of stuff.
Well, there's really seminal 60s works and his love affair with with the states.
So that kind of like having spent time researching the painting, having, you know,
really got to get to grips with it really and sort of seeing the transition of his early style through this work,
which was selling then into the California style.
You start to build up this really wonderful story, which is what I gave and spoke about with the film crew and the film crew.
They were like, okay, cool. So it's kind of we're talking Egypt. We're talking like moving pictures.
We're talking about the transition to Hollywood, like L.A. or this kind of stuff.
And that's how they came up with the concept for the film, which I which is awesome. So you should definitely look it up online.
But, you know, we have a few lines of the Cavafy poem that's being read out at the beginning, and it's quite atmospheric.
So really, the ideas start in our departments,
the film team of people who take our ideas and they translate into the moving images, which are quite effective.
So, yeah, it's kind of a specialist Orfa. I'm excited.
There are just to add to that briefly, though,
obviously a sense of kind of creative team and a central marketing team to kind of support the departments and the delivery of that.
But as Catherine quite rightly said, obviously the idea is very much stem from the specialists themselves.
It's a. There's no question that would extend our language skills and consider them useful or absolutely necessary in some cases.
Any communication with. With with Chris, these are certainly lots of roles where language is a prerequisite.
But by the same token, you know, there are lots of roles where where it isn't.
It really depends on obviously what department you are. For example, the Russian department, you know,
pretty much you have to have Russian language skills because a lot of buyers aren't very good at speaking English.
So you really have to communicate when the mother tongue.
So it really depends on where you end up in the business for us.
I think that would reflect that will reflect us as well.
For example, in the theatre department, because, well, we collect objects which come from you, which stem from the UK.
At the beginning, our collection was started in by Gabrielle and Tovan was specifically designed to collect performance within London and the UK.
Languages aren't necessarily something that we look for, but there are certainly examples of times when they are incredibly helpful,
especially, for example, if you're doing an exhibition in collaboration with another gallery or another collection within Europe.
And then sometimes you can do exhibition exchanges with those and then in those cases there can be really helpful.
So I think language skills are quite specific to reflect.
It's just effects of what you're going to go and do project wise. So I you think it's interesting, the working location you mentioned,
it wasn't a requisite in any way for you to know that everybody outside with Italian.
Yes. By but everyone else. Everybody out there. Well, yes. In the job descriptions.
But it wasn't in the job description. For my role, they specifically wanted someone who was in the school.
So it wasn't as important. And you might have everything.
That's really interesting here. I've noticed in all departments, it depends when we're trying to build up a certain competence,
like in like when I was applying for jobs and in the contemporary department, we didn't have many German speakers at the time.
Several wanted somebody so German.
I don't speak German, but I ended up doing a role which was so essential that I spoke English and was able to write in English.
And so, you know, fiche role there is a specific prerequisite.
I would say I mean, often foreign languages do help, but most of my Polish speaks French.
So if you're a French speaker. Probably not. That doesn't really differentiate you, sir.
Yeah. Luck of the draw, I think. Oh, yes.
Yes. Well, as you know is our last question, if I can.
I know his right to speak is to join us for Spycatcher at 5:00 so quickly that we come to grab them,
if you'd like to individual some of the DNA you see with your experience and also involved.
Um, I, I sort of started out, uh, food production company whilst I was here,
and I was the producer and sort of artistic director, if you like, of that company.
We did a number of productions over the years that we were active.
And then when we all got when we all got work and left university, we had to stop the company.
But I'm really quite, quite basic skills within that.
I mean, obviously, all these projects you do at university are small, but it's the skills that they equip you with.
So with me as a producer, I was managing budgets, although they're small,
at least I was used to working with them and I was used to understanding what funding I needed if I could source it from anyone.
And doing basic things like applying to J.C. Ole's for for for funding, I mean, but certainly for me anyway, it was very helpful.
Being able to know exactly what proportion of your budget was going to be coming
from external funders and how much you actually had to raise and raise you herself.
Finding out your break evens for ticket sales, managing all of your C allocations and all the more logistical planning for that was very helpful.
And then for me. I guess my return to theatre was because I had such an interest in the actual production making process of it itself.
So I was very interested in how text went to be something visual and something that was experienced by by audience members or was quite.
And I think because of that, I'm sort of interpretive development that that's why I became interested in in theatre.
Also with, um, with our history, with, as I mentioned,
the other thing I was involved with there was the activist society when it started out sort of out here.
So understanding that art is a collaborative thing and you don't just necessarily work with artists or fine artists,
but you can work with designers, you work with filmmakers, you work with a lot of different people with very creative brains and theatre.
For me, anyways, it brings quite a lot of those those things together.
And that's what I would I was interested in collaboration, so that's why I went.
You see here how these interests that we've kind of grown up with has morphed into very, very different careers.
I'd like to join the EU in a huge octopus because everyone.