Post-Workshop Thoughts - W15

 Now that the main portion of the placement is over I want to take some time to reflect on how it's been going so far. I think that doing this will help me analyse in the future how successful the placement has been was overall.

In the beginning, when I was trying to secure my placement it was quite stressful as I changed my mind on what I wanted to do. I also felt the pressure of working with an established organisation as I felt nervous that I wasn't qualified enough. In the beginning, I definitely didn't want to do a workshop as I know I struggle with public speaking and being in a leadership position. I also had never considered workshops something that I wanted to do in my career after University. Although I think I want to be a gallery artist, I decided to make my main focus of the placement zines, as I have been interested in them since last year's Zine Project workshop. I thought that it would beneficial to try something that did not involve painting so that I could at least have the experience of trying something new. 

I feel quite lucky that Jess made it clear that she would be happy working with me as at that point I felt quite lost in what I wanted to do. I think I should have from the start spent more time thinking about what I wanted to do as it lead to a long period of time where I was just lost. I should have thought about this as a trial for my future instead of as an attempt to do something different and tried to put on my own exhibition. This would have been closer to what I want to do after uni.

Despite this, I believe that the placement was a success as I was able to help run the workshop and we got some really creative zine pages out of it. I think working with the Zine Project and specifically Jessica Longmore has been a wonderful experience where I was able to push myself and get over something that was quite nerve-wracking for me.

I was able to learn a lot about zine-making and the risograph machine. It is safe to say that I am in love with the way the risograph prints and would be more than happy to make some risograph prints in the future. Moreover, I was able to learn what it takes to be a lecturer and run a room full of students. It truly did make me very anxious but it is an experience that I would not be able to get in a lot of other places.

I learned that I definitely enjoy working behind the scenes. I enjoyed the planning aspect of the workshop a lot. As well as, making posts for Instagram and organising what had to be done. I think that jobs like this would be something that I would pursue in the future. I feel a lot more comfortable and I think that organising is something I excel in. The overall experience has been very useful in finding these things out about myself. I think that this workshop has shown me that I could do with developing my public speaking skills a bit more as, while I might not have to do any more workshops, I will most likely, as an artist, have to speak about my work in front of a group of people. Moreover, I should believe in myself more as while I will probably always be nervous, it does not come across when I am speaking.

I think that if I were to do the workshop again I would have had more meetings with Jess and given myself more time as in the week running up to the workshop it seemed very stressful and like I almost didn't have enough time to finish everything. If I were to give advice to anyone taking over the Zine Workshop in the future it would be: to plan thoroughly but expect there to be changes to that plan. The workshop environment changes quickly depending on the needs of the participants and not everything goes to plan because of this. However, it is overall a very rewarding experience.