Tutorial #1

29/10/25

Tutorial with Jonathan

Things discussed:

• How does my teaching work impact on my practice? I am not sure that I always follow the advice that I readily give students: be kind to yourself, praise progress, be realistic in your expectations etc. perhaps the most important of these is to be willing to try new things and perhaps have fun.
• We discussed the fact that I am very busy with my exhibition prep at the moment but that there is still the space to think about these things. I said that, in this spirit, I have signed up to an animation workshop that a friend is running.
• What do I want to get from the MA. I have thought about this a lot. I am hoping to interrogate my practice and try to work out what a sustainable and coherent practice might look like for me.
• I talked about the fact that my current method of working is very ordered with a clear process that I tend to follow – research>experimentation>synthesis. This works for me, but I think that the MA is a context in which this can be tested.
• This led to a conversation about risk aversion and risk management in my approach to making. Jonathan asked if those qualities were innate or learned and I think that we concluded probably innate, leading me to being good at jobs where risk management is required. We also discussed whether risk management is necessarily a bad thing. Probably not, but certainly something that can be questioned in the context of an MA.
• Performative self-interrogation and my keenness to avoid this.
• Time management/ project management as strengths
• What does it look like when I am working at my best? I think that sometimes I don’t know. I am a hard worker, but my productivity and my most interesting work do not always coincide. Sometimes you don’t know that you are working at your best at the time.

Next Steps:

• Get the exhibition work made.
• Start stress testing my current MOW. In this spirit I am going to try and make some quick, unplanned pieces for the exhibition. This makes me nervous!
• Have some fun. I am always saying this to students but I am not sure that I always give myself the same permission.