Funding - Challenge

As I am working with another class mate, Alison Mckeith, we are splitting the funding in half. As the gallery we have looked at costs around £400 to exhibit for a week and we do not have the funds for this, we will be setting up a 'gofundme' web page.

This enable you to set up a funding page, describing what you would like funds for, in which the general public can voluntarily donate to you. The site is linked up to your bank account and after a period of time, any money donated will be transferred to your account.

We can share the web page link to our social media sites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter so that friends, family and friends of friends can see the page and so we have a wider audience of people who will possibly donate. I feel with the help of friends and family we will be able to get the funds that we need to hire a gallery of our choice.

The go fund me that we have set up:

This is the description we added:

"""We are students at New College Nottingham. We are currently studying for our final year of our photography degree. As we are in our final year, we have been given the opportunity to write our own project briefs to fit around our own ideas. This has given us the chance to go ahead with a project we have been wanting to do for a long time which is to create two series of images that are based around the subject of mental health. This is something we both feel strongly about and we feel that we can create images that make people understand the feelings and emotions of ‘invisible’ illnesses. Illness that many do not understand. 

Idea 1 (Alison Mckeith) - The subject areas surrounding mental health hit close to home for me as I have suffered in some areas over the past two years and even now, in many ways I still battle with them every day. I want to use the photographs that I take to only help other to understand these, but also because I think that art is a great way to escape from the feelings inside your own head. My images will be based on Disney characters as I think that this will help gain views from the younger generation who I feel suffer in silence as they don’t really understand the thoughts and feelings they may have.

Idea 2 (Shannon Jaques) - My aim is to give people a better understanding of the thoughts and feelings surrounding Depression and Anxiety. I would like to be able to give a clear visual understanding of the everyday struggles that are faced with these illnesses. 
Both of our images will be taken in black and white. The majority being taken with film cameras. 

The money from this fund will be used to cover the cost of the venue hire as this will be between £300 and £400. Alongside this we will be purchasing materials like chemicals, equipment, photo paper and film as well as paying for printing. The money will also be used for any travel expenses as we aim to put on smaller exhibitions with charities at support groups and rehabilitation centres. 

We will also be looking to sell our prints after the exhibition to donate to supporting charities. Any small contribution will help us on our way with this project.
Thank you.

Help spread the word!"""

Surface Gallery Proposal - Challenge ADD PICS OF THE TEMPLATE

One of the challenges faced with this module was creating a proposal that would be given to the gallerys we apply for, firstly, the Surface Gallery. We had never written a proposal for anything before other than proposing our ideas to our tutors for previous projects in which wasn't as formal as a gallery exhibition proposal. It was easier than expected as we had a template to follow:

http://www.surfacegallery.org/hire/

Before we send off the proposal we will add a short cover letter acknowledging the name of the manager/person we are sending the proposal to.

Creating a good proposal
http://www.artbizblog.com/2014/07/exhibition-proposal.html

This article states that you should ask the venue if they have a specific format in which their emailed response was black and white which fitted perfectly with our idea so we carried on to write the proposal, it says you shoul tell them exactly what you are offering so we put our ideas in to words and made it kind of brief so we didn't ramble on. We both had less than a couple of hundred words which we thought looked good enough.

The gallery had a specific format in which to follow to write the proposal and so we followed this to create the proposal below.

Our finished proposal

This exhibition is for a professional practice brief given to us to complete on our BA (Hons) Digital Media Design course based in Nottingham and New College Nottingham. The focus of this brief is create our own brief and to find a client in which we are to produce a professional standard of work for in our chosen industry. As photographers we have chosen to branch out in to the creative sector as freelance photographers. This is why we have chosen to produce work for exhibition as the client/s would be the gallery staff that accept our proposal as they would be expecting work for a specific completion date to a professional standard.

This exhibition will be based around the idea of mental health and the effects that people suffering/recovering from certain mental health problems face. Mental health is very misunderstood as the illnesses people suffer from are often looked at as invisible. We will both be making a separate collection of images for exhibition based on our own views, inspirations, experiences and research.

Idea one (Alison Mckeith):

My idea is to incorporate the original Brothers Grim and Disney fairytales in to human forms to represent mental health disorders along with drug and alcohol abuse. This has been a project that I have wanted to explore for a long time as I have a great love for Disney and the ideas behind the hidden meaning to fairy tales. I feel that this links with the idea of mental health as there is a dark side to these fairy tales like emotions felt by anxiety and depression. I feel that by using Disney and fairy tales I will reach out to the younger generation as well as the older generation.

Idea two (Shannon Jaques):

My idea is to show the thoughts and feelings surrounding mental illnesses, Anxiety and Depression, to give people a better understanding. These images will be in black and white. They will show the associated feelings of stress, claustrophobia, sadness, psychosis and worry by incorporating posture, movement, environment and expression.

Film and digital will be used to give us a challenge. At the present we are undecided on the exact size of our prints for each project as we will be experimenting during our proje

Potential Galleries

- One Thoresby Street
- Backlit
- Bohunk Institute
- Bonington Gallery
- City Arts
- Nottingham Lakeside Arts
- Lace Market Gallery
- Broadway Gallery
- New Art Exchange
- Nottingham Contempary
- Nottingham Castle Art Gallery
- Primary
- HUTT Collective
- Mrs Rich's Cupboard
- TG
- Surface Gallery
- Syson Gallery
- Arts and Crafts at Malt Cross
- Sherwood Community Arts Centre

Mood boards

I created 2 mood boards to help show the kind of idea I have in mind for my series of images

My Idea - Mental Health

I want to take images based around the theme 'mental health'.You can't always tell when an individual is suffering from a mental illness so I would like to show the thoughts and feelings surrounding it by expressing emotion in a series of images.

I would like to express the negative effect that anxiety and depression have on people by showing emotion by capturing facial expression, movement and environment in a series of images. These images will be taken in black and white or turned black and white in post production. I am unsure yet as to whether I am going to use film but this would be a good challenge to face. I also have ideas to use a polaroid camera to add images alongside my main images.

I was thinking of taking a series of images showing negative emotion and then taking a series of images which are general portraits of the face showing a positive facial expression like a smile to contrast the other images. This would fit with my idea as the exhibition name idea is 'what the eyes cant see' so I will be showing the person in the portrait and then their hidden feelings in the negative emotion image which will be a creative portrait.

All of the images will be in black and white but if I use a polaroid camera, the images from that will be in colour.

Brief for creative work - Professional Practice

Photography showing thoughts and feelings around the subject of mental health in a creative manner.

Mental health covers a range of subjects like alcohol abuse, depression and psychosis. Many mental illnesses have effects that are hard to put in to words so thoughts and feelings towards the subject can be expressed better artistically.

Many charities are set up for people suffering/recovering from some form of mental health problem. These charities help these people deal with negative thoughts and feelings and discuss their situation with them/in groups. They can encourage positivity and change for the better.

The aim is to produce images that relate to the people suffering/recovering and to also show people an insight to the thoughts and feelings of the people suffering/recovering from these illnesses that don't show obvious symptoms, often referred to as 'invisible illnesses'.

Specific requirements:

- Research previous photography related to mental health, look at the styles and formats.

- Research different subjects related to mental health including mental illness, alcohol and drug abuse and charities available to help with these.

- Choose a specific subject from this research to focus on and further investigate, adding thoughts and opinions.

- Plan how you would want to photograph these thoughts and feelings of the specific subject and show your influences.

- Produce a series of black and white images for exhibition, you can use film or digital.

Professional Practice - Creative Industry

" The UK’s definition of the creative industries - ‘those industries that are based on individual creativity, skill and talent with the potential to create wealth and jobs through developing intellectual property’ " - http://creativecities.britishcouncil.org/creative-industries/what_are_creative_industries_and_creative_economy

As I prefer the creative side of photography rather than the commercial I will be creating a series of images to exhibit in a gallery rather than working for a company. Although many people go on to work for a company as a career to earn money, this is not the route I want to take as I enjoy the creative side much more as I can express myself and my ideas in more depth.

I will continue with the creative work side by finding opportunities to exhibit images and post my work on sites like Behance, Flickr, Lensculture and Instagram. I will also enter competitions on sites and in newspapers. This will allow my work to get noticed by a wider audience and other creative professionals who may take an interest and offer paid work like asking me for a series of images for a specific brief for an exhibition.

By following the creative route. I will be always be able to enjoy the work that I do, even if I am given a set brief I can still add my own expressive twist to the work.