AD5804 - Silver Award workshop

Since the last year I obtained the Bronze Award, one of my academic goals of this second year is going further and obtaining the Silver Award, so today I went to the first event.

Peggy, from the Future Plan team, run the workshop and introduced us to the process of completing the Silver Award, focusing in particular on the skills we need to develop.

From this list of skills, we need to choose three different ones which are most relevant to our practice and in which we are not confident yet. The aim to this assignment is to identify our weaknesses and turn them into our strengths.

Peggy said that the skill from the list that the majority of students tend to avoid is the "Intercultural & boundary spanning skills", this is absolutely a crucial ability but it may need an extra effort and commitment to be developed, people are generally "scared" by making the commitment to develop this one.

Since I am pursuing a career as a documentary photographer, I believe that the three most crucial skills from this list are:

-Communication

This is the key of any artistic field, we want to communicate something. As documentary photographers, our biggest ambition is telling stories. "Communication" is crucial in every step of our work, such as: finding contacts, communicating with clients, communicating with subjects, and, of course, transmitting a message to our viewers.

-Intercultural & boundary spanning skills

As documentary photographers, we have to deal with an incredible variety of people from very different backgrounds and belonging to different cultures. We have to be able to communicate and collaborate with all of them, especially with our subjects we want to do the extra effort in order to understand and consequently represent them.

-Organisation

When I think about the importance of organisation for a photographer, I like to visualize the list of everyday duties that Paul wrote for us:

Given these premises, it is obvious how organisation is key for any photographer, if you are not organised you cannot go far.

Since these three skills are integral part of my practice and personal background, I am quite familiar with them and I believe I should focus on improving other skills with which I am less confident.

For this reason, I have chosen:

- Teamwork and collaboration

- Analysis, problem solving and decision making

- Innovation & Enterprise

In the next second term I really want to get involved in different projects and push my practice further. One project I am very excited about is the African Diaspora and Windrush documentary, this photography project will consist in taking portraits and telling the stories of women refugee from the African Diaspora based in Cheltenham and Gloucestershire. I will do this project collaborating with a course mate and it will turn into an exhibition. I believe that this experience has an incredible potential for my future career and it will give me the opportunity to challenge the skills I mentioned above.

The final part of the Silver Award process consists in performing an interview in which we give proof of the skills we committed to develop.

Peggy gave us several tips about being successful in an interview.

First of all, the question you need to be able to answer through a job interview is:

Can you actually do the job?

In order to evidence our skills, the S.T.A.R. system comes very helpful:

However, the most important part is actually missing from the scheme, and is: Evaluation.

In fact, the "perfect answer" is not the "perfect outcome", but showing that you have learnt the most.

Your aim is not showing how great you are, but that they need you.

Always tell the truth.

The last part of the workshop was dedicated to CVs.

Here some notes:

- Always use the invert chronological sequence (most recent jobs first!).

- If you have more recent experiences that are less relevant, you put them in different sections. Remember: you tailor the sections!

There are two questions from EVERY employer you need to reply:

1 - Why YOU?

2 - Why US?

The first question must be answered in your CV, while the second one is answered in your Covering Letter.