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Working at Summer School

As an outreach ambassador, I often work at workshops run by UAL Insights, including summer school. It's always an enjoyable experience, and I often come away having learned a lot and feeling inspired to create. I enjoy getting the chance to work with students who will eventually be applying to university. From experience, I know how valuable it can be to hear first hand what the experience of applying and actually being at university is like, so I find it rewarding to be able to offer my advice. 

This year's summer school was slightly different, more focused on graphic design (with small elements of illustration) rather than equally weighted. I was asked to help out for a couple of days to push the illustration side. Although of course graphic design and illustration do overlap considerably, some students felt the illustration side was a bit lacking, and so I stepped in to help answer questions about studying illustration. 

Photography and Long Exposure Workshop
My first day was a bit of an unusual one. It was very hot weather, and we spent the whole day in the dark, working with light to create some very strong long exposure photos. It was a nice break (and a bit of a shock) to be able to go outside at lunchtime and sit in the sun. I really enjoyed this workshop, as it was something I didn't know much about. The photos the students produced were extremely strong, and it gave us the difficult challenge of having to choose the strongest to get printed ready for the exhibition. 

Interactive Drawing Workshop
The last day of the summer school was hectic as usual, with lots crammed into one day. It started with an interactive workshop exploring drawing, movement, performance and interaction. There is definitely a strong connection between performance and graphics/illustration, and having just completed a project involving performance I was looking forward to the workshop. The students had to draw using a graphics tablet, their drawing being projected on a wall. Other students were invited to stand in front of the projection, and become part of the drawing process, either through standing still and being traced, or leading the drawing themselves through movement. 

Final Exhibition
Helping to set up the final exhibition is always fun. It was a good chance for me to be able to see the work the students created during the beginning of the week. It was a bit of a challenge for me because I wasn't familiar with a lot of the work because I was only there for two days, however I helped wherever I could. At the beginning of the week, the students explored conditional design, choosing rules for themselves and creating an electrical tape drawing to follow these rules. For the final exhibition, we decided to reproduce this but on a larger scale. We set some rules for ourselves, each picked a colour of tape and started sticking, making sure to follow the rules. It was great to see the piece grow, however the heatwave did not make it easy for us as the tape kept unsticking from the walls. It was interesting for me to experience the hanging of an exhibition from a graphic design point of view. I found it was a bit more precise, and thought was put into some kind of branding or a way to get the audience into the space. Unfortunately I wasn't able to take many pictures because I was so busy working. 








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