Where's the bread and butter?- Employability in creative arts

"Where's the bread and butter?" Our Big Question and focus point for the first Connecting Class at Hereford College of Arts. #CClasses is a pioneering teaching method for the creative arts designed by Jonathan Worth (who probably explains it better on his website than I can here) and HCA is one of a small handful of institutions taking part at the moment.

The class took place last week and was a truly unique experience. A small group of us came together on Friday morning to watch a 20 minute preprepared video relating to our question, tweeting notes as we went. The twist here is that video was on line and so we all watched it on individual devices. The idea of this sounded a little odd to me to begin with however, I feel that it worked well as it meant we could watch it in our own time, pausing it and revisiting parts as we needed to. 

After a half an hour break we had a seminar discussing our notes. Admittedly, I didn't say a huge amount during the discussion but I found it interesting to listen to the conversation. We concluded the session with the creation of our own theory which we've called "The bread and butter theory of employability in the visual arts", placing the maker in the middle surrounded by a Venn diagram of quality, communication and opportunism. I think that's something to be proud of.