Forums » Smalltalk » Work Experience (pls send help)

i should be relaxing on my birthday but i just cant-

So, I'm in england. and in the UK, we do a thing called Work Experience where you take a one - two weeks off of school to go work/assist in a placement which, in my school, you have to find and contact yourself. I have to find somewhere by the 23rd of march which, in reality, isn't actually a lot of time to find and confirm a placement.

I want to find a placement which in some way corresponds to ART.

I am mainly an art student as I spend a lot of my time doing it. I want to find some sort of art career to do when I'm older (and I've found an official Art University I plan to go to) so I want to use this work experience to help with getting used to the setting that I could be working in once I've finished Uni.

Problem: I have no clue where to start.

I don't want it to be purely design such as website design; I want somewhere where I can see artists working and/or talk to artists and ask them about what it's like to be an animator or an illustrator.

Any suggestions or ideas would be helpful. I know it's hard to give exact details because my city isn't public information, but even suggestions of general ideas are helpful and needed at this point.

We had the same thing when I was in school. Back then, I wanted to make jewelry, so I contacted jewelry stores in somewhat close proximity to me, and asked them if they had their own workshop and if they could take me in for a month, which was the amount of time we had to do. Eventually, I found one who'd take me (:

I don't know much about art, but if I was in your shoes, I would call either some artists that do what you might want to do, some agency that handles them, or maybe a museum or gallery. You can maybe also try with the university you want to attend, and hear if you can join a teacher/professor in the field you want to be in. It can be a bit scary to pick up the phone and (seemingly) randomly call people, but it's probably the way to go. You can also send e-mails to the places you're interested in, but you're more likely to get a fast reply/a reply in general if you call them. Best of luck to you!

You might try asking teachers where previous students interested in the arts - especially the types you're wanting to check out - have gone. Those places would have the added bonus of having dealt with students before, so they might be better equipped to work with you.

You could also try contacting some art schools and asking about the places their graduates have found jobs at, or asking about the backgrounds of the teachers.

Animation can be a difficult one because some much of it is done by just a few companies, but it's still worth looking into if any are near enough, even if they're pretty little. (That also makes it and game design pretty tough to break into.) Animation (and game design, video or otherwise) tends to require big teams doing lots of different jobs, so there should be a variety if things to check out.

For design studios, try reviewing the stuff they produce. Some have quite the variety, and some have specialties. It's not so unusual to need some drawing skills.

Meanwhile, I kinda wish I'd looked closer at some of the more "physical" areas, such as fashion design, interior design (design, not just decorating), maybe architecture, etc. These still employ sketchers/drafters for coming up with ideas, may involve creating physical models of the thing, etc.

And... you could also try checking out folks who have been successful at craft fairs. That sort of thing tends to require you to get really good at the business side, but it offers a lot of freedom, especially if you get to a point where you can pay others to do the parts you have the biggest problem with (be that finances, customer service, whatever).

Thank you for the suggestions c:

Small.update: turns.out I actually only have until the February half term to secure a placement which is in less than a month so yay. But.I.did ask my art teacher about previous students and she mentioned that she has contact with her friend who works in a popular and decent community arts place in town here, so she's going to get into contact with her and recommend me to her, and then we'll take it from there. If that fails on me, I do now have quite a long list of.possible placements that I can fall back on now.

Hooray! \o/