During a small peer session today at university, we were encouraged to talk about our own work as a way of building on our pitches to the industry. We were told to recreate a brief encounter with a future client for example a commissioner or a curator, we then had to pitch our own works in that brief encounter of a number of minutes.
We started by jotting down a brief overview of the series of work that we wanted to talk about during the brief encounter, or "Elevator Pitch" as we called it to emulate a short talk in an elevator. After we jotted down our initial notes and ideas, we started to pitch ourselves to a peer in a one-to-one situation. The person we pitched to then gave feedback of the timed 1 minute pitch and I then edited and modified my pitch to further develop it. We repeated the pitch and modify process 3 or 4 times to different people, all one-to-one. Finally we had to pitch our finally modified pitch to the full class (around 12 people), taking into mind that we had developed the pitch from the initial notes that we made.
This was a great workshop which really helped me to define my own work, or at least the set of work that I talked about in the pitch. I also took great advice from the people who I pitched to which really helped me to be able to talk to others about my work. I now feel very confident for when I bump into a practitioner or curator. I would also feel comfortable pitching to any other kind of future employer or any one who would want to hear about my work and interests.
Briefly, the set of work that I talked about during my pitch was that of a set of images which focusses on the praise of metal work engineers through portraiture.
Having worked in the metalwork industry part time for over 5 years, I began to really appreciate the skills of the engineers that I worked around. I am currently creating a set of portraits to praise the work of these skilled craftsmen.
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