Student Mentor

I have had the opportunity to work with the Royal Standard group with the first year fine art students as a student mentor. This is a great experience for me to get involved with to gain knowledge on art groups outside of the university and working in a proffesional environment and as I worked with the Royal Standard last year in the same module, I can relate well with the project and hopfully help the students with there works and ideas for the upcoming exhibition.

Yesterday morning I met up with Rick Creed and two members of the Royal Standard group where we disscussed plans and whats expected in the project. A theme of 'Radical' has been set for the exhibition, getting the students to become involved and think more so about the area that they are working in; creating a debate with different opinions and interests. After the sharing of notes and Ideas, we met up with the group of first years working on the project where we sat and discussed what each individual wanted to achieve from the project, each idea was different which was interesting; leading to a disscussion on what everyone thought 'radical' meant. I took this opportunity to get to know the students a little, taking the time to listen to what they had to say and answering the questions they were keen to ask. Getting a little more involved we each individually spoke about what we are interested in and the art we are working on at the minute; setting five minutes each to show us around their spaces and what they hope for their development. This was really interesting to simply listen to, just like our groups in the second year, the individual works are so very different, creating different opinions and making it easier to share ideas.

I will be meeting this group once or twice a week to discuss the works and plans of the students; whilst sharing my own ideas and then later look more so into the exhibition space and how the works will be presnted. I am deffinately excited about this opportunity and am looking forward to getting more involved with the organisation and meeting more people working in the art industry; it will also be interesting to see if anything has changed from when I exhibited my work for the project last year.