The Lecture Programme

Before I delve into this year's lectures in a bit more detail, I figured I'd have a little chat about them as a whole.

Compared to last year, the lectures were at another level. In itself that's really not much of a statement, as I was a long way from impressed with last year's batch. This year however was another story. All three lecture sections did their jobs well. They all had their genuinely interesting moments. Some more often admittedly, but all of them were good.

Allison's lectures dealt with the fairly general topic of art practice, and continued from last year's section. As the best of last year, these have continued to be interesting, detailing some really interesting elements of the art world. Despite not broadening my outlook on art as much as was possibly intended, the lectures have opened my eyes to several new artists. In particular her lectures on photography were surprisingly fascinating, even though I'm not the biggest fan of the medium. It's just so interesting to hear how these people work and their motives and context around it. And that really capitalises the parts of her lectures I appreciate the most: how she portrays the artists as real people. The way she introduces each artist before the work is fantastic and adds a lot of flavour to their work. It really helps to sell work that's sometimes not all that impressive at first look.

Next up is Pete. His lectures were a whole lot of something new. And really appreciated. Pete tackled the business side of things and these are probably the most useful lectures we've had here. They detail how to actually survive in the art world which is something SERIOUSLY useful, epecially with the way the industry is at the moment. I have learned so many really important things from these lectures. He's told us more about placements than anybody else, including the best ways to get them. he's responsible for my insane CV ideas too. Well, for giving me them at least. His lectures have been hugely effective at giving me a bit of a confidence boost about the industry. It's still a terrifying thought to go out into the art world but at least I know more about what to expect now.

And finally comes Spencer. The big curveball of the lecture programme, Spencer zigzags from topic to topic over the weeks and it might get annoying if most of them weren't fairly interesting. And quite a lot of fun too. Especially towards the end of the year, the lectures started going in some really odd directions. A lot of them ended up being really good though. Like, I think most of his best lectures came from around then. There was the awesome one on the gender imbalance in animation. And the one about all the covers of Crash. There have been some good 'uns.

Sooo...onto some of the best bits...beecause I really do need something to put into the PDF slides.