Student Placement, by Jasmine Devlin, May 2013

As a student studying, working and living within the art world, Creative Industries are a very important place to be involved. As part of my second year course at York St John University, we are required to find placement somewhere within the ‘Creative Industries’, particularly a place where we feel our career aspirations may lead.

My practice is very much Fine Art based, concentrating on installation work which provokes thoughts and experiences within the viewer. I straight away saw a connection between working with different artists and creative groups to support their projects and my own ideas and work. This placement and connection with Caroline and Luxi will, I think, be a very beneficial long lasting and important one.

I was introduced to Caroline Pearce through a mutual friend, Artist Francesca Hudson, and was met with great enthusiasm and exciting ideas for placement opportunities.

Being a manager and producer working across many art forms and projects, with a specialism in business and marketing, is an area which is completely new to me, but something I think will be very important for me to farmilliarise myself with for the future.

One of the main benefits of this placement was absolutely seeing the many different types of art practice which Luxi works with, and the huge amount of possibilities and opportunities art and culture can have within the community and within the world beyond education.

The types of tasks involved included, press, marketing, social and traditional media, market research, sourcing new customers, sourcing competitions and potential galleries, attending arts and understanding the pros, cons and general realities of making a living in the arts.

There was a lot of discussion on creative theories, different artists and the audience of art. It was so refreshing and motivating speaking to someone outside the Fine Art boundaries and seeing the different ideas and interests of someone so in-the-know within the Creative Industries platform. Caroline took me under her wing and along to meet the Head of Arts for Newcastle, which was a privilege and a very interesting experience listening to the converstaion between them discussing past projects and possible future ones. We then collaborated on some decision making and chose some of the art work for Nicole Vivien Watson’s performance scheduled for the project ‘Auricular’ scheduled  at BALTIC 39 at the end of June

Research and Marketing was a large part of the week, and I learnt how to research adverts for projects and performances, and research press opportunities, as well as learning how to write limited blurbs for documents such as leaflets, posters and press releases. These processes gave me an interesting insight into something which I would love to learn.

We took a trip to the Theatre Royal where I was able to see how Caroline has helped develop a dance project for the Salamander event, which will happen as part of Festival of the North East in June. It was then very apparent that people approach Luxi and Caroline to help support their ideas and help manage their time, contacts, budget and ideas, which is a very important role to play and needs to be done in each any creative project.

One day we were cutting out paper shapes, the next day we met with heads of cultural organisations and had lunch out, another day it was all writing reports at the computer.  I am really looking forward to seeing Gillie Kleiman’s show A Lyrical Dance Concert and learning more about performance at GIFT Festival.

From working with Caroline and having done other different placements previously it is very clear to me the different routes working in the Creative Industries can take. I will absolutely be attending any of the projects Luxi take on when I can, and I intend to broaden my Creative Industries knowledge and experiences. I am ecstatically happy with how my placement has gone and have a lot of inspiration to take with me wherever my career may lead. To any student or person with an interest in art, I would highly recommend contacting places you are interested in to see how they work and what you can learn. I think that Caroline’s job and Luxi as a whole is a very beneficial company, and there is a huge opportunity for it to become something very popular and really special. Thank you Caroline and thank you Luxi.