Talk Shop — A conversation with Alec Dudson about balancing conceptual growth and commercial viability in creative studies

Talk Shop is back for an RCA 2021 Show event! We’re a student group from the Visual Communication program, born from the process of establishing our practices and situating our work professional spaces. Our goal was to create a welcoming, informal space for peer-led learning, solidarity and community, where students could candidly discuss making a living from creative practices. These conversations, interviews and workshops facilitated learning from each other’s experiences, sharing tips, fears, and granting each other perspective on the journey that is a creative career. But they also highlighted the need for support and information around the practical realities of creative work, employment, and immigration. During this event, we’ll focus on one issue: the difficulty of accessing creative freedom and fulfilment in our creative studies while feeling bound by external administrative and financial pressures. Creative courses are spaces where we seek creative freedom, to grow conceptually and be innovative, but how do we access that feeling when we exist in a hostile environment, have to manage immigration statuses, financial pressures and the perspective of a challenging and highly competitive job market? As students, we often find ourselves torn between conceptual growth and commercial viability, rather than feeling fulfilled and balanced, to the detriment of our work, our confidence, and our mental health. We’re inviting Alec Dudson, founder of Intern to join us in this discussion. As someone who works to champion students and graduates in their creative careers, we know Alec will have valuable insight into this topic. We hope to have a well informed conversation, fuelled by our interactions with groups within and outside of the institution, with the goal to identify what resources are essential for creative courses to truly allow students creative freedom, growth and balance. Through this event and future Talk Shop iterations, we hope to help students get support and build community, as well as to engage institutions and help them understand their students better, and work together to generate strategies and solutions to respond to these needs. This conversation will be taking place virtually on the 25th of June at 10:30 am UK time! We hope to see you there!