Exhibition Participation ~ Visiting Textbook Studios.

Although exhibitions can be highly stressful in terms of setting deadlines and curating the work, the end result is always very rewarding. This is something I learnt when participating in the exhibition module in the second year of university. Due to this previous experience, this made me keen to participate in our final graduate exhibition, in order to further advance the skills required.

In terms of the participation in the exhibition, as a group, the exhibition committee decided to take a collaborative approach to the tasks, meaning I did not have a specific role. We felt this gave the best opportunity for everyone to develop a wider range of skills and enabled us to all network together, for example, going to meet with Vicky at Textbook Studios.

As a collective our responsibilities are to fundraise and to create the exhibition catalogue. To raise funds, we have taken the following initiatives:

• Pay for catalogue participation - We decided that all

  photographers that would like to feature in the

  catalogue should pay a £15 fee, as this gives us

  greater freedom with additional funds to improve the

  quality of the publication. To further enhance this

  income stream, if people would like more than one

  spread in the catalogue they can pay an additional

  £15 to do so.

• Print Auction - For this we contacted many professional

  photographers over email asking if they could donate

  a print. We were able to get approximately ten

  photographers to donate one or more prints.

  Furthermore, we opened the auction up to our course

  colleagues to donate a print.

• Do professional LinkedIn headshots - To set up a bay in

  our University’s student union, charging students £10

  per head shot.

• Do headshots for drama students portfolios- Take

  headshots for drama student portfolios - The drama

  course within our University, have a specific budget for

  professional headshots, we hope to provide this service

  for them.

• Bake Sale- We have also planned to host a bake sale.

• Go fund me page - We also curated a go fund me page,

  which we asked all photography students to post on

  Facebook in order to try and raise as many funds as

  possible.

Alongside fundraising, as mentioned previously, working on the catalogue is another major task for us to complete. For this we have to collate all images and artist statements from everyone who would like to be involved, and ensure they have paid their fees. After this we must sequence the work, which will possibly be in alphabetical order, and design each spread alongside this. We will then allocate our budget, and order these books to be printed and arrive before opening night on the 9th of June 2023.

To help us advance further with this catalogue publication, the exhibition committee were fortunate enough to be able to go to Textbook Studios, in Salford, and have a meeting with Vicky.

Meeting with Vicky at Text Book Studios

Upon arrival, we all sat around the table and started to discuss our ideas and feelings towards the catalogue and how we wanted it to look. To begin with we stressed the importance that the cover of the book did not contain only one image, as this would not allow us to display work created by the whole year. To achieve this, we decided to create a simple covered perfect bound book, white with the words BA photography. To add a unique twist to this, we have decided to make a cover, which will be a collage of everyone’s images, which when this is folded out will make a poster, example is shown below:

The Book About Colab, cover that opens up to be a poster.

We all collectively thought this could be interesting, as this is something that has not been done before for an exhibition catalogue and we believe this will be coherent of everyone’s work and the year group.

To work with the logistics of this, we worked backwards to make a work plan:

• Catalogues to arrive before the 9th of June (opening night)

• Catalogues need to be sent to print on the 22nd - 24th of May

• Designing of the catalogue need to be done for the 3rd of May.

Designing the Catalogue

When discussing our ideas for the catalogue, Vicky was able to give us advice on the printing and what works best for printing purposes. To begin with, it is important to note that fewer images on a spread make the image and catalogue more impactful as there are less things crowding the page and it means the images can be shown larger. In terms of paper, A5 is a good size for a catalogue as it is easy to hold whilst viewing the work, the cover will work if it is a different weight than the pages for example 300gsm for the cover and 120gsm for the inside pages, using anything lighter than this means the image will show through.

Overall, the meeting with Vicky was super helpful and was important for us as a committee to have a clear understanding of what was expected. We were able to come out of the meeting knowing the deadlines we were working towards and the type of catalogue that we wanted to create. Furthermore, this was a great opportunity to network with Vicky and gain that connection with her as this may be beneficial in the future. Additionally, as a collective we all came out of the meeting excited to start the catalogue and ambitious to make it the best we possibly can.