Working on this assignment was a turning point for me – procrastination into action!

This was the brief for the assignment: Write and send to your tutor a comprehensive proposal showing in detail how you intend to resolve and deliver or disseminate your major project. Your proposal should include:

• A timeline for the development of your project, your marketing strategy and the resolution of your work, including installation if appropriate.
• A description of the work. Use the work you did for Contextual Studies to help you position your work in its critical and/or commercial context. Briefly explain your motivations and how the project fits within your practice more broadly.
• A budget, detailing the costs associated with the resolution of your project and identifying any payment in kind.
• A description of how you intend to maximise the presence of your work and engage with your audience, such as your plans for a private view, screening event or artist’s talk.
• The whole document should not exceed 2,000 words.

For the Publication proposal I need to: Write proposal to communicate with my tutor the details of how I’ll resolve my final project and outline how I’ll engage with a public audience. I will:

• Explore business side of my practice, to develop further understanding of how artists and their projects are supported. I attended a useful seminar with Nick Dunmar of AOP ‘the business of being creative’ see post: https://nkssite6.photo.blog/2024/07/23/research-oca-creative-conversation/
• Explore sources of funding: National Arts Councils, Regional development agencies, partnership funding, foundations grants and awards, crowd funding. I have done this and am likely to return to research further for assignment, but as I am not going to publish my book, and want to keep the audience small, such funding is not relevant to me.
• Work out a budget:
• I have done a theoretical exercise to set a day rate for myself see blog post:https://nkssite6.photo.blog/2024/07/24/assignment-two-setting-a-day-rate/
• It is difficult to consider what my photos might be worth, certainly not the cost in time and overheads that I’ve put into them. Should my photography become popular, and I want to sell it then I would need to do this exercise at this stage. The AOP app could be useful: http://www.the-aop.org/information/usage-calculator and I would need to look at others work and prices for comparisons.
• I have worked through all other budgeting components for A3 budget working document here:

This must meet the set primary objective: To disseminate my work to a wider audience. My timely visit and networking at the Ffoton book Fair in Cardiff help to crystallise my plans, see my reflections at the end.  

I also want to:

• Confidently engage with a public audience face to face when disseminating my body of work.
• Broaden my professional photography practice, enabling me to engage in professional and commercial contexts and to establish relationships and network and understand markets.

CHOSEN OUTCOMES:

A book:

• Though I want to use my work to engage and offer others opportunity for reflection, due to the nature of the topic I must limit its exposure locally – though my secrecy about my work locally has made it intriguing. I have decided that there will only be one copy of the book (not for sale) which will be used in face-to-face situations with limited open-minded locals during my artist talks and tours.
• The book will also expose my work to professionals, away from my locality.  I will continue exposing my work through open calls for competitions and exhibitions, via portfolio reviews accompanying the images, via gallery showings of images where appropriate, and offering the opportunity to extract for magazine articles and similar.

Artist talks and tours locally:

• These will be in the woodland with poetry reading and image sharing in the environment, with feedback opportunity on postcards.
• Their purpose is to combine the images and poetry in a way that will offer access to viewers to reflect on some parts of the nature of community.
• Viewers will be able to takeaway postcards with images to give them talking points, the poetry will remain with the author. The sensitive nature of the subject means I will be most likely to get frank responses in 1:1 situation.

This gives access to different types of learners:

• Visual: book, images, physical woodland, written feedback on postcards
• Auditory: discussions and woodland sounds
• Kinaesthetic: Physical woodland experience, physicality of book and postcards

The publications must be clear and simple, to create a reason for engagement, relevance to themselves or an audience they know.

• Publicity PDF for artist promotion -done ü
• Talking point and reward postcards
• Photo Book: Online dummy for use with professionals and portfolio reviews &           One physical copy for Author’s use and sharing during talks.

I will promote the book and the talks via:

• Own: website, Instagram, LinkedIn, newsletters/emails to contacts. Conscious decision not to use Facebook as this has a local following that I can’t confine.
• Paid for: leaflets, posters, connections from membership and subscribed to organisations (Shutterhub, Source).
• Worked for: from promotions from open calls, exhibition/magazine inclusions, networking (OCA and external), portfolio reviews.

Lastly I need to devise a format for my proposal to my Tutor. This will include:

• Description of project
• How I will disseminate
• Budget for dissemination.
• Timeline for dissemination

See my detailed timeline working document here:

And see my monthly timeline here: Monthly tracker for resolution of project

2024: Month	Action	Deadline	Achieved
Prior to June	Images produced and finalised		April 24
	Footnotes produced finalised		April 24
	Poetry produced and finalised		April 24
	Own media/promotion channels set up		February 24
	Networking		Yes
	Peer reviews		Yes
June	Timeline decided	End June	23.6.24
	Networking		Yes
	Peer reviews		Yes
July	Budget draft	23.7.24
	Detailed timeline	23.7.24
	Publication proposal to Tutor	23.7.24
	Publication research		Yes
	Networking		Yes
	Peer meetings		Yes
August	Publication research
	Marketing research and outline
	Marketing designs finalised
	Peer reviews
	Book draft to Tutor	23.8.24
	Marketing leaflets/postcards ordered	26.8.24
	Networking
September	Book design finalised/ordered	2.9.24
	Marketing publication	4.9.24
	Artist talks/tours arranged	6.12.24
	Book publication	12.9.24
	Artist talks/tours execute	16.9.24- 4.10 24
	Networking
October	Book evaluation
	Engagement evaluation
	Evaluation to Tutor	23.10.24
	Networking
Throughout	Open calls/competition entries
	Portfolio reviews
	Networking

Reflections on A2

This month and Assignment 2 have been a turning point for me. At the beginning I was still undecided how I would engage an audience and meet my criteria for controlled exposure locally. Also, during the month, I had further successes with open calls, and this fueled me to continue with wider exposure.

My visit and networking to the Ffoton book Fair in Cardiff helped me to finalise my plan for dissemination; then putting together, formatting and publishing my project proposal came much easier.

Having a detailed timeline and budget will help me to execute my project effectively in the window that I have left.