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We means You - The Open College of the Arts

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We means You

StuffIn January WeAreOCA will be four years old. The name for the blog was deliberately chosen. It was always intended that there would be coverage not just of the musings of tutors and head office staff, but regular and wide coverage of student work. To date most of the student work featured has come from two sources – work picked out at assessment and assignments notified to us by tutors.
Nothing wrong with that as an approach, but it does tend to favour coverage of photography. Photography tutors are already at the computer looking at their student’s work and in a matter of seconds they can forward it on to us at the OCA offices. Rather more difficult if you are a textiles or fine art tutor with the work spread out in the studio.
So we are now looking to students to even things up a bit and to increase the visibility of student work. We have created a new email address blog@oca-uk.com What we would like you to do is send us an email when you complete something and feel pleased with it. In your email include photographs of the work if it is something physical or links to images on your learning log, links to dropbox files, links to videos.
If you do not feel confident photographing your work you might want to check out this video which Mark produced a while ago to help you. The main thing to bear in mind that we are interested in the work – we will not be judging non-photography students on the quality of the images. Joanne will go through the emails regularly and suggest work to feature on WeAreOCA.
And just to be clear – we are looking for emails from all students – regardless of level or subject!


Posted by author: Genevieve Sioka

17 thoughts on “We means You

  • I do hope you gets lots of responses. I would find it very interesting to see a wide range of work on here. I’ve often wondered why we never see short stories or essays on the blog, and it’s a long time since we saw any student textile work.

  • I have to admit that the blog does seem to be dominant with photography, which for me is fab; yet the line of thought that photography tutors are at their computers and can instantly forward work on could be applied to the other fields. For example, unless all the creative writing tutors are receiving hand written manuscripts, why can’t a word document be just as easily forwarded?
    Also with our digital age of easily accessible visual communication devices would it not be quite simple for a textile tutor to take some simple shots of student work with either a smartphone or compact digital camera.
    Just a quick google search revealed this current textile students blog that is wonderful, I have just spent the last 30 minutes reading it and viewing some lovely documented pieces of work.
    http://kpwoodfield.wordpress.com
    I just loved reading about the transfer prints onto cotton in which the student had sewn into the material. I have seen similar cross-over techniques with photography students using textiles in conjunction with photographs. It is all so good…

  • Great idea – and shame on us students if we don’t take up the chance. I would also add though that whilst I am a textiles student I really love the wide range of interest on wearer a. Thanks for that

  • I think it has improved recently in the creative writing, in both poetry and short essays of prominent Authors. It is difficult to produce a short story it will take space and time….in my case I was told I have produced three stories in my attempt for one…such greed my friends and left all of them …well not quite finished..!.and who wants have baked bread& butter puddings all the time !.Photography on the other hand does its job in virtually no time in space and tells a lot: but you see for me I will stick to writing short, long or in rhyme, until I perfect the art. I shall get there …such an obstinate ass that I am…but what can I do! I can not help it. I have stories to tell and book to write. So help me God, and Nina Milton.

  • A great idea that will bring to the forefront many creative talents that people have hidden in there makeup and a proposal like this will bring out so much creativeness that otherwise would be lost in this ever changing world.

    • Well I hope students will be brave enough Starrybird – WeAreOCA is about celebrating our students’ work. Critical comment is clearly has its place and we think that place is the tutor feedback reports which are private to the student.

    • “Who would be brave enough to offer themselves up on a platter?” sounds like an odd question to me. We’re all “artists” of one sort or another, many of those visual with a smattering of aural and literary. Is the idea not to put the work “out there” for others to enjoy?
      I know, for some it might be a deeply personal venture, never intended for the outside world. And yes, I know, when it comes to putting my work up on the gallery wall in a few months, I’ll be extremely nervous about being there when people question it, but it is all part of the process. I think the important thing is to have people explore the work and then to grow from that experience.

  • I do hope writing students get this message. It’s always the visual arts who want to display their work; it’s immediate and easy to enjoy. Harder work to read a flash fiction, poem or autobiographical piece of writing, but why not think about sending something in? I recommend you rework and polish something at around 500 words. Do have a go creative writers!

  • Well I might put a toe in the pool, or a poem out there, if only to encourage others. I would love to see others’ work – only I don’t understand where or how to do it. A step by step guide for idiots like me would be a help.

    • Morning Jane,
      It really is just an email to blog@oca.ac.uk to say you are interested and we’ll have a conversation about the type of work you would like to put out into the world and maybe I’ll ask you about your experience of studying and what not, it just depends on the work and the student. Click on the student work tab on the top of this page for some examples.
      Joanne

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