hAt the moment I am working on one particular project at the museum. I was asked by the Head of Curation -Anni, to write a funding application for an upcoming contemporary art exhibition by Belgian artist Ana Torfs that will be held by the museum in September (www.poriartmuseum.fi/eng/exhibitions/tulevat.php).
I was delighted to be asked to work on the application, as I knew it would be a challenging but great learning opportunity. I had worked on proposals in a previous job, but not in the context of art so this was a new challenge for me. Writing the proposal was made difficult at the first hurdle as the Flemish arts funding body website was not overly forthcoming with the marking criteria and guidelines for the proposal. Anni and myself joked about how we thought the funding body wanted us to fail from the outset but after a lot of squinting at the screen with eyebrows raised we managed to find the guidelines. I’ve been spending some time getting my head around putting together the proposal in a specific format. It was only today that we were able to access the online application form, and I found it quite hard during the week working on the proposal and not being sure of the correct format. Mainly though I’ve been spending most of my time researching the artist and her work in order to put forward a strong enough rationale for granting funding for the exhibition. This has been the aspect I’ve found the most difficult. My writing is rusty and it’s been a while since I’ve tried to put together a proposal. The artist’s work itself is complex, and makes you think quite a bit about the topics she is highlighting with her work. I quite like this type of contemporary art however I've found it hard to summarise her work in a concise way. I am also aware that I don’t have much experience in this particular area and it is quite daunting writing an application of this sort – I don’t want to misrepresent the museum or the artist in any way, or mistakenly miss the scope of her work due to my own limited knowledge of contemporary art and writing skills. This concern is probably making me work at a slower rate than usual but probably better to err on the side of caution in this situation. While this has been an unnerving task, it has also allowed me to develop my knowledge of contemporary art, and has helped me to learn what is involved in writing art funding proposals. These are valuable skills that will really help me down the line when applying for museum internships back in Ireland. It has also helped me to develop my interpersonal skills as I had to discuss with the curator how much work she wanted me to complete on the application, and also organize meetings with her at a time that suited her schedule. I found this part difficult because I wasn’t sure of the best way to set up meetings. We share the same office but she was often quite busy and I didn’t feel comfortable interrupting her. The obvious answer here would have been to send an email but given that we could see each other I felt this was a bit awkward. All in all, the second week of placement has presented a new challenge that has helped me to learn more about myself and the way I approach this type of experience. I’ve enjoyed building new skills in writing funding proposals and developing my knowledge of contemporary art practice. It has shown me I have so much more to learn, and that I have an interest in doing so. Building relationships with members of staff has helped me to learn other people’s boundaries and preferred methods of communication, something I believe is invaluable in the workplace. I've added in some links to the resources I used for developing the layout of the proposal in case they may be of use/interest to anyone: VAI- Manual for visual artists: visualartists.ie/the-manual-a-survival-guide-for-visual-artists/presenting-your-work/preparing-proposals/ Curatorial Toolkit: mgnsw.org.au/media/uploads/files/Curatorial_Toolkit.pdf
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Art + Animation 2016/17Jenny Grace Map of Pori |