Alix Brown – Flexibility, Feedback and Finding My Voice

I’m Alix Brown, and I’m currently studying Creative Arts at OCA.

At the time of writing, I am partway through Unit 3.2, and working on external projects related to Photography and Illustration. Originally, my plans were to write for children as well as illustrate, but during Unit 3.1, I fell in love with the visual parts of my practice and chose to develop them instead. Now I enjoy using my creative writing to place the images in context, particularly anthropomorphic photography. Luckily, at this stage of study, the reins are handed over to you to create self-directed projects ranging from small self-directed ones to collaborative ones, to even potential exhibitions. As a result, it builds off everything I learned in previous units and allows me to explore my practice and my passions, to collaborate and to learn more about what I do best.

Why I Chose to Study with OCA

I chose to study with OCA because it is a place that treats diversity and inclusion like a background process on your laptop: You only notice it when it’s not running, and it’s almost always there. This makes it a very welcoming place. As someone who is autistic/neurodiverse, my past education history has been complicated due to a lack of adaptations and/or clarifications. However, at OCA, the tutors and faculty are more than helpful when I ask for clarifications, for advice, or for adjustments. It also leaves space for me to be flexible in scheduling my work because it is not a physical university with set classes you need to be there for, but something that you do at home, which allows you to work, be a carer or just proceed at your own pace. It also encourages commercial artists like me as well as “artistic” artists, so there’s a lot of potential routes you could take. It’s a very adaptable place, and I would recommend it for the fact that it accommodates a wide range of plans, ideas and people.

My Favourite Part of the Course

My favourite part of the course right now is sharing work with my fellow students and my tutors and getting my ideas from my brain to paper and then to reality. It’s not always easy, since there’s often a few unexpected issues, or what you want to do changes as you see it taking shape. The one- to-one tutorials have been very helpful to my practice, even if I was a bit nervous about them at first. They have however become much more fun after I got used to them and are an excellent source of feedback and information. The same goes for getting feedback from my fellow students at events like the Skills Sharing Sessions, or on the forums, since they can guide my practice by spotting things I haven’t and making suggestions for things I might have missed. So much of my projects (both past and present) would not have been possible without feedback and support from the OCA community and my tutors over the years.

What I’m Doing Now

Currently, my main external project focuses on dinosaurs and disability via dinosaurs who just happen to need a disability aid of some description. It’s an unusual combination, but one that allows for a wide range of expression and exploration of the subject on a non-human canvas. In my case, the approach I took has been one where the disability is a background part of the character and narrative because I tend to see the person, not the disability aid. It has also been designed to be commercial art that people can buy printed-on-demand to items such as t-shirts and mugs, which as mentioned previously is not a problem. In fact, it’s a strength because it means that I can earn a living once I leave OCA.

However, it recently was expanded on via a non-commercial collaborative project that allows for other people to pick a dinosaur from a list and a prompt and make something that reflects their views and experiences of disability with them, allowing for the idea to reach its full potential. At the end, I’m hoping to gather up all the responses and make a permanent online exhibition of them. It went live in December, and there is some interest in it already, so I’m looking forwards to seeing what people make with it.

I hope that this student profile has been informative, enjoyable, and a good window into what the later stages of your study at OCA could look like. Yours will (and should) look entirely different to mine, but whatever you end up doing, it’ll be built around a scaffold formed by the community and your tutor’s feedback.

My Work

Tumblr @Paleofun – Gallery

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