What have I learnt from 18 years at the OCA, tutoring hundreds of students?

Alongside my students I learnt of artists new to me, of strategies for managing projects and of ways to make research and practice interrelate so that they support each other. I’ve learnt how similar the arts are to the sciences: experiment, fail, keep whatever bits worked, repeat etc. Look for positives and keep trying. You’ll learn something new every time.

Like many of OCA’s students, I studied late in life. I didn’t do a degree after school, working for 16 years in computing. However, I increasingly felt drawn to the arts. I got absorbed in thought through creative projects, partly as an antidote to work and everyday life.

It was only on changing careers, becoming a professional photographer (for the University of Manchester) that I considered a degree again – an MA in photography at De Montfort University. After graduating, I wanted to move on, so I turned freelance and then joined the OCA as a tutor (2007).

What drew me to the OCA was its inclusivity, accessibility and flexibility, for both students and tutors. I had tried lecturing but wasn’t happy with broadcasting, at one level, to students with a wide range of needs. A strength of the OCA is that I can fine-tune my support, aiming between where the student is and where I think they could be at that time, constantly drawing them forwards.

I liked the incredible diversity of students, from a 16-year-old to octogenarians; from those with no formal qualifications, to a few with PhDs. I enjoyed engaging with students’ perspectives. They had a huge range of backgrounds and – although the majority are from the UK – I’ve had students from twenty-two different countries. There were many fascinating discussions about how to create stories, about which they were passionate, into a wider world, in visual form. Seeing students’ practice evolve and develop as they grow in confidence and knowledge; helping students to manage their aims and ambitions was particularly rewarding.

Previous work as a mentor for disabled and dyslexic students (at MMU) was useful in helping neuro-diverse students. I was also diagnosed (aged 53) with Dyslexia. I learnt methods for learning and studying less textually, something I could pass on to students. In 2012, I started a practice-led PhD at Manchester Metropolitan University, showing movement within architectural spaces via ‘still’ images, accumulated over time. This was part of an ongoing creative practice that has centred on different aspects of what makes photography unique, of how challenging it is to represent time and space via a static medium.

Choosing examples from former students to highlight is difficult, but Jane Weinmann showed that, if you find a topic nobody else has covered, (Climacteric about the menopause) that’s even more reason to choose it.

While Anna Sellen has gone on to international recognition.

One of my last students, Amber Houbara produced an impassioned piece about the inclusion of women in the male-dominated sport of surfing

Hopefully, my retirement next month will bring opportunities to get some of my own planned projects moving again.

If I were to choose something that students have found hugely beneficial, it is to understand their experiments as ‘work-in-progress’: it doesn’t have to be complete, or ‘perfect’ (whatever that is) before showing it to others. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know what, or why yet; just start. Do enough to provide a starting point for discussion and feedback. Those discussions are the really constructive part, to help decide why you are making it in that way, or how one method gets the story across better than another. Explaining – and perhaps defending – your work helps you to decide what is of value in it for you. You also get a chance to accept, or reject, other people’s ideas. That forms the boundaries of what you do or don’t include, thus saving time when choosing relevant research and practice.

I wish you all well in your creative work. Enjoy it, use it to create and develop another part of yourself. That’s the part that stays with you, beyond your studies.