Blog post 8: Claire Wearn – visiting speaker
Creative Producer
Claire Wearn is a creative producer and festival director for Photo Fringe.
- The role generally involves working closely with individual artists and teams.
- Bringing a brief to life.
- Processing – making the work – exhibiting.
- Site-specific work.
- Problem solver.
Archiving the Black Country – Martin Parr, is an example of an extensive project she worked on. Four years archiving and an additional three years with other artists making sure it crossed over to different parts of the community.
Listening to Claire talk about her role, what it involves, and how she landed such a job, led me to want to understand more about certain occupations within the art photography world/industry. I found a link on The Photographers Gallery website with a podcast that speaks to different industry experts and creatives who give an insight into their roles.
- Listened to a talk with a creative producer.
- Fashion-based photography.
- Someone comes to you with an idea and you have to make it happen.
- Mentions the work is a mixture of commercial shoots and more art-based shoots. Some of the work was done for free and for the love of the art of fashion.
- Talks about how she wasn’t aware of this particular role for a very long time – similar to how Claire Wearn.
- Interesting to learn that the root into production usually for most people, including Claire Wearn, is generally very random and you find yourself in the role through alternative jobs. For example, mentioned in this podcast, a ‘prop stylist’.
- The podcast goes onto explain how being the most helpful person on set, and asking what else you can do to help, can benefit you.
- This made me think about the opportunities that can arise when you are able to work/volunteer on different art and photography projects.
https://www.creativelivesinprogress.com/job-roles/producer-photography
I thought it might be interesting to look at Claire’s Linkedin page to see her previous roles and the organisations she worked for.
