Clare Griffiths works for the Careers and Employability team at the university. Her main focus was giving us advice on preparing us for being self-employed and freelance workers.
She recommended a service called Beepurple, which offers workshops and talks on becoming self employed including being a freelance photographer which you can join any time including after you leave uni. They host workshops and run ‘start up’ courses.
She gave us an example of a past user of Beepurple who they helped to start her business called Kelly Angoods who made viddy camera, to start a business making medium format pinhole cameras. She accessed funding via kickstarter, she’d offer various rewards for people depending on how much money they sent her. I found it encouraging to be shown an example of someone with an idea and seeing how it can be made to happen, showing the recommended services as successful for some.
– An advertising image by viddy camera of their products taken from Viddy Pinhole Camera by the Pop-Up Pinhole Camera Company (thecoolist.com)
Clare gave some very helpful business starting advice-
When starting a business, you need to relate these 4 things:
- What are you good at
- What do you love
- What does the world need
- What can you be paid for
She got us to do an exercise where we think about our core values to help inform our practice – what change do you want to make? What is important to you?
- Looking after the planet
- Sustainability
- Responding to toxic consumerism
- People helping people
- Connecting people to nature
- Mental health
– I found this exercise very helpful because its the first time I’ve actually thought about the things that are important to me in terms of the areas I see myself looking at in the future. Having them written down makes it clearer as to what my unique bridge with my photographic practice could be in starting a business or the areas I can specialise in.
This was an encouraging session as it makes the connections between being a student and making my work into a job more doable! My next step is probably booking an advice session with beepurple@brighton.ac.uk.
Contacts:
- beepurple@brighton.ac.uk
- c.griffiths@brighton.ac.uk