Level 5 Professional studies introduction

Within professional studies this year we will be learning about and expanding our knowledge of the illustration industry and where we fit into this fast paced industry. We will learn more about things such as networking, markets, working with clients and other similar topics.

The main aim of this module is to help us know the industry inside out so that we are prepared for the real working world when we leave university. We will research all areas of the industry then choose an area that we would like to focus on in more detail and in the end produce academic evidence of our findings. This module should help us realise where we fit into the industry and be able to correctly identify our target market.

I enjoyed professional studies last year and look forward to taking my studies in this subject further in level 5.

Level 5: Halloween Party (side project)

As part of professional studies we have been asked to arrange a Halloween party for the university students that will also double as a fund raiser for the illustration and graphics courses. The skills needed to do something such as plan an event like this will be very helpful for us in the future as the transferable skills we will gain from it will help us learn things such as marketing, self promotion, managing budgets and workloads and working as a team. It will also help us have a better understanding of how to plan events such as gallery openings, exhibitions and other similar events.

As we had just started to plan the event we had to take a number of things into consideration for example: how much budget we will have, finding a venue, ticket prices ect. to make the event planning run more smoothly and to make sure none of these details were forgotten as a class we decided to assign people small tasks for them to do o the workload was evenly distributed. we decided that we needed people to 

• Make tickets and posters
• Source venue and beverages 
• Source bands and music
• Set up a Facebook page and do marketing
• Ticket selling 
• Room Decorating 
• Co-ordinator 

We had some things that had to be thought about straight away to get the planning process moving along such as... 

Budget planning

Budget planning is very important to us in this case as we are aiming to plan this event with as little funds as possible to optimise the money that will be raised. I think as this is an art university and we have access to art materials for the posters and tickets and we know people that will be willing to play live music for free, we will be able to achieve this goal and plan a great party with a small budget. 

Choosing a venue  

We had to decided this before anything else could be arranged as it is the main priority for planning any event. We were given 2 options for the party venue, option one was the Art Cafe (the college canteen) and option two was the old theatre in Hartlepool.  We were quoted prices for both venues and unfortunately option two was completely out of budget so this had to be ruled out. Option 2 would have made a better venue but we can raise more money and spend more on decorations ect with the art cafe as the venue.

Assigning jobs

As there is two classes coming together to make this event a success we had to assign jobs straight away so it didn't get confusing as to who was doing what. By doing this it minimises the chance of things going wrong or things been forgotten as people only have one or two tasks to complete each. 

Hopefully with everything we have done so far the party should get planned in time and the event will run smoothly without any hitches. I will do a few updated blog posts as the events planning goes into full swing.