In Transit…
So, that’s that then.
I have one week left working as a lecturer of art and photography at University Centre Weston. After 14 years of teaching as a day job, and a small but reliable salary, I’m on my own.
There are multiple reasons for me doing this at this time. Money is one — my pay barely covers the mortgage and the job consumes all of my time so that I have no space to earn any on the side. This has become even more difficult since I went into curriculum management. I really thought, when I took my first teaching job back in 2010, that eventually as a profession it would pay ok.
It just doesn’t.
I have no desire for wealth, but I do need to be able to cover the cost of living. Since 2022 my mortgage payment has gone up by 50%, my salary by 6%. It’s unworkable.
I want to be useful too. I used to feel useful as a teacher, and I do still from time to time. But I increasingly find myself doing time consuming and pointless chores — data collection, marketing, data input, trying to navigate infuriating internal IT systems. I think I can be more useful out there.
I do love teaching, and would love to find something a day or two a week. Just teaching.
So I move on, but to what? I have a few commissions to get started with — I’m working with ICVL on The Prison Mobile Library which I’m looking forward to starting next month. I have been recommissioned for a fourth season of foto/walks working with a charity that supports adults on the autistic spectrum.
I’m also putting in a funding bid to establish a photography festival in Weston-super-Mare. These are things, real things.
As I go into this new phase, I’m going to take time out to write more. To try to engage with my practice as a visual artist again, and all that that encompasses. Not trying desperately to make work, running off to the woods with a camera because I’ve found myself a day off. None of that.
I’m going to move through this in the way I’ve always wanted to. Lots of looking at stuff, lots of trying things out. Percolation. Research, embedded research. Walking, thinking, trying to make sense of what I see and experience. Reading. Slowly. Writing. Slowly. ADHDing, quickly, frequently. I might even try chasing a PhD.
Trying not to be afraid of being more than one thing. I have said this frequently to students over the years. I cannot emphasise this enough to myself at this point. I am more than one thing. I’m not going to be afraid to maintain the grounded purpose of the work that I make, but also make the odd portrait, or document a walk, or draw some trees.
Trying to record these processes here — for myself, and anyone that they might be helpful to — will, I think, be useful for my practice.
Ok? Ready?
Go.
(after I’ve walked the dog.)
