Founded some eight years ago, Xhibit Professional Development Day – linked to, as the name of the event suggests, the longest running open call exhibition for students at UAL Xhibit – aims to create a sharing space where industry professionals discuss their careers, their practice and what they have gone through to be where they are today. This year’s Xhibit Professional Development Day took place over two days, one on 25th and the other on 27th January 2023.

Xhibit Professional Development Day; Practice - 25/01/2023 (LCF)

Featured Julia Howe, Melody Uyanga Ramsay and Antony Parkes with an emphasis on practical ideas and industry advice.

“Balancing Creativity and Business in Fashion”, Julia Howe

‘You should not underestimate your passion because it can become your work’, was the initial take away from London-based Talent Manager Julia Howe. Howe who focuses on scouting, casting and managing talent across various creative disciplines. Speaking openly and honestly about her career, she confessed ‘when I started my master’s degree I hated the fashion world’. Being part of the fashion world, despite being a world that is slowly changing for the better by becoming fairer and more accessible, is a challenge.

However, it is important to pursue your ambitions because, as Howe argues, it could become something that not only nourishes you on a spiritual and intellectual level, but something that can sustain you on a pragmatic level, becoming a job.

It’s important, as Howe pointed out, not to be shy and jump at every opportunity early on in one’s career. Howe then focused on publishing editorials in magazines such as Vogue and ID.

Some pointers from Howe on how best to ‘make your message’:

• Who are you as an artist?
• What are you trying to say to the world?
• What are you doing that is different or unique?

According to Howe, making contacts is a business key to artistic success and it is ‘much easier than people think’. In the fashion world, publishing in magazines is important. Putting teams together is a vital resource, as mush as compiling a good list of contacts. As she said, ‘What matters is that it happens’, whether it is a publication or an exhibition, because ‘it is powerful’. Howe is a freelancer and, as with any career, there are pros and cons.

Pros: autonomous time management, which consequently gives you time for personal projects; more freedom; full control.

Cons: it can be scary because there is less stability; it is very competitive; budgeting is important. Also in the salaried careers there are pros and cons: less time for creative work; misconceptions about lack of creativity; more stability; creative freedom is job dependent.

Some other tips:

• When do I say yes or no to a job? It can be confusing industry. Lots of taking advantage of up and coming creatives. Beware branded work for free. Self appointed projects are key. Say no collectively to unfair offers might change how the system works atm. Know your worth! Underpayment is very common.
• Plan your career moves: plan your year in quarters; don’t take no for an answer – it just means not now; don’t go too big too fast.
• Find your personal style and hone it: make sure you are always developing; give yourself time and space between projects; don’t say no to a job just because it is not your style. Be nice to yourself!

Julia Howe website 

“Tech+Fashion+Education”, Melody Uyanga Ramsay

Melody Uyanga Ramsay is a Scottish-Mongolian Central Saint Martins Alumna, London-based Creative Lead with a background in Art Direction, Concept and Project Management. In addition, she has more than five years experience in the luxury fashion industry. Melody Uyanga Ramsay has a specialism in delivering projects with a focus on fashion and Web3. Uyanga Ramsay spoke about the link between education and technology, an issue that is extremely close to her heart. After a brief introduction on blockchain, NFTs and the Metaverse, Uyanga Ramsay introduced her projects, starting with her collaboration with Ralph Lauren and ending with Minee World, a shared space that exists as a game on Roblox, created with drawings and ideas from over 200 young people aged between 4-16 in Scotland and Mongolia. The project has a focused on education and it delivered free in-person workshops with each lesson tailored to the participants’ interests and needs.

According to Uyanga Ramsay, the project ‘captured the imagination of the children and opens up a whole new mindset for creative digital possibilities’. As she made clear, there is a close relationship between fashion and technology as they both look to the future. It is important, however, that these worlds become accessible to everyone. Finally, she presented some of the roles that unite these two fields:

• Innovation manager
• User Experience Designer
• Digital Experience Manager
• Digital Product Manager
• Data Scientist.

Melody Uyanga Ramsay website 

“Art handling, transporting and installation”, Antony Parkes

Antony Parkes is an art handler who has worked for countless galleries, museums and UAL exhibitions. Arriving with cardboard frames, sheets, scissors and cutters, he illustrated how to create perfect frames, especially for transporting works of art. As he explained

• It is important to pay attention to how you transport the works
• Use acid free paper
• Think about where and how the work will be hung

Xhibit Professional Development Day; Theory - 27/01/2023 (Camberwell College of Art)

Curated and programmed by student Xhibit 2023 curator Sarah Winski- who spent time researching themes and ideas surfaced in the 2023 selected works to bring together an afternoon with a focus on world building.

Featuring performances, presentations and workshops by Yussef Agbo-Ola, Bones Tan Jones and Eve Stainton 

We kick started the afternoon with a wonderfully intense visual–sound sound bath experience led by Yussef Agbo-Ola of Olaniyi Studio, an innovative design studio that thrives on multidisciplinary relationships to actualise ideas around themes of environmentalism.

It operates as a studio and the artistic practice of Yussef Agbo-Ola. In Agbo-Ola’s work there are archive images, symbols and the subconscious, between the seen and unseen. These elements condense into a prayer asking the earth to heal. The artist mixed everything because ‘sound and space can never be separated’. The performance presented by Yussef was a dense and stimulating experience.

Olaniyi Studio website

Yussef Agbo-Ola of Olaniyi Studio

Bones Tan Jones opened up in a precious way and talked about their practice. Their work can be described as a spiritual practice that seeks to fuse activism and art to present an alternative, queer, optimistic dystopia.

Their practice is not linear, it consists of alter egos, symbols, a sense of community and collectivity, with the aim of creating a safe and accessible space for all. The idea of an optimistic dystopia really struck the audience. ’I want to create space’, Bones Tan Jones pointed out, connecting with heritage, magic, and theatre. They approach activism through art, ‘creating diverse, eco-conscious narratives that aim to connect, enthral and induce audiences to think more sustainably and ethically’.

Bones Tan Jones founded Shadow Sistxrs Fight Club, a physical and meta-physical self-defence class for women, non-binary people and QTIPoC.

Here, they combines Brazilian JuJitsu and magical/medicinal herbalism to create a holistic approach to self-defence. 

They believed in the power of nature and connections, as showed in the project “Whychcraft”, a result of a four week residency at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. “Whychcraft” explored the journey of ‘a cyber druid of the future following the lay lines of their ancestors to seek out why they treated their earth so thoughtlessly’, singing and using extracted junk. Bones also created monoliths out of scrap metal donated by Anthony Caro to the park at the time of his death.

bones Tan Jones website

bones Tan Jones presenting on their practice

The penultimate experience of the day comes from Eve Stainton, an artist interested in the politics of uncodeable queer presence and its intersections with race and class. Furthermore, Stainton creates multi-disciplinary performances involving different media, creating ‘live ecologies that are discordant, multi- layered and psychedelic’, with the intent ‘to create more expansive understandings of the lesbian identity, non-gender/variance, and perceptions of the real’. Stainton, who has worked for museums and foundations such as ICA as well as working with artists – among many, Sonia Boyce and Tai Shani –, led us in a movement workshop to discover the body and its perception, and the self as observed by the other. Divided into pairs, they invited us to create ‘zips’ on our bodies, keeping our eyes closed and changing position after a period of time, allowing ourselves to be observed by the other.

A gentle, sweet experience that created a moment of vulnerability and sharing.

Eve Stainton website

Eve Stainton movement workshop

Q&A with Yussef Agbo-Ola, Bones Tan Jones and Eve Stainton, facilitated by Sarah Winski

During the Q&A, the concepts of transdisciplinarity were touched upon and the question “what kind of world would we like?” was asked. A world where there are diverse communities, with different opinions but with the ability to build things together, in unity and harmony. It is important, as Yussef Agbo-Ola pointed out, ‘to share a deep intimacy with other species, to be able to learn their language and communicate with them’. As for Bones Tan Jones, it is important to find a common utopia, possibly a positive one. For Eve Stainton, in the future it will be important to remember that the body is a 'form of knowledge'. We concluded with a reflection on “to what extent are you responsible for others?”. Everyone agrees that we are all responsible for others, which is why it is important to have an ethical approach.

This article is written by student Arts Programmer Veronica Grazioli, MRes student researcher in Exhibition Studies at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London (UAL).

Images of our second event (Xhibit Professional Development Day; Theory) taken by David Povilaika and the Arts Programme. You can find the complete album here.

Find out more about Xhibit here