Personal Development Planning: Network Maps

As part of our personal development planning we were all asked to create mind maps about our artistic and future career pathways. This is a pretty scary thing to be thinking about but I just started listing artists that I really like and that have done work linked to stuff ive created myself. I was struggling a bit with the whole future planning thing but I watched this video where Alis Pelleschi talked about her experience at university and how she made contacts to get work after it. I suppose im saying that I want to be a self-employed artist type person and I know that this is going to involve some degree of self promotion and branding. Ive included social media on the map because that can be a pretty good way of letting people see your work and maybe meeting people to work with. I have this blog but I haven’t gone into any other social media platform so far so I might consider doing that soon. I have a bit on the map about the past, the kind of art I wanted to do a while ago, textile based stuff maybe thinking about costume design. That was what I was into when I first left high school but my tastes have changed and the things I like creating is different. My present section is all about my work process the now and ive included pictures of artists I like, work that ive made and how they all linked together. Id say where I am now I know the kinds of things I like to make and the artists that inspire me and the next few briefs we get are going to be all about that.

Multiples: Edinburgh Trip

I’ve gone off to Edinburgh with a bit of an idea of what i want my theme to be and some places that i want to visit. I was considering going on a ghost walk but decided to go on a tour of Mary Kings close with a bunch of other people. It was pretty interesting but we couldn’t take photographs which is something that would have been really useful so I might still go on a walking tour at another time, see some of the vaults. I also felt weird breaking off from the group to see things on my own so I didn’t make it up to Piershill Cemetary to see Lafayettes grave but im kinda drifting away from that idea anyway. This felt like such a long day and there was so much walking that i felt like i got all that i could within the day, its quite a leg workout. Here are some images that I managed to get and im gonna get back to Edinburgh at some point to get more, maybe more based on the sex work theme.

Some of the closes- lots of stairs.

The Magdalene Church and around the Cowgate

This guy chilling out at Greyfriars Cemetary

Multiples!!!

Second year starts off with a new brief about 'Multiples' which is also connected with the city of Edinburgh. I had heard about this story of a really popular magician who burned to death in Edinburgh in the early 1900s from a tv show but hadn’t really looked further into it so i decided to look the story up to see if i could get anything from it.

The Great Lafayette and Beauty

Sigmund Neurberger, known by stage name The Great Lafayette, was the highest paid performer of his time with waiting lists to see his performances years in advance. He died in a fire performing ‘The Lions Bride’ in Edinburgh’s Empire Theatre on May 9^th 1911 and was buried with his beloved dog Beauty, given to him by Harry Houdini in Piershill Cemetary. You can read more about Lafayettes life and death here.


As interesting as the story was my heart was set on the theme of 'multiple orgasm' looking at the way womens bodies are used as commodities in the cities, maybe looking at advertising, shop mannequins or sex work. Researching sex work i found out a lot about Edinburgh’s history of sex work from ScotPEP, from the Magdalene Asylum in which one of Burke and Hares victims had been incarcerated to current laws regarding saunas and the prostitution tolerance zones in Leith.

We’re heading off to Edinburgh soon but I have an idea in my hear of what I want to do so I’ll see what images I can get and where my ideas go then.