Catherine Métayer, an MA Publishing graduate, was recently awarded the Macmillan Student Achievement Award. Catherine is French-Canadian currently living and working in New York City as a Publishing Assistant at the United Nations. She pursued her MA in Publishing at LCC last year with the motive of reorientating her career towards independent and art publishing. Since then, she has started a small company, Palaver Press, with her partner, publishing audiobooks and handmade editions of artist books. She also founded a collective of designers and editors, Collectif Blanc, that curates exhibitions. She wrote her thesis on the emergence of new businesses and creativity within independent print publishing, and she strives to transform her passion into a sustainable professional career.
We caught up with Catherine, to find out a little more about her time at LCC and her award.
“This Macmillan prize is the most gratifying recognition that I could hope for at this moment, and I am very grateful for it. I worked on two main projects whilst at LCC, one was a magazine BRUTAL, an art publication inspired by arthouse film created by a small group of students for which I was the editor-in-chief. During that first project, I discovered the Book Arts studios, and despite the fact that it was not part of our curriculum, I started going there often. I discovered a true passion for bookbinding. Later that year, I published a small book which I printed, letter-pressed and hand-bound at LCC by myself!”
Catherine’s second main project was her thesis on the emergence of new businesses and creativity within independent print publishing. She explains: “Conducting the research for my thesis was such a fulfilling experience, but even better was the number of great people that I met and still keep contact with – everyone was so open minded and supportive. The MA did give me strong basis in terms of marketing, design and business skills, whilst letting me explore my own interests and push boundaries. And the fact that we had access to all of that extracurricular stuff was a big bonus for me.”