Evie Mundy believes that the key to working in the creative industries is that you need to know what you want.
“You need to work at what you want and stick at it,” Evie says. “Especially in the arts industry where it can be so competitive - you need to really focus yourself.”
Evie needed help focusing her own ideas which led her to doing the Arts Management Online Short Course with Central Saint Martins during the 2020 lockdown.
“I had been toying with the idea of doing a short course for a while to help me get more specific knowledge in the area of the arts that I wanted to pursue in my career. Fortunately, lockdown gave me the time and opportunity to do that.”
With a BA in Photography from Southampton Solent University, Evie currently works as an administrative assistant in Cambridge, but says she uses every opportunity she gets outside of work to nurture her creative side.
“I'm now in a 9-5 job, still waiting for the opportunity to work in my chosen field. But I try and stay creative in my spare time. I enjoy shooting on film, making mixed media collages and I have become obsessed with macrame and other fibre crafts.”
Evie says doing the short course not only helped her fine-tune her creative ideas and new found passion for macrame, but it also gave her the confidence to start her own business.
“If it wasn't for this course I wouldn't have pushed myself into starting up my own business, Create Space, and the past 6 months would have been very different!”
Evie adds that it was the skills that she learned on the short course that really inspired her to take what was initially just an idea into a fully-fledged business, with regular sales, and products stocked in three stores as well as plans for a craft fair in the near future.
“From drafting press releases to cash flow and budgets, the course gave me so much insight into things that hadn't even crossed my mind,” Evie tells me.
In addition to the skills she developed, Evie says she enjoyed the community feeling of the course, despite it being online (due to lockdown).”It was so interesting to hear everyone's ideas that were all so varied. I also really liked the assignments that basically formed the backbone of my business and the feedback from the tutor, Zara Worth, was so insightful and supportive.”
Zara’s support has continued long after the course, according to Evie as she tells me her short course tutor has been in touch and monitored her progress with her new business. "Since I've started my business Zara has been following my progress on social media, showing support and even buying some items!”
When asked what advice she has for other students who are also toying with the idea of doing a short course, Evie is happy to encourage them to go for it. “Do it! You'll get so much out of it, even just the assignments can help you focus your ideas and the feedback you'll get will be extremely valuable!”
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Perhaps you’re someone who has a wealth of creative energy, but feel you could benefit from a short course to help consolidate your ideas – or even develop new ones? Our Arts Management Online Short Course is here to equip students with transferrable skills to help them display, exhibit and promote their own art to the public.
Did you know our online short courses are delivered by industry practitioners? This means you’re taught by people working in the field with insight into a range of dynamic creative industries.
