I found the last session very interesting, particularly using the model to delve deeper into what our work is about. It is quite apt at the moment too, as I had struggled to pinpoint some of these aspects until recently, where I felt things started to become clearer.

As someone mentioned in the discussion, this method of ascertaining your work would only really be relevant to current practice and is likely to change, not only from one body of work to the next but perhaps throughout the process of a single body of work. I disagree that it isn’t helpful and was surprised to hear so many of my cohort feeling that way. Maybe this model will work for some and not others, but I certainly found it interesting and it allowed me to look deeper into my current practice and tease out aspects I hadn’t yet considered – overall making my work feel more wholesome.

My current body of work uses paper, fabric, chemicals, negatives and I feel like the process is one of the more important aspects of this work. The context is largely focused on a journey, my journey, literally and metaphorically and highlighting the challenges that I have overcome and still to overcome.

What I also found very interestiing and helpful, was changing the focus onto a specific element of the model. For example, if I prioritise the idea or mood rather than the process, it encourages me to look at my work in a different way. In this instance, the mood would be inspiring, uplifting, challenging; words I hadn’t really considered previously as a reflection of my work. If the focus was on the idea, it would be more about the representation of journey, divisions, challenges perhaps. Then the common demoninator becomes the notion of challenge. My identity on the other hand is, I suppose, an aspirational working–class creative, which ties in with the notion of challenge as a central theme.

I feel however, that there are many ways this could be used but certainly by deliberately putting emphasis on one aspect of the model, it forces you almost, to consider that in a deeper way and in fact enabling a more balanced view.