Reflection of the Exhibition

Although all students were there on the opening night and could talk to the people at the exhibition we were not there all the time that our work was displayed. This meant that we may have not seen all of the people that may look at our work. In order to try and get around this we decided as a group that it would be a good idea to have a comments form to encourage people to write something down about the images. This worked to my advantage as I received some good remarks about my work and made me feel proud of my work and helped to boost my confidence levels.

As this was a group exercise, it was decided amongst ourselves the roles and responsibilities within the team and we were designated tasks to complete before the exhibition. I suggested in one of the meetings that we should produce an A5 flyer that could have been handed out in the city centre to promote the event. This could have also been sent out as an e-shot to all of the students at the three college campuses, as well as to people within the creative sector. The person allocated with this task did not complete the artwork for this and consequently not only did I fell that the exhibition suffered from this, I also felt that as though I had failed with this task, as it was a group effort. In the future when having and idea such as this, I would prefer to follow it up myself to ensure that it is completed, as I felt that this would have made a big difference to the event.

I also had the idea to produce a banner that could be put up in the centre of Wakefield in order to generate interest about the exhibition. With it being in a public place I had to get clearance from the council that it would be OK to do this, which was granted. Again this is something that I will in future push to ensure happens, especially if it were to be done for the end of year show.

I believe that the exhibition could have been marketed and promoted better in several ways even with a lack of finance. Earlier in the semester we discussed talking to the local radio and newspaper stations for coverage about the event which would have hopefully created interest; however for one reason or another task did not get completed. This is something that I would want to do if given the opportunity again, as I think it would have increased the amount of people at the event, and I will put a lot of effort into for the end of year show.

It is my hope that from hosting two previous events that we will be able to draw on our strengths and reflect on our weaknesses and make these stronger for the end of year show. I hope we will be able to promote both the event and ourselves better and improve links with the creative industry, so that we will be able to invite other photographers and clients to the event.

To ensure that there will be more people we have started a Facebook group for the end of year show and have sent invitations to family, friends and professionals. It has also provided us with another style of communication within the group. This is a bonus as there were several occasions where not all members of the group were there and missed out on important decisions. I also plan to use the database of contacts that the group compiled when setting up our media agency to invite people to the event.