On Wednesday 12th October, LUV Charity partnered with The Photography Foundation and ran their first self-promotion workshop with 5 photography trainees.
About The Photography Foundation
Based in North Greenwich, The Photography Foundation create pathways to professional photography for less advantaged young adults in London through education, professional development and alternative routes to creative careers. Each training programme runs for 6 months and during that time, the trainees take their photography skills to the next level and develop a commercially-focused portfolio that is tailored to their career goal.
Aims and objectives of our collaboration
With over 20 years of experience combined in the creative industry, Katie Bulmer, Thanh Uong and Ming Lee wanted to take their passion for branding and graphic design and educate the Photography Foundation trainees on how these skills could be used alongside photography, to support them with self-promotional materials.
During our 4-hour workshop, we discussed the importance of visual communication, understanding your purpose as well as how to create a brand identity for yourself when considering starting a business or searching for future employment.
As well as these fundamentals, they shared their own career progressions; and opened up about their personal experiences and difficulties of getting into the creative industry:
“I always wanted to do something creative; and I loved exploring a variety of creative disciplines including illustration, photography and sewing. At a young age, it is always difficult to understand which career direction to consider and talking to other people in the creative industry, helped me understand possible career avenues to explore.” – Katie, Creative Designer
““I loved sharing lived experiences through engaged mindfulness and design (our intended action) for personal transformation. Looking at getting to know yourself, the whole-person system approach, and the hard and soft skills. From Atomic Design to Atomic Habits tools kit, these skills are useful for professional & personal life development and are adaptable & transferable to the constantly changing modern life challenges.” – Thanh, Social Value Lead
Inspired by American Author and Inspirational Speaker, Simon Sinek, Thanh Uong, our Social Value Lead, discussed the importance of finding your ‘Why’ and your purpose when visually communicating who you are and discovering your career journey.
Katie, our Creative Facilitator and Designer, discussed the importance of having a coherently designed brand identity. As well as taking into consideration the design elements, Katie also discussed the importance of visual communication and making sure your design approach reflects your values, voice and purpose in the best way possible.
Towards the end of the workshop, Katie provided an Adobe Illustrator tutorial and taught the trainees how to add images, colours and fonts and create a brand mood board, inspired by the afternoon discussions.
Summary
Overall, we thoroughly enjoyed working with The Photography Foundation and working with the trainees.
We look forward to connecting trainees with our network of creative partners for future work experiences and we wish them the best of luck as they continue their traineeship and career progression over the next 6 months.
Here is some feedback from The Photography Foundation:
“I thought LUV Charity was a pleasure to work with, the communication was smooth and you tailored the workshop to our trainees. I liked the balance you struck between emphasising the importance of soft skills, while providing some training in hard skills.”
Here is some feedback from our trainees:
“The workshop with LUV is a good first step in learning graphic design and finding out more about the business side of the creative industry. If you are someone who wants to learn how to present yourself better commercially as a photographer or designer LUV will help you in finding out how to do so.“
“This workshop reminded me why I initially took up Graphic Design at university and how to changed my mindset/way of thinking or approaching a brief. The idea behind mindfulness and the Ikigai felt like the most significant part of the workshop for me personally.“
Interested in partnering with us?
We are always on the lookout for partners and organisations for collaborating and coproducing workshops just like this one. Drop us a line with your name, contact number, email and London Borough you live at info@luvcharity.com