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Life at RIG Arts

Welcome to my first blog post!

For the past year I've been studying for a Masters degree at the University of the West of Scotland in Ayr. It's been a hard, trying time but ultimately has offered me great connections and resources and pushed me to make a solid decision for my future. The decision is to pursue film and TV production as a full time career.

I work as a project manager and freelance filmmaker at Inveclyde arts and media charity, RIG Arts.
                                                                                   

I've worked here for three years on and off and it's been the been the making of me, not just professionally but also personally - my confidence has grown tenfold and I've never been so comfortable in a work environment before. Previously I would get quite angsty or bored in jobs and itch to leave, but at RIG there's always something new and different happening that keeps me occupied.

Although I've worked at RIG for quite a while now, ever since I started studying I've wanted to push myself at work. This has led to a few changes - becoming freelance, adding more film-making to my resume, and taking on a more managerial role.

The past few months I've been working on big projects (each will be expanded on in following blogs!) - the organising of a two year arts and regeneration project funded by Creative Scotland, filming and editing 'how to' videos for an upcycling project, setting up a Greenock heritage project and lot's of interesting office work to keep me busy day to day!

The team is ever expanding but we all have different roles and responsibilities - there's a funding office, a project worker, and various freelance staff ranging from stone sculptors to songwriters and comic book artists.

My role at RIG is fulfilling because I am constantly challenged but I always make sure that I am pushing myself to try something new.

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Film-making with RIG

Like I said in my first blog I've had the chance to work on my film making skills with RIG's Recycle Upcycle project. Recycle Upcycle is a year long project teaching people about the importance of recycling and how to upcycle items to save them from landfill. The project includes workshops led by upcycling artists where people can go and work on their own projects - screen-printing on used materials, painting and distressing old frames, decoupaging tables and drawers and glass paining old bottles to name a few activities. One of the workshop leaders was Jeanette Sultan. Jeanette is an artists who specialises in upcycling furniture and runs her own company selling such items - Shabby Shock. Jeanette has quite a big following from her business as well as her monthly articles in 'Reloved' and 'Reclaimed' magazines. I thought it would therefore be a good idea to create vlogs for the project so that people further afield that aren't able to attend the wo...

The role of project manager

As RIG Arts is quite a small company with only a few core employees you kind of have to be a jack of all trades as you could be doing anything at any given moment. However each of us do have a specific skillset that lends itself to different roles, one of mine being Project Manager. This year has been a good year for RIG; we have secured funding for a two year long regeneration project with Creative Scotland as well as a one year heritage project with the Big Lottery Fund and several other smaller funds like Climate Challenge Fund and Awards for All. All these projects mean one thing, ORGANISING. Organising and managing these projects is crucial to the outcome, and that's where I come in. In February and March I started a rough draft of a timetable for our Creative Scotland and Heritage projects as these were the longest and most ambitious. Each required several public workshops a week as well as in schools and with local groups. This required sourcing and hiring freelan...