Artist's Resource Pack

It is important to make the most of any opportunity to study. There are a number of things you might want to think about:

Making time for training
If you are working and studying at the same time, it can be easy to try and do too much. You need to make sure you give yourself enough time to do everything – and remember that a lot of training is also about making contacts so socialising is important too!

You might also need to set aside time to read or listen to books or articles that are part of what you are studying.

You might need to improve your time management to get the most out of your opportunities – there is a well known time management saying:

Concentrate on results, not on being busy

It is very easy to fill up all your time – but are you making time for the most important things?

Time to put things in practice
As well as time to study, you might also need to plan time to put into practice what you have learnt. If you learn a new way to edit film, you are going to need to practice it. If you learn about a way to improve your marketing, you will need time to put this into practice too.

If you plan to do this in advance, you won’t have to try and squeeze it into a packed timetable later.

Study buddies and co-mentoring
Sometimes having a person involved can help us make the most of learning opportunities. You could find a 'study buddy' – someone else who is studying who would like a bit of support.

All you do is agree when and how you will check in with each other – and do it! You might find someone studying something completely different and phone each other once a fortnight just to see how things are going. You might choose someone on the same course as you, and pop out for a drink every Friday. It might be an email relationship with someone at the other end of the country who you contact each month. It doesn’t matter how and it doesn’t matter how often, what matters is that you are in contact with someone and sharing your experiences.

Learning new things is not always easy. It’s a lot easier to give up or miss deadlines when we are on our own – having someone else there can make it easier to talk things through, get things in perspective and stick with it.

Co-mentoring is a way of taking this approach into work. You find someone at a similar level to you, but usually in a different organisation or working with different people. The mentoring is for both people. One listens to the other and comments supportively, helping the other person to look at what they are learning, and then the roles are reversed.