Hi i'm Victoria um I'm based in Margate and I am one of the co-founders of 'People dem collective'
and I would class myself as a portfolio artist so I do a bit of everything and that is Education,
Programming, Curation. Hi guys my name is Zoe Murphy and I'm a furniture and textile designer based
in Margate, I make my living by designing my own patterns and prints and putting together my own
color palettes and then screen printing all of my ideas and my drawings onto second-hand furniture
pieces no day is necessarily the same no week you know one day or one month I might be programming
and what that might entail is me sort of trying to search for exciting and fun activities um
art activations um theater music um with the the you know the hope of creating a exciting
and fun and educational space at the we out here festival and we are in the process of uh securing
a building for a national cultural centre which will be uh you know a place of black and brown
excellence and diaspora excellence it will be a place of art and culture health and well-being
all of the skills that i've you know acquired over the you know the years in programming 100 percent
you know to that that role. So a typical day for me with my job is just like Vic was describing
it's going to be tons of different things so most of the time i'm heading to my studio to
do drawings and paintings and design screen prints to go on to the pieces of furniture that I
decorate and if i'm not doing that i'll be wearing one one of my other creative small business hats
which will be doing research for my projects uh contacting clients and finding out what they might
like me to make for them getting involved in other projects that people have got me
commissioned to working on it will be promoting the work that I make um getting in touch with
people and sharing news about what i'm doing. I think the advice i'd give um people who are
trying to get within a you know a creative career powerful within the creative industry
would definitely be about thinking about your values as as as an artist as a creative I think
being really clear about your in some ways like your personal branding isn't it you know there is
the way that you move you have your core values um if people were to pick out you know out stuff
specific about you like you know just from knowing Zoe's work straight away you know the DNA within
her work is Margate and then of course when you speak to Zoe you you get even more of that
richness because that is coming from a place of of lived experience and it's it's got so much
integrity because that is her core value of who she is and i don't think that comes quick
you know it's okay to not know what it is that you want to do but definitely realizing that
that's something that you're gonna refine as you move forward and it can change what your focus is
in relation to your creativity and your work i've only just really began to really understand and
really um love wearing my badge of honour of my lived experience and knowing that
those are the things that make me really unique. That's spot on and when I i'm making
stuff um it's probably got a lot of um authenticity about it because i've
I don't think I trained myself to do it but I don't doubt my points of view I don't always
think that they are the best ones I don't you know whether it's to do with colours or the way
I'm going to draw something or what I'm going to print it onto or how I'm going to present it
I think I just a long time ago came to understand that um the only thing I can have full faith in
Is that I think this is the right answer for a long time i've kind of come to understand that
a good option is to trust my own judgment if you tap into what your state of flow is
and and pursue that that's when I think really magical things happen and finally the only really
addition I wanted to say that just to say on top of that was to surround yourself with people that
either respect and pursue their flow in the same way or that are actually very interested in the a
variety of the things that you're interested in as well time with people like Vic and with my friends
who are um really going for their own goals in the same way that I'm going for mine that validates me
in a really powerful way and makes me really revises my passion for my my projects as well