After reading through the call out sheet, I see this as an amazing opportunity to meet new people and explore a field I lack experience in: marketing. This is a heavily collaborative project and I’m excited to have the opportunity to work with a range of people in such a flexible way. 

The students at UAL, including those in my own class, are diverse and include both international and home students. However, I have found that we often divide ourselves by these groups. I hope this project helps to bridge some of these gaps as I want to learn about different perspectives and how they impact our perception of things. Despite working in such a visual way as an arts student, I have never considered the context of my work on an international scale.

Resonating with different people across cultures is important in making them feel seen and catching their attention. By addressing this in our own projects, we form connections with people and influence how our product or service is viewed. I am excited to take on this proposal and learn how to use this approach in my own work.

I attended the first session of Global Campus Studios. During this session we created a profile for a character who could appear in a children’s book to appeal to a wide range of audiences. As I joined late and there was a lot of external distractions and disruptions I found the task a little confusing. In order to have a better experience next week I intend to book out one of the library rooms instead and take time to read through the emailed material beforehand.

I feel our profile was very unsuccessful as it is overly generic and doesn’t feel like it would be relatable to many people. By being unprepared for the session I did not feel confident in giving much feedback on this task. Moving forward, for future tasks I will plan better to avoid this from happening so I am able to make better use of the time and project as a whole.

Throughout the rest of GCS I continued to work on in session projects like this. This was a good chance to practice communication skills as it was important in getting ideas across smoothly.

These tasks were led by different lecturers across all the different participating schools. As a result, we worked on a wide range of tasks which made me reflect on different areas, specifically relating to consumers and customers, to having a focus on the brands themselves.

One of the problems I noticed with this project was that not everyone engaged. Because we were put into new groups each week there was no way of knowing what kind of experience you would have. Later on in the project in week 9 no one else joined the break room I was in on the call. As it happened, my friend was having a difficult time in her group as no one else was participating so I joined her break room to help with the task. Having someone else from the same University in the call made it easier to interact with the brief, especially if it’s someone you already know. I understand the benefit of it being randomised as it forces you to meet new people and develop your social skills, however, makes it harder when no one wants to participate.

One of my favourite tasks was the virtual getting to know you task where we were supposed to virtually meet the others we were randomly matched with to learn more about each other and compare our lives. Unfortunately we were unable to organise a time to meet that suited everyone, as someone was very busy and their only available time to call would be 11pm here. This highlighted the struggles of working internationally online.
To still meet the brief, we instead sent each other information and pictures either through email or in the format of a slideshow. Here is the presentation I made and sent:

In my presentation I wanted to cover my university life as well as personal life so included bits of both.

I found it interesting to see all the similarities and differences between our lives. One of my teammates shared similar experiences (creative cafe + Photo Booth) which I found very interesting! It was a very fun project to carry out however is a shame that we couldn’t arrange a call.