Study Skills Pro-Forma Self-Assessment (Current Thinking) and Future Orientation (Planning and Goals).

Current Thinking

These headings are derived directly from the criteria used across the Creative Practice modules to define required performance and competencies. For each domain, you will rate your current skill level and detail your “current thinking”.

1. Knowledge and Understanding (Focus: Subject Knowledge, demonstrating systematic knowledge, use of established creative work in the field).

I have strong subject knowledge in millinery, the craft, its heritage, traditional and modern techniques mainly within a commercial setting. This term has highlighted knowledge gaps in theoretical and conceptual thinking. I am conditioned commercial ways of thinking and working. I need to connect differently to bridge the gap so I can engage in larger cultural conversations with my work.

• Critical Analysis and Thinking (Focus: Investigating subject matter, deploying established theoretical analysis and inquiry, making independent judgments).

I am strong at making individual judgements, I feel when things are right or wrong and when I need to push a subject or not. Whilst I am a critical thinker in terms of being critical of my own work, I have never investigated critical theory or applied specific theories or critic methods to my work before.

The mid-term crit was, uncomfortable because I struggled to articulate my ‘why.’  By opening through experimentation and critiquing my practice this will improve.

• Critical Approach to Practice (Focus: Choice and justification of sources, critical and rigorous adaptation and synthesis of sources to develop a distinctive approach, addressing ethical and sustainable practice).

I am good at developing ideas to a finished piece. However, justifications come from prior experience rather than new research, this term has pushed me to research and think deeper than my innate knowledge. I have found it difficult to evaluate some practical work because I have not started from research first approach. Experimentation and testing will allow me to develop pieces that will have fully rounded stories to their creation, allowing me to fully critique and analyse and embed the ‘why’ into them.

• Communication (Written, Oral, and Visual) (Focus: Style, structure, grammar, spelling, presentation, referencing standards (i.e., Harvard)—essential for reflective journal and presentation).

Written: I have not used citation in essays before however, it is becoming a natural addition to my writing. I have an informal, conversational witting style. My default is to make sure everything clear so written work can be unconcise. I am strong at grammar but disengage with editing.

Oral communication: I am good 1-2-1 in environments I feel comfortable in, but struggle to articulate in a bigger group. Words don’t come to me quickly nor clearly. When I am not confident in the subject matter, I am poor and find it hard to make a point against more confident speakers. If I am confident in my subject, I am more forthcoming in this environment.

Visual Communication: Colour and proportion come naturally to me, but I am far stronger with things that are physical than in digital media. My use and knowledge of illustrator, photoshop and other platforms like video editors are functional, but not creative. It is an area I have actively avoided apart from for the necessary. I don’t have natural interest in or enjoy digital creative work; it feels like a chore to endure over its creative possibilities.

Photography-I am good at art direction /composition / balance, but I have never mastered lighting and disengage with digital editing. Knowing how presentation can transform meaning, I will have to engage more to develop my skills.

• Creative Practice and Technical Standards (Focus: Technical competence, experimentation, capacity to operate across familiar and unfamiliar contexts, professional quality of technical work).

My skills are high and confident in millinery techniques, material knowledge, problem solving and creating professional finishes on the practical side. Documenting my work as I go along needs more work and being more experimental and freer with my ideas. I need to work in unfamiliar ways; with materials I don’t know about and be satisfied by both successes and failures.

• Collaboration and Team/Group Work (Focus: Ability to work with others, collaboration, communication, and organisation within a group context—linked directly to the ‘Emotional, Social, and Physical’ competency).

One of my poorer areas. I have little experience in working in groups on an equal hierarchy, I have always worked in employer/employee or client/maker structures. I enjoy collaborating with people with a similar work ethic and style to myself, but when perspectives clash strongly, my default would be to retreat. I would become disengaged if it is an inefficient environment. I need to apricate other people’s input and what they do bring to the table, such as a deeper understanding of the abstract than myself, even if their working manor is different to my own.

Future Orientation and Development

This section addresses the requirement to identify “future planning/goals/ambitions” and explore how these will be addressed during the masters’ program.

• Digital Skills and Resource Management (Focus: Identifying necessary software/hardware skills, especially related to time-based media or digital tools (e.g., industry standard digital tools), and managing data (including ethical deployment of AI), linked to the ‘Digital’ competency.

I have spent a lot of time avoiding developing my skills on digital tools. Whilst I apricate what the tools can do, they don’t excite me enough to want to get involved, the thought of being ‘creative’ whilst sat behind a computer screen is really demoralising for me.

Improved photography, photoshop, adobe skills would benefit me if I weren’t so resistant to start learning. I am an adopter of tech by need over curiosity.

Learning more basic Lightroom techniques and seeing what photography facilities are available to me at the college so I can start developing thoughts on how I may wish to present work, would be proactive and beneficial.

With ethical use of AI, I plan to keep exploring the resources available, ensuring that I used it as a research aide over a critical thinking aide. I particularly find Notebook LM useful for breaking down subjects.

• Professional Development and Goals (Focus: Outlining ambitions for professional growth, career planning, and how the MA will facilitate this, linked to the Learning Agreement and the ‘Professional’ competency).

I would like to position my future practice as an expert in my field in what the future of sustainable millinery and fashion looks like, whilst preserving and elevating the broader scope of crafts status against conceptual art and preserving heritage techniques and the endangered millinery skills. This conversation can go broader than millinery and cross into the craft, repair, and fashion worlds.

Words which define my thoughts on what I would like my future career to represent are ‘renewal,’ ‘reclaim’ and ‘transformation’.

The MA can help facilitate this by giving me the critical thinking frameworks, pushing me out of my comfort zone, giving me access to facilities, allow me to try and fail without the commercial pressure of my business, linking me with future collaborators and provide me with a portfolio of work that expresses the contradictions of fashion, the planet, art, craft and fashion.

• Identified Skill Gaps and Development Plan (Focus: Specific areas identified in sections 1-6 that require improvement; actions planned to address these gaps (e.g., through workshops, independent study, or specialised coaching))

Teamwork – Learn to lean into other people thought processes, accept how they work and see where it leads me.

Technology – Use the facilities and expertise available, in the that will be helpful but to which I am resistant. Consider short courses in lightroom / photoshop / photography / 3d printing.

Critical research – Understand how thinking of theories and researching themes can influence my work.

Grammar and editing – Make it part of the process rather than a chore, allow it to be time to reflect on my work and ensure I am meeting criteria required.

Oral communication – Get comfortable in the group, say what I think clearly and concisely, and ensure I come across as confident, so my addition to the conversation is not diluted by my inability to communicate clearly. In Crits, prepare beforehand key points I want to get across.

Documentation – Develop my own way of incorporating ‘The Studio Habits of Mind’ method into my work, so it becomes a natural flow, that critical engages and pushes my work.