Ama Niang

Category: Blog

  • Settled In

    4th week of placement done. It’s been going well, I’ve gotten use to my roles and responsibilities. Currently working on the competition entries, outreach email, and the exhibition SIP.

    I asked for more tasks, preferable creative ones as well since I am able to do my current tasks pretty quickly. I was given some more to do so that’s good. I do feel like I could do with more more but I understand that they only have x amount of tasks that need doing.

    I think I have felt just a little down about my dps colleague getting the creative tasks and me not getting any, I feel a bit unsure about how much I will be able to get out of the placement. I do like the placement and the people, I just don’t feel very challenged right now. I am looking at other opportunities as well just to see if there is are any other placement opportunities that I could do alongside this one. I consider myself to be a pretty creative person so with how busy I am currently, I am not able to make or create anything which has been hard for me.

  • Design Values

    Competition Flyer by Never Such Innocence

    During my placement I am working on competition entries and outreach.

    The competition is for children aged 9-18, this is part of their program Conversations On Conflict. This program aims to uplift the voices of young people and children through art on the topic of conflict and war.

    The outreach I have been tasked with is to get in contact with music/choir teachers. In hopes to get more children aware of the song category.

    The competition has a different yearly theme, this years is in someone else’s shoes. The winners are chosen in their own age categories, its divided up 9-11, 11-14, 14-16, 16-18. This way it is fair for all the participants and they can get a equal amount of winners of varied ages.

    The reason behind the Conversations On Conflict program matches my values. I am interested in exhibition design because I think it’s important to uplift artists, their voices, and their experiences. This allows us to be more open minded, considerate, and caring towards others we may feel different than. Its an important way of discussing social issues and bring awareness to them.

    In terms of adapting it to include some other values of mine, I will be able to do this with the exhibition they have put me (and my fellow DPS intern) in charge of. We have decided to look at the theme of Unity Without Uniformity: the importance in accepting and understanding cultural diversity.

  • Positionality Statement 1st Ver

    The reading we were set was very interesting, especially where she touched on how everyone has unconscious basis and how our perspective centres our experiences and interactions with our work.

    It was important and made me take a step back and reflect on how a lot of my work resolves around addressing the same root issues.

    100-200 Words Positionality Statement

    From the quick brainstorm we did during the DPS session these where the more relevant aspects of the positionality wheel task for me:

    Languages I speak and why – French, parents

    Race and Ethnicity – White and black African, Senegalese and French

    Age – 22

    Gender – woman

    Family – eldest child, one brother one sister, both my parents moved to England in their twenties and they met here.

    Parental status – 2 parents, married and I live with them, Mum charted accountant owns business, my dad worked security (had a stroke so can’t work anymore)

    Level of education – Undergrad

    As someone who has always been interested in finding ways to address elitism, exclusion and xenophobia/racism in their work, I plan to apply this to my work this year as well. I am very interested in expanding my knowledge when it comes to exhibition design, as this is a career path I am considering choosing. I like that exhibition design allows you to work with artists and uplift their voices and art. I have done projects before about uplifting the voices of under-represented and overlooked groups in the art space and would like to continue to do so. For me, it is very important to bring awareness to the ways in which systems of oppression affect minorities, and the art world is a great example of that.

  • Monday B-day Shenanigans

    On Saturday it’s one of our colleges birthday so me and Dagyum (another DPS student) were tasked with decorating her desk. She likes horror movies so we did that as our theme.

    The rest of the week I continued with the tasks I had been given, competition entries and admin. On Thursday we started looking at our SIP, holding and designing an exhibition.

  • First Day at Internship

    How I looked vs How I felt

    I started yesterday, I got to know everyone and they explained my roles and responsibility, how to use specific software and showed me around the office.

    It was an interesting first day! I was very nervous on my journey there but I was worried for no reason. First day of full work in my new role tomorrow.

  • ERORR

    hehehe