Unit 1 Part D: Arts Research

For my Arts Research, I chose to look into jazz music and what life was like as a professional jazz musician, and how to get into the world of photography and make money out of it.

Research into jazz music

I firstly decided to interview my piano teacher, Nikki Yeoh, who plays at jazz gigs as well as teaching piano in schools across North London. She gave me an insight into how playing jazz to earn money works, how she came to be playing jazz and what she likes or dislikes about her job. The interview, which is about 6 minutes long, is attached below.

To summarise, Nikki's jazz inspiration started in secondary school, when a music teacher recommended some famous jazz musicians for her to listen to. I similarly only became interested in playing jazz about a year ago (I'm fourteen now), through Nikki, so it interested me that I could still potentially make a living out of it in the future having only started relatively late. Nikki is self-taught, having not gone to university, but instead joined multiple jazz bands with other musicians before creating her own band. I thought that was interesting as, should I not want to go to university, jazz music would still be open to me as a career, and it didn't necessarily require any qualifications to have a good career in. She now lectures in Leeds Conservatoire (which I subsequently looked into and you can visit the link of by pressing it), in addition to teaching secondary school children and playing in gigs. When I asked how large her field is, she replied that she knew lots of people who did the same thing as her, something that surprised me, because I didn't think so many people were in the world of jazz or music teaching. When asked what she'd change about her job if she could, Nikki replied that she wished there were more hours in the day. As someone who enjoys being busy and always having something to do, I totally agreed with this and thought that perhaps a lifestyle similar to Nikki's would suit me well.

Research into photography

I also looked into photography and how best to get a good career in it, as it is something I am quite interested in. I was surprised to find that photography jobs are in quite high demand and it is quite sometimes quite difficult to find contracts or jobs. This is particularly in light of the development on phone cameras, which take such nice photos that professional photographers almost aren't needed anymore. However, I decided to find out exactly what would be needed to be done to become a good photographer who got hired often because it's something I really enjoy. I found a university in London (where I live) called the University of the Arts London that offers photography courses and thought it looked very interesting - the link is here. I think I could work my way through the courses and eventually take the post-graduate degree, which would show potential employers I was skilled and committed to work. Through my research I also found out that getting work experience is also very important (particularly after reading this article), so I think that while taking my postgraduate degree I could find a more experienced photographer to help out and gain knowledge and experience from them. However, this is also in quite high demand, so I would have to work very hard to get a good position working for an experienced artist, but I can be very committed and would be willing to put in the work and keep going until I found a mentor who would give me work experience.

Overall, I think both the careers I've looked into could work for me and I could have a full and interesting career in them, but I think I would prefer going into photography. This is because I enjoy having a more set path to take where I can plan out what I'm going to do and don't have to rely on being chosen out of thousands to be in a band, like in jazz. However, having a job like Nikki's could be better because I could get into working faster and start earning money earlier. Even so, I think I would rather go into photography as it is overall something I enjoy more and would love to make a career out of.