Unit 1B
Researching and applying for arts opportunities
The arts activity I want to learn more about is:
Writing
Why?
Writing is an essential tool for me to communicate creative practice to my audiences, customers and funders. It is the means of explaining my process, telling the story of Lizzies Lines and sharing the lessons I’ve learnt along my creative journey authentically. Being able to convey personality and emotion through writing creates a stronger image and fuller picture of the person behind the brand which is integral to creating deeper connection between your audience, your brand and your work.
I want to explore writing from a creative lens influenced by poetry, playwriting and storytelling, as well as from a media perspective by means of PR, branding, promotion and selling. This will help me to develop my ability to translate my voice into written form to write blogs, guest articles and books.
Writing careers research
- What is a Copywriter?
Someone who takes a client’s advertising brief and generates original copy ideas that grab the attention of the target audience. This can include creating straplines, slogans, body copy, jingles and scripts.
(source: https://creativepool.com/articles/jobdescriptions/copywriter-job-description) - Article on the life of a copywriter in lockdown:
https://creativepool.com/magazine/workshop/the-copywriters-toolkit—part-2-loneliness-and-the-long-distance-writer.22360?from=search:what%20is%20a%20writer;;:0
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Top Copywriting tips from Lizquidity’s article
‘How You Can Make $62,723.85 From Writing In Two Weeks Without An Education’ by LIZquidity.
Read full article here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1A8UIxtPXxrjvY-wGtAZBN0Q4EPxBCqQJSTTFSBZlQ30/mobilebasic
Key takeaways:
The headline:
Because our attention is very scarce, and the headline is our first interaction, it has to be good. It has to hook the reader in quickly because no matter how good your product or service is, your potential customers aren’t going to stick around. Once hooked, the customer’s attention has more chance of engaging with the “body copy” to learn more.
The body:
“A normal story structure with a beginning, middle, and end is a terrible idea. Nobody has time for that.” Lizquidity advises to start with the conclusion, the big claim about how you’re going to improve your customer’s life. Then use the following body copy to justify, support and add credibility to those claims.
Use the word YOU and MORE YOUS:
Your potential customers don’t care about anything except what’s in it for them, so convincing them of that is important.
The primary skill actually isn’t writing at all. The primary skill is psychology.
The point of copy is to create a mental environment where prospective customers can easily convince themselves that your offering will be useful enough to them to buy it.
‘The ideology becomes the identity, and the identity becomes the ideology.’
If you understand what your prospective customer’s ideology is, and what they want to believe, you can make your sales job much easier on yourself by selling their own identity back to them. Forget changing minds. Just roll with what they already believe and write your copy to provide them with psychological validation for those beliefs.
Overcoming a customer’s objections is an important part of copywriting. It’s counterintuitive, but rather than trying to sweep the objections under the rug, it’s useful to address what you believe [the objections] will be directly.
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How to find jobs in writing: Lucy Wrener’s talk
Key takeaways from the talk by Founder The Wern, a PR company on how to get articles and opinion pieces published:
- Topics for the most engagement: Failure pieces over positive pieces, positioning yourself as an expert, comment on a human interest/life event, speak on a passion point related to your personal projects.
- Contact marketing team/editors/journalists. Target your top 5 and
be actively aware of their work, style and topics etc. before
approaching them. (Logos on the left are three of my dream clients) - Search #Journorequest on Twitter.
- PR exercise kits: https://www.thewern.com/freebies
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Evidence of Participation
Evidence of active involvement
I got a job (!!) assisting the Women+ in Leadership programme run by Creative Shift at UAL and wrote up the progress of the 9 week programme.
Download the PDF below to see:
- How I was hired for the opportunity that didn’t exist before I got in touch with the leaders via email
- The social media content I produced and feedback I received from the Digital Communications Coordinator at UAL, Rowan Mills.
- The two-part article I wrote about the whole programme
- Feedback I’d received from the team on my work on the programme, support of the students and delivery of content.
Making LEMONADE Portfolio 
