Review of our 2017 Alumni Event by Nathan Scrimshaw

I was very proud to be part of the 4th annual DFSA Alumni Event last week (25th Feb 2017) – and I just wanted to share what I took away from the day.

There was a bumper turnout of alumni representing the widest spread of graduates we’ve seen and a huge range of different career-paths and life-journeys. I was one of them, representing one of the first year-groups to graduate in what was then Time Based New Media in 2003, but we also had recent leavers and a wide sample of year-groups between.

Rob Adams 2016, Craig Bilham 2008, Anna Hawes 2008, Lawrence Simpson 2009, 

Cecilia Reed, Elliott Williams, Matt Flemming 2012, Tamara Lenz 2015, 

Laura Thomas 2016, Charlie Akehurst 2010

What struck me about the event was how similar many of our stories were, despite our taking very different directions in life and having completely different career strategies. There was a common theme of spotting opportunities, seizing chances, not being hostages to fortune, and not being deterred if things didn’t work out the way we expected. This has always been part of the DNA of the course, but there was still a satisfying continuity in recognising it across so many disciplines and so many year groups (thirteen years separated the earliest graduate in attendance from the latest).

What was also striking was how impressive everyone’s achievements were, yet how our own measures of success used metrics that were personal to each of us. No one said it explicitly, but it was apparent in the journeys we shared with the audience. Values, priorities and ambitions showed through and were all unique to the owner.

It’s a truism, of course, but still easy to forget when the rest of society often defines ‘success’ in comparative (read: competitive) and binary terms. Furthermore, there were occasional remarks throughout the day which acknowledged that the landscape we operate in is becoming increasingly hostile to the very concepts that we, as DFSA creatives, learn to appreciate – nuance, complexity, diversity.

Trump. Brexit. Post-Truth. All mentioned at some point and all polarizing forces. It’s not just success now; it feels like everything is becoming binary and competitive (read: combative).

This is giving us more to do, not less. There’s more to challenge, more to highlight, more to say. It’s interesting, and encouraging, how strongly this is reflected in the Year 2 exhibition ‘Seeds And Surveillance’ in the Linear and Foyer galleries.

Billie Williams - Fear = Money

I’m really glad the alumni event was followed by a private view of this current work – the connection between past and present students was clear throughout the day, and both the artworks, and the current students from all years that I spoke to, emphasised this in the evening.

It was good to be able to hand the day over to them. They are, after all, what it’s now about.