As part of my role, made possible by the Jerwood DCMS Creative Bursaries Scheme, I recently took a professional development trip around the UK, meeting people from many different organisations. I learnt and saw an incredible amount; so much that I'm still trying to process the conversations and assess their impact. Seeing the way a wide variety of cultural, artistic and educational spaces are structured and run has been completely invaluable, and I look forward to seeing how it will affect my aspirations.

Here is a small cross-section of the advice I gathered:

- Learn on the job, work outside your own strict remit to make things happen
- Rather than limiting yourself to one skill/trade/interest, find the thing that links them all and develop your understanding of why it drives you
- Write down all your skills, do it reciprocally in groups so you can understand your own strengths and identify areas for improvement
- Be genuine and completely honest to yourself so people will feel they can trust you
- Keep working on time-management, expectation management and self-discipline
- Be the glue that holds things together, with an ability to plan and execute things realistically
- Learn to build a time-frame from scratch by assessing the scope of a project
- Have confidence in your own abilities, remain calm and find solutions even if you are terrified
- Exposure to many different places, experiences and people will give you a broader palette to draw from when solving problems
- If problems occur, communicate and be the person who presents other options
- Make strong local connections with professionals in different practises: you can offer one another advice in difficult situations, or when trying to reach new audiences
- Find the value in not being an expert so you can bring people with expertise together to share knowledge
- It's important to have a network that allows you to discover things that come out of different disciplines
- Get things out of your system early in your career, you may think you want to do one thing but it may quickly lose its glamour
- Believe you are an [insert job title] and you can be one with time, direction and experience
- Having personal passion and being multi-skilled can lead you to jobs you thought you weren't qualified for - actively engage with your interests to demonstrate your knowledge to an employer
- Don't validate yourself through your work, find confidence outside of it too so you can remain professional

I have recently developed an interest in working freelance, potentially across disciplines, hopefully combining production and practise within the arts. I made sure I met with various freelance arts practitioners to get some insight. Here???s a small selection of the pointers I received:

- Always learn new skills, never stand still
- You must hit the ground running when starting a job, no faffing or training
- Be a perfectionist and never do a shoddy job
- Before attempting to go freelance, save as much money and make as many connections as you can
- Turning down work is hard, but must be done to manage your workload - be forward, direct and make quick decisions
- Never pull out of a project/job once you have said yes
- Build up a name in one skill but be flexible and try everything
- When working on a freelance job you are expected to temporarily absorb, live and breath the cultural values of that organisation - you are essentially doing something for someone else

The last point really struck me. I thrive on change and variety - thankfully my post here at iShed has included new challenges and exciting surprises at every turn, and having a job title in such a well respected organisation has been fantastic. However I feel drawn to the idea of temporarily being taken into a fold, dipping a toe into a new community; making exciting things happen with and for one organisation, then returning home to work on an entirely different project.

Before starting at Watershed I volunteered and worked in a series of short-term placements - I found it empowering to assume the persona and adopt the house style of each different organisation. The ability to be a professional chameleon whilst bringing idiosyncracies and unique ideas to a role is something I find very appealing.

As another great piece of advice warned me, things may lose their glamour, and perhaps the unpredictable nature of freelancing may bite me, but I'm beginning to gather skills and confidence that would make becoming a sole trader a whole lot easier than going in blind.

Until then I???m gathering essential skills to enable me to produce, coordinate or program creative/participation projects and events. As I said in my blog post for the DCMS, the opportunity to be part of the iShed team has been incredible, and I will come out of this year with an immeasurable amount of applicable knowledge and experience.