Factory Lunch Hour – Keeping it Simple: admin and organisation

What is the session about?

Join us for a conversational Factory Lunch hour between British Ceramics Biennial’s Learning and Participation Manager Natalie Armitage and Artistic Programme Manager Rhiannon Ewing-James about how to keep admin and organisation simple when you work in the Arts. While neither Natalie or Rhiannon claim to be the most organised, they will share the different methods and hacks that work for them after years of working in arts and education.

This session will cover:

• Admin and organisation methods from a neurodiverse and neurotypical perspective. 
• Planning workloads and projects in word, excel and calendars. 
• Out-sourcing organisation

Who is the session for?

• Students or people who are early in their career and want to start building a tool kit to help manage a sustainable career. 
• People who are interested in arts or project management but don’t have experience yet. 
• People who feel are interested in learning how other people stay organised and stay on top of admin or not.

Who is delivering?

Natalie Armitage

Joining the team in 2017, just prior to BCB 2017 festival, Natalie manages the Education strand of the BCB engagement programme. Her main responsibilities include: 

• The CLAY School programme; 
• Foundations, a project funded by Children in Need and Wellcome Trust to give children exciting science learning experiences through experimentation and play with clay; 
• Generation, a youth-based project for young people between 16-25 to explore the ceramics heritage of Stoke-on-Trent funded through National Lottery Heritage Fund. 

Natalie has a background in art history, film, and material culture and 2016 completed her PhD in English and American Studies at University of Manchester. She has experience in a range of different education settings, having taught at college and university level and within informal settings through arts engagement work. Outside of BCB, Natalie maintains her own creative practice through writing and work in a range of media. 

Natalie is focusing on building upon previous successful work, exploring more ways of creating meaningful learning experiences through open-ended, person-centred working; incorporating play and experimentation to facilitate exciting learning and creative environments As a neurodiverse person, she also has an interest in how we can create more inclusive and accommodating spaces in relation to the varied and complex needs that neurodiversities present.    

Rhiannon Ewing-James

Rhiannon joined the BCB in 2017 as the Artistic Programme Manager where she has the opportunity to create exceptional experiences for audiences, artists and communities through meaningful and impactful exhibitions and programmes. Rhiannon works on the exhibitions programme on a festival year supporting artists and she has the wonderful opportunity to work on year-round programming with her talented and knowledgeable colleagues.  

As well as having the pleasure of working creatively within her role at BCB, Rhiannon is an artist and epic clay nerd with a degree in Contemporary Applied Arts from Ulster University, Belfast and is currently studying for an MA in Curation at Teeside University. Rhiannon’s past experience includes working as Studio Co-ordinator at Guldagergaard International Ceramic Research Centre, Denmark and later Project Officer at Craft Northern Ireland. Continuing to engage critically, she also loves to write, share ideas and hold conversations with people about contemporary ceramic practice. 

How to book?

All Factory events are free and tickets are booked through the event pages on the BCB website.

What is Factory?

This workshop is proudly run as part of the creative business support programme Factory. Factory is a partnership between Staffordshire Chambers of Commerce, Staffordshire University, British Ceramics Biennial and ACAVA. The programme is part funded by the European Regional Development Fund. Visit our main Factory page for more information about other opportunities and workshops run through Factory. 

Online Access:

• In advance of each event we aim to share an overview of the event including tasks that may be given to participants you can prepare.  
• We will enable captions for anyone to access during the event and download after. 
• We will record each online event so you can re-watch it. 
• We will share a resource pack after the event including summary notes, relevant links shared during the event, the event transcript and the event recording. 

If there is anything we can do to support your participation in the event, please email rhiannon@britishceramicsbiennial.com to discuss what we can put in place for you.