With no particularly established order, I shall dive into this week’s post Planning ahead in terms of creative projects and not only. Why is it important?
It may sound like common sense: outline a plan and follow it, have a backup, easy. Although in reality outcomes rarely end up in the exact way imagined/planned. Sure, planning is essential but a crucial skill turns out to be flexibility. Being realistic about your abilities in a time frame coordinated with the rest of taken responsibilities can be tricky, assuming is where it can go downhill.
A project may sound very exciting and promising, there as so many possibilities out there for one to engage with and invest time in. Selecting comes key in these situations as commitments can stack up, time could be put down to hours, and if the plan was based on assumptions one mismatch can turn the course of everything. A task could take a couple of hours or five hours instead? The work to be put here is to also make time to find out a deliberate answer to how long would it take to print images for example. That might require finding the source of information, sending an email (additional time until a response is received *but no guarantee given), or approaching a technician in person. Do they work every working day? What times? When can you initiate a talk? Approaching them with particular questions collected through research undertaken can save another visit and lead quicker to the next step.
Speaking to them will possibly give more details to the process such as inject prints require sitting at least for 24h before being installed. This, I have learned after undertaking the steps described above weeks in advance the paste-up exhibition I am the curator of is to be installed.
Projects vary, different people are involved, and setting limitations and flexible schedules including extra days in case of anything are essential for success. It is never too early to start as they say ‘there is no such thing as bad weather, only poor clothing’.
