FuturED#3.5, What the Speakers Said
A team of students now in Year 12 used their summer break to organise, speaker event, FuturED#3.5 held on 19 August 2016. They invited people from the creative and media industries: what the speakers said,
Alice Zhang center with students Rafa and Erica
Alice Zhang, Designer, Illustrator and Founder of Mischmasch, a website that displays and sells art works.
She explained how Mischmasch started, “I was just really bored! People told me there is no way art would sell online. But it is not true. I went to a lot of openings and [art] talks and it was just a lot of housewives talking about bad art and I wanted to change the art scene.”
“It is fine to create art for the market, that is why we have art fairs, but if you use art to talk about want really matters to you, you will find an audience much quicker and people want to buy works that speak to them.”
Kathrine Teh
Katrine Teh, Concept Designer at Walt Disney Hong Kong.
Teh studied Visual Communications at college in the Philippines, before coming to Hong Kong to study Illustration at SCAD (college). While there she took part in a competition, run by Disney, that challenged students to create a new product. Her group worked on a concept that encouraged Disneyland visitors to get to know Mickey Mouse as friend, and her team won!
She said, “Now at Disney I am an Imagineer, mixing imagining and engineering, working on Tomorrowland. One of the best projects I have ever worked on is the Hyperspace Mountain [a ride themed around Star Wars].”
“Imagineers think about ‘the story’ all the time and how we can use props, lights and sounds to tell that story.”
Teh talked students through the Hyperspace Mountain ride experience explaining that the line-up area has been designed to look like a rebel alliance hangar and the post-ride gift shop is surrounded in Star Wars images.
She finished by saying, “You might feel that there is someone you should be or something you should be doing, but you just have to find out who you are and what you want to be.”
Cliff Buddle, Special Projects Editor South China Morning Post
Cliff Buddle, Special Projects Editor SCMP
“When I started in journalism and a story broke we [journalists] would run to the phone to be the first to dictate our story to the news desk as quickly as possible. If you want to be first you have to be fast!”
“Now things are different because we publish news online. We still print a paper because most of the money comes from sales of the print version.”
“It’s a journalist’s job to write in a way that makes people want to read their copy. They also need to be responsible and not to publish anything that is indecent or damaging. Journalists must be a trusted source of information.”
“Now everyone can be a journalist and everyone can self-publish (using social media). “But we still need journalists and what we [editorial teams] really like is for reporters to have their own stories from their own contacts, telling us about something that no other newspaper has.”
“At 4:30 pm each day we have an editorial meeting, we look at what news stories we have and decide what goes where in the paper. When something changes (e.g. a Tsunami) everything moves and it is one of the most exciting times to be in a newsroom.”
“During “Occupy” we created a live blog to report on what was happening. Things changed so fast, news came in via Tweets and What’s App messages.”
“Digital news has changed the way journalists work, they must be quicker with the news, they must collect photos and videos and when news is broken on social media journalists now have to be distributers as well.”
“There are lots of challenges to journalism now but there are also lots of opportunities. Reporting is still about telling a good story that influences a little bit or may be even changes the world!”
Kalen Marie Curtis, Executive Director of Admissions at SCAD with Dharesha and Disha
Kalen Marie Curtis, Executive Director of Admissions at SCAD.
Curtis showed videos from alumni who have become sound engineers, fashion designers and stop motion animators. She showed a stop motion video made by an undergraduate premiered at a film festival in the States who was offered an animators job on the same day.
She said, “If you want a creative career it is ok, you are not alone and you can be successful!”
The FuturED#3.5 organisers: Year 12, Erika, Disha, Lauren, Kiara, Gregory, Goldie, Alsha, Noemi, Pranav, Dharesha, Rafa.
