Is a lecturer the same thing as a teacher? Does she ever get bored at work? Maybe not, when she gets to wear fashionable clothes, go to Paris and spot famous people!
I am a 7yr old. My name is Gwen Rose. I wanted to do this podcast so all the girls, boys and me could learn about what adults do all day.
In this episode we will learn what a Lecturer in Fashion, Media and Marketing at a University in the UK really does.
Tune in for this debut that you won't want to miss!
Visit our website https://gwengetstowork.com/
Produced by Enigma Records
https://enigmarecords.co.uk/
Is a lecturer the same thing as a teacher? Does she ever get bored at work? Maybe not, when she gets to wear fashionable clothes, go to Paris and spot famous people!
I am a 7yr old. My name is Gwen Rose. I wanted to do this podcast so all the girls, boys and me could learn about what adults do all day.
In this episode we will learn what a Lecturer in Fashion, Media and Marketing at a University in the UK really does.
Tune in for this debut that you won't want to miss!
Visit our website https://gwengetstowork.com/
Produced by Enigma Records
https://enigmarecords.co.uk/
Gwen: 0:03
Have you ever been asked, "what do you want to be when you grow up?"
Voiceover: 0:09
Gwen Gets To Work.
Gwen: 0:11
I like talking to people. And they like talking to me. At least, that's what I think. One day I asked my mum, "How do I know what I want to be when I grow up?" My mum said, if I interview people about, like, their jobs and things like that, well, I will find out. And, like, all the people who who were listening....umm...you will find out too, if you don't know. Let's Get To Work!
Gwen: 0:50
In this episode, I was talking to my Auntie Alanna. She is a Fashion Lecturer. Basically a fashion lecturer is a school teacher which teaches fashion. So, when you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?
Alanna: 1:15
Oh, um well, when I was really little, I wanted to be a nurse. And then when I was a teenager, I wanted to be radio DJ. So as you can see, that didn't happen.
Voiceover: 1:35
Wait a minute, who are you?
Gwen: 1:38
So are what are lectures?
Alanna: 1:43
Okay, so a lecture is kind of like three classes that you have at school, except for instead of doing lots of fun activities. I stand the front sometimes with a microphone (depends how big my lecture theatre is) and I talked to the students about something so it changes every time. Every time I do a lecture it's different. So one day it might be about why fashion films are important in the fashion industry. And the next day it might be about why the Internet is really important in creativity, so it changes every day. But the students have to sit and listen to me and take lots of notes. Sometimes I teach up to 100 people at a time. So it's quite difficult to do activities when you've got that many people. Sometimes we do practical things as well. So we will have days where my students will be in the studios doing a photo shoot, and then that is what we would call a workshop because they get to do practical things.
Gwen: 3:05
Who who pays you?
Alanna: 3:08
Who pays me? Err, the university pay me. Um, yeah. So the students pay to come to university. You get student loan, when you apply to university. You don't have to have one, but you have to pay for coming to learn with us. So that's kind of different from you guys. You guys go to school for free, don't you? But, you have to pay to come to our University. And then part of the money that the students pay, pays for me.
Gwen: 3:39
What do you talk about?
Alanna: 3:41
What, at work?
Gwen: 3:42
And also teach?
Alanna: 3:44
For Fashion, Media and Marketing we teach lots of different things, but everything is connected to the fashion industry. So sometimes we teach photography, so how the good photos in the studio and good photos outside, of clothes and of people. Sometimes we teach our students how to make magazines. Lots of our students like making magazines. Um, what else do we teach....so my area of expertise, so before I was a teacher, I was an In-Store stylist for Topshop and Miss Selfridge. So my job was to make the window displays. So you know, when you go to a shop and there's, like, mannequins in the window and they've got outfits on, yeah? That was my job. So I would be in the shop at like, six o'clock in the morning, in the windows, undressing the mannequins and redressing them, putting their outfits on. In the summer. We have to do lots of prep for the next year and we also do some shows as well. So we have a fashion show, which we work with our fashion students to make. And then we also go to Graduate Fashion Week every year. So we take our students who are graduating and show them off, basically, at Graduate Fashion Week, and take all their work and show people who work in the Fashion Street how brilliant they are, and hopefully get them a job in fashion. Um, so, yeah, those are some, so that happens in the summer as well, so it's not just the summer off. We do have to do work. But we do get some time off, too.
Gwen: 5:25
So what do you wear?
Alanna: 5:28
Oh, I am interested in fashion, and my discipline is fashion. We get to dress up quite a lot. So I like to wear dresses when I go to work. I like to wear, I wear quite a lot of black as you know, but I do like to wear a jazzy print as well. I've got a lovely leopard print dress that I really like at the moment.
Gwen: 5:49
What type of clothes, would ummm, would your students wear fashionable clothes, or just clothes that you would normally wear?
Alanna: 5:58
Oh, yeah. They love fashionable clothes. But sometimes my students will come in in outfits and not bring a coat with them because it ruins the outfit. So will have to go outside and get wet. Lots of my students are really interested in makeup as well. So they spent a lot of time getting ready. And making sure that they look nice so yeah it is definitely something that they care about more so than other students in the college who were studying something a little bit different. But what they like at the moment, they really like big, chunky trainers like your trainers.
Voiceover: 6:39
What are those?! They are my Crocs.
Alanna: 6:44
Umm, and they really like, umm, big coats, like a bit like they're a bit too big for them. Weird materials. So they like like shiny materials, like PVC, or leather. The wear a lot of leather. And quite weird jewellery. So big, chunky jewellery.
Gwen: 7:12
Do you get cross any time?
Alanna: 7:14
Oh, all the time, All the time.
Voiceover: 7:20
When there's too much drama school, all you gotta do is walk away.
Alanna: 7:26
Um, I think when you are doing something where you have to work with people a lot and also something that is quite creative, it's quite easy to get cross, particularly if somebody doesn't understand what you are saying to them. Like sometimes students will show me their work and then I will tell them something that maybe they've missed and then they get cross, which makes me a bit cross. But the most important thing in my job to be good at my job is that you enjoy talking to people and that you talk to people well. So I often find that when I do get cross. Actually, all that I need to do is just talk to the person i'm cross with, and that makes everything a bit better.
Gwen: 8:22
Um, is it boring, or tiring, or?
Alanna: 8:28
Yes, it can be both of those things too. The thing about my job is that every day is different. So what happened. yes, so what happened last week might be different to what happens next week So I have some weeks where I get to do lots of teaching, and it's really fun. Or I go on a trip....
Voiceover: 8:48
Her name caresses the lips with a lightness of champagne: Paris. A tower scintillating with epigrams would be out-sparkled by the reality, which is she: Paris. Elegance. Fashion.
Alanna: 9:03
We went to Paris for a week when Paris Fashion Week was on, and we took my students to take photographs of people outside the fashion shows, which meant that we just got to walk around Paris for a week, which was really fun. But it was really tiring because we were in charge of all of those students, and had to make sure that they were all where they should be. And help them make sure that they got their photographs. So that part of it to be really tiring, but that's really fun. But I'll also have weeks where I'm just marking their work for a whole week, which doesn't make me physically tired but makes my brain tired. Twice a year we have fashion month. So where there's a fashion week in four different places. Then those places are New York, London, Paris and Milan. Um, where lots of people from the industry go to those different places and see the new designer collections. So what's really important for our students is to see what's happening there because that's like the sort of most recent thing. And see what trends there might be that are on those catwalks and try to predict those or try to help other brands make a version of them.
Gwen: 10:34
Do your students use like go onto the Internet to like find out the answers or things like that?
Alanna: 10:42
Absolutely. Yes. So lots of the work that my students do is based on the Internet, because that tends to be where the newest things are. So lots of my students end up going into jobs where they're in charge of the social media accounts for brands or for people. Um, where it's their job to be on the Internet basically. So lots of what we do, they have to be online. Um, so, yeah, we do spend lots of time on the Internet. So understanding how about how the Internet works and how people communicate over the Internet is really important for my students.
Gwen: 11:34
Like, if they were, they had to design their own dresses or things like that would they have to like, and they were going to the catwalk and they were watching it, would they, like take notes of what they could do and things like that? And put them on, like, an app to remind them, like Reminders?
Alanna: 12:01
Absolutely. Yes. So, um, we teach them how to do that. So after we've been to Paris sometime, we go to London, but this year we went to Paris, and whilst they're there, they have to take lots of photos. And when they come back, they look through the photos to see what their trends are. And then they write an article about it like you would see in a, uh, like you would see in a magazine.
Gwen: 12:33
Notes like, um, if you were trying to make a story and you put them on notes so that you will remember them, like that, and then you can type them into an actual story book, or something like that?
Alanna: 12:45
Exactly. So you might not write in full sentences. You might just right like some really important words down. So it might be like pink fluffy material, girly dresses, um, with big handbags.
Gwen: 13:04
Like, is there like thousands of girls and like, a tiny amount of boys?
Alanna: 13:09
Nope. We have boys as well. Um, there are more girls than boys. There are more girls than boys, but we have got some boys.
Gwen: 13:19
Do you also stick things? And, like create portraits and things like that? So they go to runway shows and catwalks...
Alanna: 13:30
Absolutely.
Alanna: 13:31
Do they, when they come back do they, like, do portraits of the people that they've seen in their clothes and everything.
Alanna: 13:39
Yeah. So one of the things we do when we go, particularly one which Paris or to London Fashion Week, is we did this thing called Street Style, which is basically: after people come out of the runway shows. And before they go in, we take pictures of them. That's one of the things that are students have to practise. So it's taking pictures really quickly and making sure that we're able to see their outfits that people are wearing on the street, but also making sure that we are that they understand who the people who are important in our industry are, and lots of the times they might be pop stars or they might be film stars, or they might be editors of magazines.
Gwen: 14:27
Like famous people, or not famous people?
Alanna: 14:29
Yeah, famous people and we will try to record the outfits that they're wearing because often they get to wear the most, the newest, and the most extreme outfits.
Gwen: 14:43
Would you sometimes video them like the people that you go to see and would you see, like, famous singers or famous dancers and things like that. Likewho have you seen?
Alanna: 15:00
I'm trying to think if we saw anyone good. We tend to see I don't know if you're gonna know who any of these people are, but we tend to see, like, quite famous models who might not be modelling on the catwalk anymore but might be doing something different. So it was a very famous model called Naomi Campbell. We saw her last year. She's very, very famous and very important. So we were really lucky to get a picture of her. This year we saw Ellie Goulding, do you know who Ellie Goulding is? She's a pop star. She's a pop star. We saw her. We saw a very famous model called Karlie Kloss but I don't think you're gonna know who she is but it really depends who goes to the show so we don't know who's been invited. So we just have to hang out outside on and try to have a really good knowledge of who people are. So one of the things that we try to make our students doto prep to get to Paris is learn who are important. So whether that's somebody who is the editor of a magazine, so decides what the magazine is gonna look like and what the design is going to look like in the magazine. Or it might be like a famous photographer ot it might be somebody who's a pop star or a film star.
Gwen: 16:21
Um, my mum said I have to go, so...
Voiceover: 16:25
Why? Why? Why? Why?
Alanna: 16:30
Okay, you probably need to have your lunch don't you?.
Gwen: 16:34
Uh, yeah, and I also have French.
Alanna: 0:00
Oo, Francais.
Gwen: 0:00
So thank you. Bye.
Alanna: 0:00
Bye!
Gwen: 0:00
In next week's episode, i'm interviewing an interviewer which is funny, which will be exciting, but I'm kind of nervous, kind of excited, but, um, it will be fun! So you can hit that subscribe button, and write a comment. Bye.