We don’t always get to respond to every question or mention we get over Twitter and Facebook, but often very good points are raised and we thought this might be a good way of opening out the conversation (in more than 140 characters).

Recently on Twitter…

#Debate – no pay/low pay
One of our posts caused a bit of a stir a week or so ago, and we thought it deserved a proper forum.

The tweet was about a job which had come through from our membership, looking to fill a design internship post. The position was low pay and this started a number of conversations, the first one being that Central Station shouldn’t have been promoting it.

It’s a difficult one for us to enter into because on one hand we don’t condone anyone being exploited, whether you are in the creative industry or not, but on the other we understand that people only see your work if you are out there making it & getting contacts. We’ve had people let us know that they have been picked up for exhibition or gotten work from participating in an opportunity they found on the site which is exactly what we’re here for, so deciding what makes the cut and what doesn’t can get messy. Our policy is that as long as there are creative projects or jobs going, everyone should know about them and make up their minds if it’s something they want to participate in.

For us, it’s not only the people looking for opportunities that need a place to find them, we also want to give people who have a project or job somewhere to post it for free where they will attract the right person, hence, almost all requests for a post make it to the notice board. In extreme cases (i.e. one where we can’t actually identify the benefit of going for the opportunity) we won’t put it up, but these have been very few in the past. As far as we’re concerned, we’re all grown ups and we all know our own personal & professional limitations.

The conversation grew legs among the tweeters and it became more about minimum wage..

We don’t think there is anyone who is going to disagree that everyone should be getting paid for the work that they do for a company or organisation, but it raises so many other questions. Can small organisations afford to offer paid internships? Would talented but inexperienced people loose the opportunity to gain experience and meet professionals if they couldn’t be offered?

We’d love to hear more thoughts on this – please feel free to comment below. Also, for a bit of extra reading, the topic of unpaid work was brought up by @gailtolley a little while ago in this blog.

Thanks to @i_am_duncan @willagebbie & @welcometohr for their insights and debate.

#Question – Gallery space in Glasgow

@wilfreeborn would like to know about any spaces to exhibit in Glasgow. It would be much appreciated if any of our members involved in exhibition spaces, or members with suggestions could get in touch.

Recently on Facebook…

Just in case you missed them, here are a couple of posts from members on our wall that you might want to know about:

And Finally…
Here are a couple of new twitter followers this week that you might be interested in following yourself:

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This is a place where you can catch up on what’s been happening on the Censta community, find out who is new and participate in the conversation. We’ll try to feed in some past questions and conversations  from time to time too (we’re experimenting here though folks so please don’t go getting upset if not all the questions and discussions are mentioned).