Britt Crowley is an independent Film Producer with an eclectic work background. She has lived and worked across America, the UK and China, and now lives in Australia. She recently won the BAFTA New Talent Award for producing, her shorts have been screened at Clermont Ferrand, Cannes Short Film Corner and and she has worked on an AACTA nominated drama series in Australia.

You can’t connect the dots looking forward you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something: your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well worn path.
Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement Address, 2005

This quote resonates with me because most people aren’t fortunate enough to know what they want to do, or they don’t have the perfect path to get them there. It is important to seek out jobs and opportunities whenever you can because you learn something from everything you do. When you finally reach where you want to be you will be wiser from those experiences and you will have some good stories to tell.

Here are my first five jobs:

1. I grew up in the United States and the working age in my state was fifteen years old. The day after my fifteenth birthday I started working as a lifeguard and swim instructor. I spent the next eight years teaching swimming lessons and lifeguarding after school, on the weekends and during summer holidays. I advanced to beach lifeguarding and managed a team of lifeguards. I also taught Lifeguard Training, CPR and First Aid for the American Red Cross. This job taught me about making schedules, managing people and what really constitutes life and death.

2. I worked in several areas of an upmarket department store. In addition to selling clothes, I measured women for bras, got high on fumes while painting fingernails for a promotion and also did some modelling. I eventually worked as a customer service representative where I was involved in loss prevention and handling the money for the entire store.

3. I have always been interested in entertainment. In school and university I danced, sang, wrote stories, played instruments and acted.  I also love being where the action is.  With these interests I was thrilled to work as an intern in New York on a national news magazine show. I loved the buzz of creating a daily show, but I wasn’t interested in the stories about which celebrities were dating. This experience taught me a lot about writing short pieces and working with editors.  One of my duties was listening to the messages people left about show ideas. I remember one woman left a million messages requesting a segment about how Rottweilers were a misunderstood dog breed.

4. My boss from a previous job asked me to take a teaching contract in China. I love to travel and this sounded like a fantastic opportunity. So, after graduating from university I taught the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) at a university in China. Aside from the time when my boss was visiting, I was alone teaching large classes of Chinese students who wanted to do their Masters or PhDs in the United States. I could only say a few basic words and count in Chinese. It was very interesting to live in such a different culture and it taught me a lot about self reliance.

5. I was still really interested in film, but I didn’t live in New York or LA and I wasn’t sure how to get involved. One day I saw an open casting call looking for extras for a film that was shooting in my hometown. I went to the casting call and waited in a queue for the entire day. They called me back for two more auditions…to be an extra! I got the part. Then I found out this coveted role was a maggot! The movie was called The Ring and I was part of the featured cursed videotape.  There were only ten of us (5 men/5 women) and because it was the only scene they were shooting that day, we got the undivided attention of everyone on set including the director Gore Verbinski. I was covered in mud and we were duplicated several times so it looks like there are a lot more of us than there were. I’d obviously impressed as a maggot because I was told to move to LA. Instead I moved to the UK to be with my British husband. I kept thinking about film and intended to find a way in. Years later I went to Screen Academy Scotland and studied producing.

More: Twitter

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We’ve asked professionals in creative industries what jobs they have had in the past to get their foot through the door (or at least pay the rent). For more in the “My First 5 Jobs” series look here.

BIG Kids Magazine is a creative arts magazine that features the work of kids and artists curated SIDE by SIDE.  It is a biannual publication of creative ideas and response-driven projects printed on draw-ready paper with a pull out artist print in each issue.

Born from the late night musings of two mother artists in response to the lack of creative children’s magazines in Australia. Artists Jo Politt and Lilly Blue first dived into the making of BIG Kids Magazine in September 2010 despite living on opposite sides of Australia and having not having seen each other for 12 years. They documented the journey and madness creative process from the outset with an exposing ‘making of a magazine’ blog, and by September 2011 BIG was available in all major Australian Art Galleries. Their 9yr old ‘senior’ editor, Luca and a BIG kids team of various ages and interests oversee all the BIG work.

BIG stands for Bravery, Imagination and Generosity and these are the underlying principles of the magazine. They showcase the work of children and artists side by side and invite children to participate in conversations that might otherwise seem elevated or out of reach. BIG have featured the work of some incredible artists across visual, conceptual and performative art forms and are always on the lookout for artists with a rigorous practice to participate in their ongoing Child Artist Response Project. They encourage kids (and grown-ups!) to make their mark, offer a perspective, develop an opinion, collaborate on an image, co-author a story and explore new ways of thinking and seeing the world. Where many children’s experiences are becoming screen based, BIG fosters an immediacy of response and make it possible for kids to draw, contribute and colour directly onto the pages in the moment. The magazine is designed to be personal to each child and importantly is able to be read under the bedcovers with a torch.

Recently, Politt and Blue also launched the Mother Artist Network (MAN), with Rachel Power, author of ‘The Divided Heart’, opening the conversation of the slippage between motherhood and art practice. It received an overwhelming response and now they just need the time to get the posts up.

Right now BIG are changing design hands and are very excited about the shift toward more readable chaos while they finalize Issue 3 –Game On! and prep for issue 4 – Into the Dark. The latest edition Treasure Maps is available now with Game on! available for pre-purchase and both feature an awesome array of kids and artists including Jacqui Stockdale, Stormie Mills, Ingrid Darbinger and Lea Redmond (World’s Smallest Postal Service).

The BIG info:
Editions 2 -Treasure Maps, and 3 – Game On! are currently available for online purchase here (We deliver worldwide) or see our stockists page
Keep up to date with BIG news on our BIG Facebook page

BIG are currently accepting submissions for their 4^th edition Into the Dark. Deadline for contributions is 30 November 2012.
SEND your work via print quality jpeg images, 600 dpi scans, or Word documents. Download, fill in, save and send with the completed submission form to submit@bigkidsmagazine.com

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Find more zines we’ve featured here.

The studio came about six months ago when a space opened up in the iconic Nicholas building. A hub for artists for many years I jumped at the chance to be a part of something really special. During that time I’ve concentrated on creating a rather strong aesthetic. I suppose you’d call it Victorian Gothic. Using a very monochromatic colour scheme I’ve tried to not only instill the artwork with a feel of a bygone time, bridging the gap between painted portraits, silhouettes and early photography, but to also give the space a feeling of something long since lost.

People are encouraged to enter the space, so its now not only a working studio, but also a gallery and a retail outlet for some of the other pieces I make. You are even encouraged to bring in old frames or pieces to use in creating something special. Having come from a strong retail background and working in the events field as an art director for the last ten years I was always conscious of creating something that wasn’t just a piece on the wall, but also something that had a history and perhaps a darker meaning. Whether it was an heart ornament, a painted book or a cushion all the pieces could sit comfortably together and hint at something else that was going on inside.

Many of the works are done with vintage fabrics and papers, frames with original distressed mounts and found objects. Most of the portrait work are of artists and authors of the time all of which held darker secrets and had scandalous private lives. The pieces can be taken as simple bizarre objects or take on a deeper more macabre meaning. Its interesting to gauge from the reactions from the public just what someone will either laugh at, me moved by or simply walk away from.

Its about plugging into peoples memories,some good and some bad under the illusion that its a literary theme. Its all packaged up as the romantic side of the Victorian Gothic era, but of course there is allot of suppressed sexuality, the supernatural elements, love gone wrong, religion, madness, monsters, murder, loss and life and death. All of the experiences we don’t like to talk about but make up who we in fact are.

So the studio although having a rather dark theme is handled in a fairly light manner. The customised voodoo dolls, the children’s torture toys, Rorshack cushions or even the gruesome hearts all give the viewer a chance to laugh.

More: Blog

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‘Where I Make’ invites readers behind the scenes of artists from many disciplines to share photographs and a little insight about where they create their masterpieces. See more from the series here.

The zine is always anonymous but is credited to an artist who uses the pseudonym Luke You. The zine follows the life of Luke You who usually writes the zine, however sometimes the zine is written by other people that Luke You meets and asks to write for the project. Issues of the zine have appeared in English, French, Japanese, Danish, Arabic, Spanish, Hungarian, Mandarin and Braille.

In 2011 YOU is celebrating ten years of zine making and 520 issue of the zine with the launch of YOU #520 and a YOU Zine Making Workshop at Sticky Institute as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival. The launch and workshop will take place at Sticky Institute in Melbourne on October 8th 2011.