Pat Kane is a musician, writer, consultant and researcher. Here he talks about his first five jobs…

1. Summer student jobs: play school attendant and train cleaner | mid-80s
The first made me realise that the expected terminus for a boy of my class and smarts – school teacher – was not going to be arrived at. No patience for weans being sick in synchrony on Wurlitzers. The second – working out of a repairs depot in Motherwell – gave me a big insight into industrial working culture: “slow down, son” being the best remembered phrase. Though after a summer of arguing about politics, it was the coolest thing when a quiet wee fitter gave me a battered copy of Bobby Seale’s Seize The Time, with the injunction to “pass it on.” And I did.

2. Musician under major record contract | 1986-1991
I exchanged labour for money, so I guess it was a job. But in all other respects, far too much fun for a young adult male (working with his brother, in their band Hue And Cry). My version of 80s excess was all realised aesthetics (rather than powdery substances). You’d loved post-punk and its ideological and musical freedoms; now, with a major record business flush with both profits from CDs and still-idealistic A&R men, you got the chance to use the actual New York jazz-and-soul sidemen that you’d only previously made po-mo ironic references to. And conduct muttered album artwork sessions with lugubrious St. Martin’s graduates, or make videos with moonlighting members of Throbbing Gristle (Peter Christopherson). Like I said, too much fun. And still having it: our last Hue And Cry album was Remote: Major to Minor in 2014, and we’ll be bringing out an all-new ballad record in 2015.

3. Freelance journalism and media | 1985-present
While waiting for a record contract in London, I started scrivening for NME as a media/TV reviewer (for my then editor Stuart Cosgrove), and for a pop-culture mag called Jamming. I parlayed my early pop-success into more writing by-lines, and ended up with a column in the Scotsman called “Citizen Kane,” which became a book called Tinsel Show: Pop, Politics, Scotland in 1992. That generated a whole range of gigs for TV and radio, including a live chat show called Nightwatch for Channel Four, and a Sony Award winning series on Radio Scotland. Two reasons I’ve been able to pursue this, through almost all major titles, magazines and broadcasters in the UK. One: my mum compelled me to endure the Scheidegger touch typing course when I was 17. This meant that when my arse got kicked out of the major music biz in 1992, I could sit down to a keyboard and rattle off scripts, texts, articles, and display an employable facility. Two: my film and television studies and literary-theory classes at Glasgow University. The ideas ingested there have enabled me to think out of any tight corner, and leap into surprising places, with both seeming to have pleased enough gatekeepers and budget holders to give me cash for content.

4. Editorial roles within The Herald, founding editor of The Sunday Herald | 1996-2000
I shifted my column back to The Herald from the Scotsman, struck up a friendship with then head of the Scottish Media Group Gus MacDonald (he employed a sociologist as his personal chef), who then gave me two pages every week in the Saturday Herald to do with as I wish. I called them ‘E2’ (for “Second Scottish Enlightenment”) and “Scotgeist” (just to annoy people) – the first a think-tank, the second a New-Yorker style cultural review. Three great outcomes from that. i) When I walked through the editorial floor of The Herald, people whistled the theme tune from “The Twilight Zone.” ii) A senior executive once said, “this isn’t journalism for the 21st century – this is journalism for the 31st century.” iii) Andrew Jaspan saw my trouble-making and asked me to be part of the founding editorial team of The Sunday Herald along with Robert Brown and Richard Walker (now the current editor). So exciting, and so traumatic, was the launch of this title over 1998-2000 for me that I forswore any regular job from that point onwards, and settled down to write The Play Ethic for Macmillan, published in 2004.

5. Speaker/researcher/consultant on play, creativity and innovation | 2000-present
Initially I launched the idea of a “play ethic” – a new mentality for productive, creative lives in the information age – in an essay in Scotland on Sunday in 1996, but amplified it in an essay for The Observer in 2000. From that point onwards, I began to be asked by organisations both commercial and public – whether advertising, tech or toy companies, or broadcasters, educators and public services – to talk to them about the power and potential of play for their organisations or occupations. Over the last ten years, The Play Ethic – now an innovation consultancy – has taken me to Australia, the US, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe. My play axioms even got onto the walls of The Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2012! My latest engagement around this topic is to be appointed the lead curator at FutureFest a two-day London event organised and funded by Nesta. My next book will try to fuse my understanding of play with our growing sense of environmental limits – it’s to be called Radical Animal.

There’s only one thing I know about “jobs,” and that’s from Confucius: “the man who finds a job he loves never works another day in his life.” That sounds right to me.

More: Website | Facebook | 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.

My name is Kelly McGrath but I work under the name/brand KellyDawn Riot. I’m Irish but moved to Glasgow to do my MA at GSA. I’m originally from a purely printed textiles background, but have transitioned into a both a print and menswear designer in recent years. The opportunities in Glasgow have been wonderful and so I have decided to stay here as so far it’s been very kind to me.

Photography: Gabriela Silveira, Model: Bejoy Sanjeev

Since completing my MA two and a half months ago, I’ve been lucky to have had fantastic opportunities come my way quite regularly, but that’s not to say that they fell into my lap. A lot of it was days spent searching for opportunities online or going the extra mile to go out of my way to approach people.

The GSA Promenade and accompanying publicity was a launch pad as it provided great exposure for me. I was featured alongside two other classmates on The Herald and on the college website. From this, I was contacted and offered two photoshoots, one for an online retailer, and the other for GUM magazine. Following this, GUM offered me the main space for a fashion show at their launch event in December.

I think it’s important that if you meet like-minded creative people that you keep in contact and network as much as possible. There’s a lot of people who want to collaborate with other creatives and the photoshoots I have on my website were the result of this. Gabriela Silveira Photography and Bejoy Sanjeev were two people who really just wanted to get involved and be creative and I think you can see that in the shoot.

Since finishing college, I have ensured that a large portion of my time was spent entering both large and small competitions. Although it’s sometimes incredibly disappointing not to win or to hear that they don’t want you, it’s good to see who wins and what their website or CV looks like so that you can better yourself and improve on things (like your website, like I did).

However I have recently been awarded The New Talent Award for Scotland Re:Designed which was an exhilarating experience. It has provided me with fabric, funding and a mentor which is more than I could have asked for. From this, I was offered a fashion show with Glasgow University and have had the most amazing feedback and compliments from various creatives such as the director of Grazia and the director of Victoria Beckham.

If I had any advice it would be to network constantly and to research, research, research.

Comment below or on Twitter using #LifeAfterArtSchool & mentioning @CenSta with your experience after art school.

Stay tuned for updates from art school graduates all this week. In the meantime see a preview of what to expect from the Life After Art School features here.

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1024RandomisedScottishElections by Paul Maguire

“This is a visual of a run of 1024 randomised elections of a population of 5,000,000 created in Processing.”
Paul Maguire _ Electronic Media Developer & Lecturer | The Glasgow School of Art

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“Democracy has spoken, my Heart may be broken, but it will remain intact, If only through the memory of the passion and solidarity that I have seen in the people of Scotland.”
Michael Sherrington _ Director | The Forest of Black

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“Forza Alba!”
Damien Smith _ Creative Partner | ISO

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“I voted conscious of my experience, compassion, intellect and beliefs, I have no bitterness or disappointment, no anger or blame, I have my relationship to my country and know where I stand. It is a night where democracy won, and that is wonderful. Fight again and again for justice, equality, peace, freedom, speak up where you can without fear, vote every time, it is your obligation to your past, present and future. I love Scotland and I always will, but perhaps for now it remains a work in progress. But for now no anger, fear, recrimination, introspection and no more talking ourselves down. I am very lucky, an artist in a Western country with friends, family, health, hope and a lot of happiness. I will never forget the summer of 2014.”
Alex Hetherington _ Artist, Curator, Writer | Modern Edinburgh Film School

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“I am disgusted at the sight of people celebrating more nuclear weapons, less equality, more food banks and the refusal to grow up and take responsibility for ourselves. For the first time in my life I am ashamed to be Scottish.”
James Young _ Founding Partner | D8

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“This morning I’ve woken up in a country that has engaged and educated itself in how the UK is run – the political establishment, the economy, the media – and knows that it isn’t run in our best interests. Our binary political contests provide a black and white result for the people we once trusted with the running of our lives – politicians, bankers, and those who used to be known as journalists. This referendum stopped being about them, and became all about us. Everywhere I turned there have been people who believed in creating a better society – creative, generous, community-minded people who I could only aspire to be a bit like one day, and regret not being more like now. These are the sort of folk who won’t sleep, won’t rest, if there’s an important fight to be fought…and there now will be many. If you missed out before, join them now. If you feel bitter towards those who voted a different way to you, remember we need all the friends we can get.”
Emlyn Firth _ Director | a visual agency

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“Disappointing…”
Mark Breslin _ Creative Partner | ISO

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“For the thousands of young artists, creative people, writers and others who engaged with the Yes campaign, with the National Collective, and the broader independence movement, last night’s result will of course be very disappointing. Many have put their lives on hold to campaign for Yes, and felt a wave of inspiration and enthusiasm not experienced before. To them, the No vote represents a chance for another kind of future, lost.

But not all artists and those in the creative industries were Yes voters. Today, for them, will bring a sense of relief, perhaps, rather than overt jubilation.

Some of the more well known supporters of the Yes movement have successful careers and those will continue.
Whether the coherence and organisation of the creative movement for Yes remains, and perhaps morphs into something else, can only be judged in the fullness of time.”
Phil Miller _ Arts Correspondent | The Herald

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Scott Monument by Andy Hepworth

“It has been a long road; sometimes contentious, mostly kind and inspiring from the point of view that people have simply cared. There was a strange but invigorating peace over the capitol yesterday which I don’t think I’ve encountered before – and that peace I suppose was the sound of a nation using its voice. This morning’s news that greater devolution has been proposed for all the UK regions actually gives me a sense of hope, and what I hope for – across the whole of the UK – is that the voices within nations will be heard, and will not remain dormant. The process has been an eye-opener; let’s not close them again.”
Andy Hepworth _ Illustrator

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“Punk is dead!”
Mark Bell _ Architect | NORD

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“It’s business as usual, but with a heightened energy and respect brought about by a country that came out in force to let its voices be heard – and, I’m proud to say, a population that is proving to be as graceful in victory as it is in defeat. The road ahead should still bring about change (let’s keep focus without cynicism!), and hopefully this will be realised right across the UK. And, on a side note, if the creative sectors get on top of this movement, we might even be able to turn one of our biggest issues of talent migration on its head. Exciting times.”
Simon Meek _ Creative Director | The Secret Experiment

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“As a yes voter I am deeply disappointed but Scotland has spoken and I respect that. We have had an amazing turn out of 97% of people registered to vote which is hugely positive and I hope that this brings more change to Scotland. Let’s hope Westminster stay true to their word.”
Rebecca Torres _ Director & Designer | Rebecca Torres

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“For me, this referendum was only round five of a fifteen round thriller. We’ve landed a big punch but not quite enough to floor the idea that money is more important than people. Lets gather ourselves, enjoy the sponge, sook a few oranges over the weekend. The bell will ring again on Monday and we’ll be back in the fray, fighting the good fight. There’s a lot of points on our card already. And the world is rooting for us. Hand in hand with our friends and neighbours in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, we’ll do this.”
Paul Welsh _ Film Producer | Digicult & Edge City Films

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“Dear pals south of the border, we saw a chance for freedom from austerity, from unrepresentative governments working for big money not citizens, from illegal wars, from the systematic destruction of public services, from food banks and the demonising of the poorest… We saw that chance and we went for it. It didn’t work out, but look what we achieved against the overwhelming opposition of the media and the three big parties (who might as well be one): an energised, informed electorate, the engagement of the previously disenfranchised, a massive voice for change. The challenge is there for you to take up the fight and join us in bringing these Westminster shitebags to account next May, not to mention the ugly ugly threat of UKIP. Change is on the way. If we’re Better Together, let’s prove we really can be BETTER together.
Matt Lloyd _ Director | Glasgow Short Film Festival

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“37 publications, every TV station and Radio Station in the land lined up to quash an uprising of sorts. Is it a surprise that Scotland has voted No? Of course not. However the creative and inspirational message of hope that has sprang up in this campaign is not going away.”
Paul Crawford _ Head of offKILTR | KILTR

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“Despite the disappointment felt by so many Scots this morning, we can be really proud that we have collectively shaken the political establishment to their core and I honestly believe things will never be the same.

Scotland does not wake up today as an independent state, but the whole process of the referendum has empowered Scotland and our people to bring about significant and meaningful change to our political system.

This will affect the whole of the UK and I believe it will become a catalyst for greater social justice both here and in the rest of Britain. If we can
harness the incredible political energy generated in our wee country in recent months, and push hard enough, it can be a springboard for far greater democracy in Scotland and proper electoral reform within the UK.

We can’t let the Westminster political elite off the hook here and we should immediately begin a concerted campaign to bring proportional representation and an elected upper house in Westminster.

Power To The People!”
Michael Grieve _ Managing Director | Sub Club

Central Station covered the Scottish Indy Ref this week with events, showcases and features all relating to Scotland’s Big Decision. See more articles here.

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