Print Auction

As part of our course we needed to raise money for the Free Range exhibition that would be held in London. In order to raise this money we were given the task of putting on a Print Auction which the hope was it would raise a significant portion of the money needed to put on the exhibition. For the Print Auction we were teamed with the second years with the intention of maximising the profits made. We then split into different groups to complete the preparation for the Print Auction. Each group was a mix of second and third years so there would be a fair division of the work as the proceeds of the Print Auction would be split evenly between the two year groups.

I nominated myself to be a part of the fundraising group and when we had a meeting with just the fundraising group I suggested that I be the head of the group as I had only nominated to be in one group and could take on the responsibility where the others were in two groups, they agreed to this. I then assigned everyone tasks for fundraising, I gave the second years the responsibility to create a fundraising video as there were more of them than the third years. There were a few difficulties working with this group of second years that were not resolved before the Print Auction which reduced the amount we made from the event.

As the weeks progressed I kept asking the 2nd Yrs for updates on the video, ideas that they had come up with, how the filming was going. Unfortunately I got hardly anything back from them, and when I did it was vague. This culminated in them going to Jan lying about the communication between us saying that they had been coming up with loads of ideas and I had been turning them down, apparently demanding that we only do bake sales and bingo nights. This was resolved with me showing the project managers the group chat proving I was innocent and that they were lying. I was also informed that these particular people had caused problems last year as well. After this I carried on trying to get information from them (I got more information about what they were doing and researching from Jan), and asking how the filming was going. Despite chasing them up, they didn't start shooting till after Christmas and this dragged on until the week before the Print Auction when it still wasn't finished. The decision was made to not have the video the week before the Print Auction. When I confronted the 2nd Yrs, they were unconcerned as they planned to use it for their third year fundraising.

One of the fundraising events we did was a raffle and everyone had to take shifts to sell tickets leading up to the draw. I made the second and third place prizes which was home made fudge and the first place prize was a large bottle of prosecco. Unfortunately we were limited in the fundraising opportunities as the project managers restricted us to only photography related fundraising events. However we made just enough to put on the event and we had enough prints to auction off. We not only auctioned off our own work but we also had to acquire prints from other photographers which would get potentially more money than our own prints.

On the night itself the room was packed full of people who were interested in what we had to offer. We even had the Mayor of Plymouth at the event and he bought quite a few pieces. The night was busy and most of the pieces were auctioned off with a few that were sold after the auction had ended. As the event was happening I was in charge of marking which print had been sold to whom and sort the prints out at the break and at the end of the night when people came to pay and collect the prints that they had purchased. Although the night wasn't a massive success we did make over £800 for the third years which went straight into the account for Free Range.

Fig 1: Coath, L., (2019). Mayor. Photograph. Print Auction Team Drive

Fig 2: Coath, L., (2019). Print Auction. Photograph. Print Auction Team Drive