By Mark Davison

Passion projects, what are they good for?

As part of our work over the holiday, Marc asked us to start, or continue working on passion projects. For me, that means I’m planning on picking up a photography project that I started last summer. It’s something that I’ve been looking forward to doing over the break, and I’m excited to have some time to get back into it again. 

However, as part of setting the work Marc also showed us a series of passion projects done by others in the passed. And they all had something in common, they were nothing like mine. All of them seemed to be a route for the person or teams doing them to get themselves in the industry, or hopefully, the national press. They were clever ideas, or little puns or jokes that journalists might be keen to write about. None of them were purely fun things that the people making them just wanted to do. 

Now I don’t know how these projects started, or how they changed from their inception, so I shouldn’t really make sweeping statements like this (but as I’m writing this blog I’m going to anyway). But seeing all these projects together made me question if just doing a photography project, because I enjoyed it was the best thing I could do. Should I be expanding my project, or working on something totally different, with the aim of making myself famous? Or would this just be adding to the noise in an already loud and overly full media world? 

I’m going to have a think about which route to take my project in, and if I want something to make me famous, or I just want something creative and fun to help me recharge over Christmas. To be totally honest I might decide to take it in one route and end up somewhere else entirely.  We will all be showing off our passion projects later in the year so watch this space to find out more.