Friday 12th February 2021
Today's lecture meeting with Yan Preston started at 11:30am, Yan started by asking what I was currently practicing and creating for my project. I started by explaining that I wanted to created a zine style publication looking into the affects of Covid-19 on the Uk beauty industry and using visual and informative platforms to create this. I have started with interviews from the owners of beauty salons and asking them various questions on how they felt about being told they were non essential and understanding their positions as owners and managers in such a tough industry. Yan then started to reel off some questions for me to think about in terms of my research, she asked to define what essential is and why beauty is essential, along with do we need beauty as a human race? She then explained she liked the idea that I have first hand information from these salons and that interviews are a great way to communicate and network but how much information do I need from others when this is my project? This was something that I understand and have taken on board to ask myself how far I should include others opinions in my work. Then Yan made a very valid point to me, that why are garden centre's allowed to be open and classes as non essential but salons are not? This got me thinking into why they are allowed to be open, we are in a national lockdown and will be for another 4 weeks at least so why can this building be open over others. You could suggest that a much older generation are more likely to go the garden centres but they are more vulnerable to the virus so why would you open a building during lockdown that could potentially cause harm! This turns my thoughts to the tory government and the shocking response they have created towards this global pandemic - sorry to start being political but my project is about 40% political because of the way they have handled certain situations and not to mention the way the beauty owners feelings towards the government. Moving on, we started to discuss normality of beauty and why it was so important to so many females and males in this 21st century with gender identity. The beauty industry creates millions for the UK and has been hardest hit due to Covid-19 so how can we see these businesses bouncing back? Researching more into this and the response owners have taken with government grants will show through when we see which salons will reopen and which salons won't. Ending there on our 30 minute chat, Yan has created some more reasons to question my beauty is essential and why beauty has become a thing of normality and can we live without it if needed?
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