Blog 4 – Peer Review
As Better Lives is coming to an end its time to reflect on my developing creative attributes, by exploring and discussing my own posts and reviewing my peers work.
I have chosen to peer review Ellie Shemmells 2nd blog post ‘Reflections on how the Better Lives themes might change how you work in the future.’ I chose Ellie’s post as she is studying a similar course to me (Hair and Makeup Field). Ellie wrote about initially finding it quite difficult to identity the themes within her work, she explained how the better lives unit helped her to identify them easily which is a great positive outcome for her and the unit. I completely agree with Ellie as I struggled at the start of the unit too in identifying the themes within my work however through the lectures and sessions helped me hugely to identify and understand the themes of which have now become a second nature of mine to think about.
Ellie talks a lot about how she wants to make sure her work is diverse and inclusive as possible and making sure she is respectful about different cultures/religions through her work, which is excellent. I think that Ellie could have research more into ways she would avoid any negative effects through her work and examples of who/what. For example, reflecting on the cultural appropriation of corn rows within the black community, which have been seen worn by many white celebrities as a ‘fashion trend’ and expand more on this. Comparing my blog post I wish I had spoken more about respecting and researching different cultures/religions as I believe it is very important to have knowledge of in terms of my work.
She talks greatly about sustainability and wanting to make sure she tries to use products that are sustainably friendly in the future. She mentions ‘bigger brands’ and them wanting to be more transparent, I think to have fully reflected on the sustainable theme she could have mentioned some brands that are beginning to be transparent such as Illamasqua , Charlotte Tilbury, Glossier etc. and what they are doing to be sustainable. Comparing to my blog I talked a lot about consumable products that causes a lot of waste for the makeup industry and I think I could have touched more on makeup products as Ellie did.
Social responsibility is such an umbrella term for so many things. Ellis touched upon social responsibility in terms of diversity and taking responsibility as a makeup artist. To have fully reflected maybe looking at brands/companies that are socially responsible for products (cruelty-free, eco-friendly etc) and how she would have understood they are and why they are. For example, cruelty free companies such as NYX who display their cruelty free logo on products and have a whole webpage addressing, they are cruelty free.
Overall, I think Ellie produced a very good blog post with the fundamentals of the themes in her work however I do believe she could have even more reflect by researching and finding examples like I did in my blogs.
Link to Ellie’s Blog: https://1920betterlivessmc.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2020/04/28/blogpost-2/