MAKE YOUR OWN MASTERS APPLICATIONS ARE NOW OPEN, IN A BID TO FIND THE 10 NEW CREATIVES, WHO WILL FORM THE MULTIDISCIPLINARY COLLECTIVE OF 2025. APPLY AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE!

Applications close on December 14th 2024, and the program will begin in March 2025.

WHAT IS MYOM?

MYOM is an experimental, self-directed creative learning system designed to support individuals from underrepresented backgrounds, in bridging the gap between creative education and industry. It provides a space for participants to develop their portfolios and practices within a supportive, interdisciplinary community.

The project exists to support anyone from an under-represented background, who has faced any barrier to industry or education, in forging a career in the arts through a self-built, industry-sourced year of learning.

HOW IT WORKS?

Make Your Own Masters is an 18 months experimental learning system. Run on a part-time basis, learners will source briefs, mentorship and space directly from industry to build a bespoke year of education and simultaneously a professional network.

Starting with a 2-month onboarding period, there are two planned, 2-month breaks over the summer and Christmas periods, allowing participants time pick up additional paid work. The basis for this is to remove financial barriers to learning especially while living within a city. This schedule in total provides 12 months of part-time, hands-on learning.

MYOM offers a series of sessions focused on achieving a sustainable work/life/learning balance, designed to help you build your practice, expand your network, and create new opportunities all while sustaining yourself financially.

You’ll also have personal 1:1 sessions with the MYOM founder and alumni, plus specialised training and talks from external industry supporters and partners, who have all donated their time and expertise to the project.

Over all, MYOM provides a community and structure to help you shape your own unique year of learning. The program concludes with each participant defining their own ‘Masters’ and adopting a new creative title that reflects their journey and growth all presented in a final show, traditionally held at Somerset House.

DISCLAIMER

MYOM is an experimental, independent learning initiative—unaffiliated with institutions and created by individuals who believe in forging their own paths. This is not a traditional educational program; rather, it's a community-driven project started by one individual and continued by those with a shared vision.

Your success and the impact of this experience depend entirely on your drive and commitment as a learner. MYOM offers a blueprint, structure, and guidance, and will provide everything possible to support you on this journey. However, we do not have the extensive resources or funding of conventional institutions or brand-backed programs.

COMMITMENTS

Time commitments:

You MUST be able to commit 2-3 days per week to your learning, the recommended max ‘paid’ work schedule is 4 days per week. This project is not possible to complete successfully alongside a full-time job, this requirement does not come into play until May 2025, so you have time to make any adjustments and there are integrated work breaks throughout to ensure participants can financially support themselves.

Session commitments:

MYOM sessions are hosted on Tuesday evenings, this is the only 'fixed' timing within the system, the rest of your 'learning' is structured around you.

The first Tuesday evening of every month is a MYOM led session, and is always in-person, all other meet-ups can be held online unless we have invited an external speaker.

Creative environment commitments:

Each member is responsible for creating a collaborative and inspirational environment within the collective. All members are encouraged to instigate and direct sessions and activities that enrich the collective experience. The bare minimum of this commitment is that each learner must organise at least one external speaker or workshop session, and take over the MYOM Instagram twice over the course of the entire 18-month programme. This commitment is key to fueling such a multi-disciplinary group.

Peer to peer commitments:

Each learner must make a commitment to peer-to-peer learning and facilitating monthly collective meet-ups.

COSTS

Successful applicants will be asked to pay a £100 joining fee. For full transparency, this fee is to cover all running costs of the programme. This includes 2-year subscriptions to the programmes that make communication and running of the course as smooth as possible. This cost can be spread across the full 18 months, and please don’t let this put you off. If it does become a barrier, get in touch and we can find a solution.

Learners are responsible for their own project costs, materials, and any digital programmes. These costs are obviously dependent on your practice but below are some average costs different learners believe they spent on completing their projects.

Stacie - £1100

Grace - £300

Thomas - £2100

Although these amounts can seem high it is important to remember that these costs would always be additional to any institutional fees within traditional learning. This course has been designed to be accessible on any budget and the alumni and surrounding community will be there to offer guidance on how to source alternative materials and find ways around this being an issue.

The hope and ambition would be to gain higher paid work during the experience to make this way of learning more comfortable.

SPACE/LOCATION

This year's collective is primarily based in London (near bond street). Not living in London itself is often a barrier to creative opportunities itself, the aim of MYOM in the future is move beyond this city, but for now with such low resource the project has had to stay local. With this in mind the bare minimum commitment is, one in person, evening session per month, if this feels like something you can still commit to then do still apply.

In previous years MYOM has managed to source a series of residencies within creative maker spaces, been granted in-kind access to co working spaces, and generously donated studio space. This will hopefully continue, but cannot be guaranteed.

TIMINGS

Applications will close on the 14th of December.

All selected participants will be interviewed during January. The programme officially begins in March but the first two months are dedicated to onboarding and building your own MYOM curriculum, so participants can still work full-time, using this period to either find or cut down to part-time work.

Learners will begin their own briefs and creative projects during the month of May. From this point onwards we will work through three learning seasons with two intermittent work breaks.

The programme will conclude in July 2026, with the option to host a collective showcase 2 months later in September 2026.

WHO IS IT FOR?

Make Your Own Masters is for anyone, from any creative discipline that has faced a barrier to learning or industry, whether it be due to finance, ethnicity, age, location, or disability. The MYOM system means that anyone from any background or circumstance can make their own education.

MYOM provides learners with a framework, a methodology, and a community to learn within, alongside a series of experimental learning sessions to better equip people to make progress within their careers.

‘Make Your Own’ really is the core ethos, learners are completely in charge of their individual learning, what they learn, when they learn, and how. MYOM will offer as much support as possible, but this is independent learning.

This is for those who thrive on independence and feel inspired to drive themselves through collaboration and collective support.

WORK AND CREATIVE DISCIPLINES

Learners decide how many briefs they wish to complete during the 18 months, on average 4 briefs were completed per learner.

Any creative discipline is welcome to apply to the programme, from makers to artists and beyond, so far the project has only supported visual creatives, but anyone hoping to develop their creative practice and process is welcome to apply.

BRIEFERS

MENTORS

SPEAKERS

Learners will source their own briefs live from industry professionals. This process works by reaching out to individuals and organisations and building up a relationship to gain a brief from them as a starting point for a piece of work. Briefers can be as involved or uninvolved with the process from this point forward.

The same process follows in order for each learner to build up a network of mentors to help support them throughout their learning.

MYOM with support and advise throughout this period, but the main point of this process is for every individual learner to build up their own professional network to learn from live, and potentially open up more opportunities within the field of their choice.

These relationships are all the learner's responsibility, not the MYOM programme. MYOM will offer guidance and basic know-how plus resources, but brief sourcing and mentoring are at the success and discretion of each individual.

Alongside the 12 internal MYOM sessions there will also be room for around 10-12 external guest speakers, this guest list will be selected by the learners. Responsibility for these sessions will be shared across the collective and a speaker fee will also be raised as a group (if necessary).

12 MYOM LED SESSIONS

12 EXTERNAL TRAINING/SPEAKERS

4 1:1 SESSIONS WITH MYOM ALUMNI

12 1:1 SESSIONS WITH MYOM FOUNDER

KEY DATES

Applications open - 1st November 2024

MYOM Open evening - 26th November 2024

- 3rd December 2024

Applications close - 14th December 2024

Interview period - 1st January - 31st January 2025

MYOM Start date - 4th March 2025

Summer work break - 1st July - 31st August 2025

MYOM Part 2 - 1st September - 31st December 2025

Winter work break 1st January - 28th February

MYOM Part 3 - 1st March - 30th June

Show prep - July - August

Final show - London Design Week 2026

LIIM STUDIO

DECOY

Daniel Oduntan

Michelle and Andrea (aka Liim Studio), a creative duo have had an incredibly successful year, after winning a D&AD New Blood pencil during the programme, they have gone on to secure a full time job at leading advertising agency Widen and Kennedy’s. They have collaborated with Ikea’s innovation lab ‘Space 10’ and also picked up press interest with their latest project ‘Toy’s Aren’t Us’ when they recreated childhood toys with East Asian representation.

Decoy has spent the past year creating some incredible work, collaborating with leading brands and independent artists. Benjamin was granted the Selfridges Artist residency and went on to be commissioned to produce several projects. His latest move has seen him take on a position at MTV where he will continue to grow his body of work further and add to his ever growing portfolio of cutting edge visual and audio work.

Daniel has continued to further his creative practice of ‘Interdisciplinary media art practices and explorative participation design’ taking projects that tackle access and creative fair play into the working world, collaborating with organisations and councils to further his reach. Daniel was granted a residency at Somerset House as part of the black business incubator to further a collaborative project called ‘Free Form Frequency’. Daniel is also working with Channel 4 to accelerate his work, and pursuing projects with the Southwark council and the Tate Modern alongside numerous other organisations.

I have had some amazing speaking opportunities to share this story through press and conferences such as ‘Dezeen Day’ to respond to the title ‘fixing education’. Alongside this I spent time on multiple Ba and Ma courses, teaching on the very programmes I could not afford to attend myself. I am currently working in Creative Direction at Selfridges & Co, using the very niche skill set I built for myself during my DIY MA in ‘Anthropological Future Design’ in which I titled myself to conclude the journey.

Since completing my very own MYOM I have also been given some incredible opportunities.

I produced new work in collaboration with the BBC and ICA, worked with leading institutions such as Somerset House, the Barbican and the V&A.

Collaborated with several brands such as WWF, Selfridges, NTS and more. Received industry recognised awards such as the D&AD Side Hustle pencil, the Deutsche Bank creative entrepreneurs award and the Beazley designs of the year at the Design museum.

-Stacie