My name is Yassmine. I’m of Moroccan origin. I was born in Italy, and then we moved around quite a bit. I lived in France for six years, and because of an exchange between the university where I was in France and Cardiff University, I moved to the UK. I was supposed to stay for a year, but I liked it. So that's how I arrived in Cardiff.
I trained to be a lawyer, but I was always interested in working in the creative industries. So even when I was studying law, I decided to specialise in intellectual property so that I could work in artistic matters. It was a different way to get into the creative industries. People don’t often think of it this way, but there’s law in everything – no matter the field. What's interesting to me is that often people oppose those things: science, law and the creative industries. But they go hand in hand more often than you’d expect.
So, given that I was working on intellectual property, I could then work at Bad Wolf in their legal business affairs department. And from there I made the jump to Painting Practice, first as the studio manager and then into a purely creative role. Before working at Painting Practice I had no knowledge of digital software or 3D processes – but I learned. Switching from one department to another was key for me in learning the language and the business.
As a producer at Painting Practice, I get to deal with projects from start to finish. That means looking at the budgets; creating a team around the understanding of the needs of the client; putting together the schedule. It can also be more of an advisory role where you say, ‘you want this: so maybe we should look at doing it this way’. Alongside these projects, we also have R&D (research and development) and that’s super interesting because there we’re developing new tech and software.
We’ve received Clwstwr funding twice at Painting Practice. Thankfully! Because it absolutely wouldn't have been possible for us to do this research and development for Plan V, which is the software that we developed, without it.
The Plan V Suite will eventually be an ensemble of tools and software that are created to facilitate and democratise access to virtual production. With the funds that we received, we were able to create the software. We also received support to go out there in the world with it – from Wales to the Netherlands to Barcelona – to meet other companies and talk about the research and development that we've been doing.
People might see the fact that the creative industry in Wales is a bit smaller as a disadvantage. But it’s actually its biggest advantage, right? Because that's what allows it to grow with everyone being part of that same network, growing together. You really feel supported here. That's something that I really haven't experienced anywhere else.
Want to discover more about Painting Practice and the work they do? Visit their website.