Phase 2 - Week Six
Week Six
Peer to Peer
I started this week by attending a creative peer to peer in which i partook in a crazy eights session. As I was still unsure on the area that I wanted to focus on, I wanted to try be broad with the ideas that I was thinking about as well as the outputs which allowed me to open my ideas. Below you can see the crazy eight ideas which I will elaborate on below:
Idea 1: Collaboration with Community post bid win
Idea 2: showcasing Southamptons sights - taking landmarks from around the city and making them focal points
Ideas 3: Events that would get community engagement - exposure exhibition.
Idea 4: Student vs professional pairing. Collaborating in a new and exciting way
Idea 5: Ideation output - Exhibition of different creatives / collaboration
Idea 6: Exploring different venues for creativity - Job swap.- how would this work about exploring different disciplines
Idea 7: Ideation output - workshops that are in place to try evolve the culture of arts
Idea 8: Ideation output - Exhbition space and new areas that are restored with ideas from students collaborating.
When talking through my ideas with the peers and gaining feedback, a lot of people liked the idea 2 and reminded me of like walking tours or decorating a wall as well as the case study that was shared with me below:
https://www.grandappeal.org.uk/gromit-unleashed/trails/gromit-unleashed/
Gromit unleashed is a public trail that was started in Bristol In 2013 - as a collaboration between a children’s hospital charity and Aardman Animations. They lined the streets with 80 giant gromit sculptures before auctioning them to raise money for the charity. I really love this case study as it shows how unique each of the gromits are and how custom they were thanks to the local businesses within the city. As well as; Sir Quentin Blake, Cath Kidston, Nick Park and Disney Pixar.
This also reminded me of elephants that were placed around Southampton which related to different creatives:
https://www.elephantparade.com/parades/westquay-2021
There were 25 elephants that were placed around the Southampton city, that helped to raise more awareness of the elephants and the mission to raise money to help them. They created a riddle that allowed them to find and explore them across the city. They were painted by artists worldwide which I assume were then taken to another location when people were finished with them.
https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/19315100.herd-colourful-elephants-heading-westquay-art-exhibition/
I think that this concept could be taken further by collaborating with local artists within the city instead of global artists and the object could also be changed away from elephants to be something that is more based within the city. For example, the titanic which Southampton is known for, how could this be used to explore the heritage within the city and collaborate with the local creatives.
Lou also mentioned that she liked Idea 6 as she spoke about how when she said that she’s a creative a lot of people think that you are capable of doing everything so doing a something where you are able to experience different disciplines could be an interesting concept.
From this, I decided to use the layout from last week to test the ideas and how I thought they might turn into a question:
Idea 1 - How can design be used to encourage collaboration within the community of Southampton city, post city of culture bid win?
Idea 2 - Can design turn landmarks within the city of Southampton into points of interest?
If Southampton is successful with its city of culture bid for 2025, how could design be used to turn landmarks within the city into points of interest for the community?
Idea 3 - Can design encourage the community to engage with creative events that take place across the city?
Idea 4 - How can a student and professional collaboration connect the Community, within a post city of culture bid within Southampton?
Idea 5 - Can an exhibition help to highlight some of the talent that is within Southampton?
Idea 6 - How could creatives exploring other disciplines open up a network for collaboration and connection within Southampton?
Idea 7 - Could workshops help to bring more insight into young people on the creative availability within the city of Southampton?
If Southampton is successful with its city of culture bid for 2025, could creative workshops bring more insight for young people on the creative availability within the city?
Idea 8 - How could restoring a space within Southampton by the student collaboration, help to bring a new insight into the city of culture post bid?
From these I was able to brain storm more around the possibilities of the issues that I could focus my project on, that would allow me to have a more focussed project:
The main thing that I came up with was no space for collaboration for the post bid to happen? I think it was also interesting to note down the partners of the city of culture bid. They had listed the Southampton Uni and Solent Uni.
I then again went through the process of selecting some of the issues that I thought could work within Southampton:
1 - No Space for collaboration - Creativity
2 - Looking at the sponsors - University / Professional?
3 - Global warming?
4 - Recycling
5 - SPACE
From these initial ideas, i went through again exploring how these could layout as different questions:
1 - If Southampton is successful with its city of culture bid for 2025, how might the design of a physical creative collaboration hub bring together the creative community?
2 - If Southampton is successful with it’s city of culture bid for 2025, how might a collaboration project between students and professional within the city bring together the creative community?
3 - If Southampton is successful with it’s city of culture bid for 2025, how might creative collaborators come together to show how global warming is impacting out city?
4 - If Southampton is successful with it’s city of culture bid for 2025, how might creative collaborators come together to change the way that recycling is process across the city?
5 - If southampton is successful with it’s city of culture bid 2025, how could a space for the creative community help bring together creatives from across the city?
From this I then selected my favourites from the previous brainstorm and the brainstorm above:
1 - If Southampton is successful with its city of culture bid for 2025, how might the design of a physical creative collaboration hub bring together the creative community?
2 - If Southampton is successful with it’s city of culture bid for 2025, how might a collaboration project between students and professionals within the city bring together the creative community?
3 - If Southampton is successful with its city of culture bid for 2025, how could design be used to turn landmarks within the city into points of interest for the community?
4 - If Southampton is successful with its city of culture bid for 2025, could creative workshops bring more insight for young people on the creative availability within the city?
I then wanted to post these on the ideas wall to gain the feedback from others before starting to really focus on my ideas next week and get a presentation together for the phase 8 output;
Whilst waiting for feedback from my peers, I decided to look at how using the template that I laid out within the last week could be used to explore these ideas further:
1- What is the project question?
If Southampton is successful with its city of culture bid for 2025, how might the design of a physical collaborative hub bring together the creative community?
What are the aims?
Create a space that allows for collaborating
bringing together the local creative community
Inspiring those within the city that change is possible
What will I do?
I will create a creative hub within the city that will be available to use by all those creatives that work and live within the city. Running workshops and other events that will allow constant collaboration to take place.
What do i intend the outputs to be?
The output would be a design for the making of this space, this could be an digital plan of the space.
2- What is the project question?
If Southampton is successful with its city of culture bid for 2025, how might a collaboration project between solent university students and creative professionals within the city bring together the creative community?
What are the aims?
Connecting students from the university and creatives within the city
Starting a collaboration that allows them to join heads to solve problems
Changing how we perceive the issues within the city
What will I do?
I want to create a tool that will allow for solent university students to connect with creative professionals across the board and then allow them to collaborate on different projects.
What do i intend the outputs to be?
The output would either be a tool or some kind of system that will allow the collaboration to happen effectively and easily.
3- What is the project question?
If Southampton is successful with its city of culture bid for 2025, how could design be used to turn landmarks within the city into points of interest for the community?
What are the aims?
Bring the creative community together to collaborate on landmarks
Create cultural and artist focal points
What will I do?
Take something that is significant to the city of Southampton, for example the titanic boat and use this to create a focus point culturally and creatively.
What do i intend the outputs to be?
Physical titanic boats that are across Southampton, with Southampton artists on footprint on them.
4- What is the project question?
If Southampton is successful with its city of culture bid for 2025, could creative workshops bring more insight for young people on the creative availability within the city?
What are the aims?
Create workshops with local creatives within the city
Inspire local young people of all things creativity
Show the wide range of creative options that are available for future career options.
What will I do?
Organise an event with locals and creative professionals that allows for the teaching and showing of different professions available within the creative community.
What do i intend the outputs to be?
The workshop would be as part of the output but also organising when each of the creative workshops would happen, who would attend and what would they be on.
After this I received some feedback from Lizzie on the ideas wall, who is from Southampton so her point of view is always really helpful.
I think lizzie makes valuable points within her feedback and creating a creative series that attracts the community to the landmarks would help the city.
I then also wanted to analyse the video of the bid that lizzie mentioned with her feedback and what Southampton decided to include.
The video shows a range of clips that are across Southampton, using various different creative areas that are used to ‘show of’ the creative energy.
From the above, I decided to look into both the questions that Lizzie thought were good and rephrase some questions that surrounded them:
Identity creation;
If Southampton is successful with its UK city of culture bid for 2025, how could design be used to turn landmarks within the city into points of creative interest for the community?
If Southampton is successful with its UK city of culture bid for 2025, could an identity be created by local creatives to help put Southampton on the map?
Student and professional:
If Southampton is successful with its UK city of culture bid for 2025, how might a collaboration project between solent university students and creative professionals within the city allow for students to feel more rooted and inclined to stay within the creative community post graduation?
I then created a mood board on my favourite ideas from above which was the following:
Landmarks:
Within this mood-board, I tried to look at different projects or dreams that had been done surrounding some of the iconic landmarks that have been changed with a creative effect on them.
https://www.reshareit.com/rick-mccor-paperboyo/
https://www.bloomandwild.com/famous-landmarks-reimagined-with-biophilic-design
https://londonist.com/london/art-and-photography/london-landmark-imagined-by-kids
Collaboration spaces:
Within this moodboard, I looked at previous case studies but also different creative hubs and different ways of working that could be effective in terms of collaboration, workshops and being supportive of the creative community.
https://www.wework.com/ideas/workspace-solutions/flexible-products/what-is-a-collaboration-hub
https://www.waspsstudios.org.uk/2022/02/16/inverness-creative-academy-is-open/
https://otcreativespace.co.uk/projects/
From these, I was stuck between these ideas but realised that I hadn’t done one of the templates for the landmarks question that could help me decide:
What is the project question?
If Southampton is successful with its UK city of culture bid for 2025, how could design be used to turn landmarks within the city into points of creative interest for the community as well as an identity for the city?
What are the aims?
Creating an identity for the city
Creating creative interest places for the community
Collaborating with local artists into changing landmarks
What will i do?
I will open up conversations around the identity of the city, re-developing existing landmarks to create creative focal points in collaboration with local artists. Learning about what is important about land-marks and the historial places of the city
What are the outputs?
A creative response to each of the landmarks in collaboration with local creatives and the community.
I also decided to write out the project title and the summary for each of them which I could then read out within the trailer:
Research question/ Project Title
If Southampton is successful with its UK city of culture bid for 2025, how could design be used to turn landmarks within the city into points of creative interest for the community as well as an identity for the city?
One paragraph summary statement
Southampton is currently in the middle of the application process to be the city of culture within the UK for 2025, as part of the bid they have shared, Southampton want to bring the creative community to the forefront of the city. They have already started to do this with grants and competitions as well as showcasing the range of creativity that lives in our city in the final bid video. If they succeed in winning the bid, a downfall they currently have is lack of a strong creative presence as well as a definite identity as a city. From exploring the current creativity within art spaces around the centre and understanding how important it is within the cities bid, it was evident to me that some of the key historical places or places of significance are lacking a personal creative touch that I feel could create an identity for the city.
To try and open up a conversation about the cities identity and to help bring more of a creative presence to Southampton, I will re-develop existing landmarks to create creative focal points that will allow the community to become more aware of the creative changes that will be happening within their locality post bid. I will talk to local creatives and learn from their perspective the key landmarks that mean the most to them and how, together, we can bring a strong creative presence to the forefront of the city.
Research question/ Project Title
If Southampton is successful with its city of culture bid for 2025, how might the design of a physical collaborative hub bring together the creative community?
One paragraph summary statement
Southampton is currently in the middle of the application process to be the city of culture within the UK for 2025, as part of the bid that they have shared, Southampton want to bring the creative community to the forefront of the city, which they have already started to do with grants and competitions as well as showcasing the range of creativity that lives in our city. If Southampton is successful in winning the bid, this could lead to endless opportunities for the local creatives but also being economically relied upon. A creative hub could become the heart of the blossoming creative community.
Having done some initial research on the spaces that are available within the city of Southampton, it is clear that there isn’t currently a creative hub that all creatives can feel they are apart off. In collaboration with local creatives, I will develop a solution that will allow for creatives to have a space that they can attend creative events, workshops and to meet others which will hopefully spark collaboration and networking across the city.
Writing out both of these summary statement allowed me to look at how much I understood about the city but also where my interests laid. If i chose the creative community question, I feel this is something I would be completely comfortable doing as it’s where my interests lay as a designer but I don’t feel I would be challenging myself for this project, therefore I have decided to choose the first question to focus on.
Contact with graphic designer
During this week, I also made contact with a mutual graphic designer, who I asked to be my industry specialist through this project. I am looking forward to having a zoom call with them within the next few weeks to gain important and crucial feedback about my project.
After I completed the mood boards and the summaries, I started to think about the trailer that needed to be submitted for Monday and what the contents needed to be which I needed to create through imagery from the mood board just to show a hightlight from the above text.
Weekly Summary
This week was really successful in terms of the fact that I feel I finally have a direction to work upon over the next few weeks which will enable to me to get crucial feedback within week 8. This week and last week I did feel a bit panicked and lost as I felt myself falling behind in my project due to not having a research question that had any direction. Now having a direction that I am able to build upon over the next few weeks and keep pushing to find professionals within the industry to connect with that will allow me to expand my project.
For the up coming weeks, I also want to focus on how I am able to test the viability of my project and also do some sketches that will allow me to explore the directions in which my project outcome could go as well as continuing to further research my question before the panel review.
Bibliography
Anon, (2015). Artist gives popular landmarks a creative twist in these 14 pictures; now they look uniquely different. [online] Available at: https://www.reshareit.com/rick-mccor-paperboyo/
ArchDaily. (2021). LEEDS 2023 seeks artist or creative team to create landmark large-scale artwork for City Square. [online] Available at: https://www.archdaily.com/971178/leeds-2023-seeks-artist-or-creative-team-to-create-landmark-large-scale-artwork-for-city-square
Bloom & Wild. (n.d.). Bloom & Wild Flower Delivery | Flowers & Gifts. [online] Available at: https://www.bloomandwild.com/famous-landmarks-reimagined-with-biophilic-design
Creative Boom. (2018). Sculpture in the City: Artworks in London’s Square Mile alongside the city’s historic landmarks. [online] Available at: https://www.creativeboom.com/inspiration/sculpture-in-the-city-artworks-in-londons-square-mile-alongside-the-citys-historic-landmarks/
Edgley, T. (2021). Elephant herd set to brighten up Westquay this weekend as art exhibition heads to city. [online] Daily Echo. Available at: https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/19315100.herd-colourful-elephants-heading-westquay-art-exhibition/
Hogarty, S. (2021). What is a collaboration hub? [online] Ideas. Available at: https://www.wework.com/ideas/workspace-solutions/flexible-products/what-is-a-collaboration-hub.
Noble, W. (2021). London Landmarks Reimagined By School Kids. [online] Londonist. Available at: https://londonist.com/london/art-and-photography/london-landmark-imagined-by-kids.
OT creative SPACE. (2019). Projects. [online] Available at: https://otcreativespace.co.uk/projects/
The Grand Appeal. (2013). Gromit Unleashed. [online] Available at: https://www.grandappeal.org.uk/gromit-unleashed/trails/gromit-unleashed/
Wasps. (2022). Inverness Creative Academy is open for business. [online] Available at: https://www.waspsstudios.org.uk/2022/02/16/inverness-creative-academy-is-open/
www.elephantparade.com. (2021). Elephant Parade. [online] Available at: https://www.elephantparade.com/parades/westquay-2021
www.kingston.ac.uk. (n.d.). Kingston School of Art student gives Canary Wharf store front makeover in creative collaboration with Canary Wharf Group. [online] Available at: https://www.kingston.ac.uk/news/article/2584/21-oct-2021-kingston-school-of-art-student-gives-canary-wharf-store-front-makeover-in-creative-collaboration-with/
www.tpexpress.co.uk. (n.d.). UK Landmarks Re-imagined | TransPennine Express. [online] Available at: https://www.tpexpress.co.uk/explore-the-north-and-scotland/blog/2019/september/uk-landmarks-reimagined
www.youtube.com. (2022). Southampton’s bid to be UK City of Culture 2025 | Make It SO! [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrjnsVZZ8EI
Things to Remember
What do you do now to start testing the viability of your project?
Who do you need to talk to?
What specific explorative initiatives should you set up?
Report outline / plan is to be refined, and logistics of running your studio, practice-based project must be defined (project management) as two A4 text documents
Experimental work and testing for your Studio Practice should be clearly presented and peer reviewed by a relevant external critic of your finding (creative directors, design studios, writers, journalists from within or beyond the subject), as befits the needs of the area of your proposal.
a two-minute case study of your final project (both practice and critical report), peer reviewed by an industry specialist. You must find your own industry specialist and include a quote / soundbite of feedback from them in your presentation for the panel in the Case Study Panel Review Webinar.
In addition to the case study presentation, you need to create a section on your blog for an ongoing literature review that has academic integrity, a bibliography, a clear structure and role of appropriate histories and theories that contextualise and support your idea. An ongoing archive area for your research sources using Falmouth University Harvard ReferencingLinks to an external site..
Or if you are writing a business orientated essay / report, make sure you integrate relevant market intel and data to support the positioning and viability of your project.
All outputs to be clearly documented on your blogs, with evidence of active engagement with the Ideas Wall.