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Saturday, 9th - Sunday, 10th September:

During this weekend I was asked by The Portico Library to run a two days workshop for the heritage opening weekend. In honour of the Portico’s chairman William Gaskell’s passion for making kites with his daughters, I was appointed to recreate the workshop at the Library.

On Saturday, unfortunately, I did not have many participants; while on the Sunday, I worked with my youngest and oldest ever participants. I worked with a two-year-old boy and a man in his sixties, who constructed his very own kite.

It was a great opportunity and two-day adventure, where I had the chance to learn more about the Library’s historical and heritage value, but at the same time managed to create some valuable connections.

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Commission

Tuesday, 1st August:

Today I met with learning coordinator Denise Bowler who commissioned me to develop, plan and run a digital workshop for the Autumn Term at the Whitworth Art Gallery.

I was asked to think about the concept of identity and use i-pads during the workshop.  I was asked to look up at my previous project CDDIR for inspiration, and get from that the idea of creating and generating self-portraits.

The workshop would start from October.

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Monday, 31st July- Friday, 4th August:

During this week I worked in collaboration with Outreach Tutor Kate Dunstone. The week was studied to attract students who are about to finish their A-Levels and are interested in taking a Foundation year in Art and Design.

Throughout the week we worked on different activities, and two slots were reserved for my workshop: monoprinting.

The students loved the workshop and explored making with ink and other materials.

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Venture Art

Wednesday, 26th July: Venture Arts

 Venture Arts specialises in visual arts, running a great number of inclusive arts and workshops every year, supporting people with learning disabilities. Starting my volunteering experience at Venture Arts it’s the scariest and challenging project I am involved since the start of my Master’s Degree. Working with people with learning disabilities it’s always a challenging and difficult matter, but for this reason, I decided to push my boundaries and get out of my comfort zone, once again, like the first live project of this year with Cultural Digital Designer in Residence.

For Venture Arts, I improved my professional platform knowledge, undergoing with the DBS check which authorises me formally to work young students and people with learning disabilities.

During my first session at Venture Arts, I worked on a one-to-one basis with a young student knitting together a pillow. It was particularly fascinating to watch her do her work independently but still asking for help when needed. My fears immediately disappeared as I started collaborating with Kheelan, the student, and as we started making as a team.

 https://venturearts.org/

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Tuesday, 25th July: Community Learning Festival

 The aim of the Community Learning Festival is to unite the local community over three themed days of free activities hosted by the Faculties of Education and Health, Psychology and Social Care with a wide range of community partners. During the festival, together with Dr Juliette Wilson- Thomas I had the opportunity to run, once again, a monoprinting workshop to a wide spectrum of audiences. During the day event, I shared the space with EdLab developer Wilson- Thomas who was running a textile workshop. During the Festival, different groups of people visited the workshops: families, young students, international students, teachers, parents and adults. The experience was particularly fascinating and interesting seeing all these different groups engaging with me.

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Kate Dunstone

Friday, 7th July: Kate Dunstone – Summer School Portfolio Production

 Outreach assistant Kate Dunstone, and Outreach support tutor Elle Simms are working together on the Summer School Portfolio Production project. The project through specialists and staff at the School of Art will help students who are interested in studying a creative subject at higher education level with mini projects and workshop to have a better understanding of the creative subjects while developing a portfolio.

I will be running again the monoprinting workshop, again with a completely different audience to the international MA network and the group of very young students at the Faculty of Education. The audience this time is going to be a group of 15 students aged 16 years old.  The workshop will happen on Monday the 31st.

 http://www.art.mmu.ac.uk/outreach/youngpeople/

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Thursday, 6th July: Juliette Wilson-Thomas – monoprinting workshop at the Faculty of Education

 Dr Juliette Wilson- Thomas is the EdLab developer at the Faculty of Education at Manchester Metropolitan University. EdLab works innovatively with communities, to create innovative educational experiences. Their core aim is to develop community engagement with sustainable, genuine and positive impact. On the 6th of July, Dr Wilson- Thomas gave me the opportunity to run a workshop with a group of 12 children aged 8/9 who are involved in the researches at the Faculty of Education. During this session 9.15 until 10.40 am I experimented the monoprinting workshop. The children were particularly excited to work with paints and colours and experimented quite a lot during the session. I set up the students with a challenge after they understood the basics of the technique: to create an imaginative/ visual game. During the session, I also introduced the instructive booklets but the young students were not paying as much attention to those but were instead much more interested in playing and experimenting with the colours.  

This group of students has been the youngest audience I have worked with so far.

 http://www.edlab.org.uk/

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Testing Time

Wednesday, 5th July: Jeroen Bouweriks

 Jeroen Bouweriks is a multi-disciplinary graphic design and visual artist based in Amsterdam. Collecting, gathering, arranging and creating significance are the core basics of his work. Bouweriks lead a three days OFF-COURSE dispersive review during testing time. I participated to File_sharing & the other, during this session we had to give our work to one other member of the group. You, as the maker, are absent and see the work thrown at the eyes of the other who is describing and presenting the work as its own.

My work was presented by Patrycja Marczewska, a graphic design student, who had never seen my work before. She captured the core idea of my project in recognising the instructive nature of the booklets but did not understand those instructions were meant to leading workshops. Again, as during Liz Wheeldon-Wyatt’s critique group, it was suggested by Bouweriks that my work should have been more personal.  He suggested the work I presented during testing time was “too cold” not reflecting my “warm” personality. During the presentation it was suggested to make the work more interactive, how would I do that? How would I include the “messiness” of the making process in my very clean environment I created with the booklets and website so far? Also, Bouweriks, advised I should question the form in which I present the booklets, should they still be compressed to an A size format?

During the discussion, I was the one presenting his work, which was a real privilege for me. Having to interpret and present some else’s work in itself it’s a very challenging task. Having to present Bouweriks’ work helped me understand better how your work should be put together in order for an external eye to capture and perceive your message by you, the maker being absent.

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Testing Time

Wednesday, 5th July: Liz Wheeldon-Wyatt

 With over 20 years’ experience in the design industry, in both the UK and the States, Wheeldon- Wyatt, is an established graphic designer particularly active in Education and in organising and promoting workshops. Her critique group was particularly interesting not only talking about my work but as well while listening to the other ones, she gave an objective and sincere feedback on each presentation, which was particularly helpful.

Looking at my work, Wheeldon- Wyatt liked the core idea of my practice but argued that it was lacking on personality. She and my peers suggested that the booklets I introduce during each session of my workshop should fully reflect my personality. As for now, these booklets, are too cold and de-personalised. She suggested that my audience should understand my work should say all about me and make people realise what I do, and who I am at first sight.

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Testing Time

Tuesday, 4th July: Caren Garfen

 Caren Garfen specialises in textiles and social issues, especially women's issues in the twenty-first century. Garfen’s work is incredibly accessible and masks serious underlying of social commentary. During this critique group, I presented my work as first and the immediate feedback was from Garfen who labelled my work as “tremendous”. She particularly liked the fact that I am focusing on my main audience of young students, where I can “clearly make a difference”.

Throughout this critique group one of the other participants, a photography student, who has similar experiences to mine pointed in how I am intending to bring a difference compared to their existing teachers. I argued just by being a different person coming from the outside, by simply being a new person they see gives a big impact and innovation in how they perceive the activity. This critique group was particularly important and useful because it made me reflect on my role in what I am doing.

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Monday, 3rd July: monoprinting Worksop

 Today, I and Amina finally run our monoprinting workshop to a group of selected MA international students. I was in charge of the branding of the event and all the logistic preparation of the event, as in inviting people and getting ready the equipment.

For the purpose of Amina’s practice, I invited Rafael, Rocha, Apurva, Anja, Karla, Enrique, Kate and Napatt as an extra supervisor. As an experience, Susie and Tony asked to join the group. Amina’s practice is based on personal myths and mythology and the importance of automated drawing, so we asked our audience about their experience as MA student living abroad. We asked, “what were their expectations before they came to Manchester, and how it differs from the reality”. Amina asked to be the one actively running the workshop as it has always been something she wanted to try but never had the courage to do. At that point, I was being her support and back up team filming and helping in practicality the participants. All the participants loved the process and how relaxing and easy it was. They liked the atmosphere we created and enjoyed the making as a spontaneous act. During the Worksop I also recorded everything, leading to the timelapse below.

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Testing Time

Friday, 30th June: Cherry Styles testing time critique group

 Cherry Styles is an expert in zine making. She is part of the Salford zine library and owns and runs a press + zine distro, based in Huddersfield.  Her expertise in zines and publishing was exactly what I needed to test out my booklet in the contest. She seemed to deeply appreciate my practice and booklet offering me a space to run one of my workshops in the Salford zine library. I was advised to display my work in the context of the zine library as well. During the session, she made a connection between me and Saffa Khan, a recent Illustration with Animation graduate. She took it upon her to contact Saffa and make us meet for a possible collaboration.

I was also suggested that my works is a creative consortium, as I what to give a taste of what my practice is. I was asked to consider also an older generation and deconstruct the idea of teaching/ workshopping by analysing what they think they know and offers something different.

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Venture Arts

Friday, 30th June: Venture Arts introduction

 Today, for the first time, I was introduced to Venture Arts. Venture Arts it’s an Art centre in Hulme, specialised in visual arts and in running inclusive arts workshops to support people who have learning disabilities. During the morning, I am introduced to Laura, the volunteer coordinator, who gives me a tour of the space and let me meet some of the students in action in their workshops.

While at the centre I had the chance to taste what the students were like and what kind of workshop is being conducted and understood that this position is far more challenging compared to what I thought in the first instance. But, with this in mind, I want to challenge more myself and push my personal boundaries and succeed. I will try this new experience putting as much effort and good willingness that I am capable of.

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Testing Time

Tuesday, 27th June: David Britton testing time critique group

 David Britton’s critique group has been the first I attended for the two weeks of testing time. Britton is an expert in writing and publishing, including authorship and the material culture of achieves and for these reasons I wanted to talk to him and have an opinion on my work, especially after the open source lecture back in the practice one.

The session was composed of three students in total. I was the first one to present and had a general super positive feedback on my practice. Everyone seemed to like the concept of my practice and especially the booklet, they all liked the idea of having a series of booklets for each workshop I will be running.

Britton particularly appreciated the layout and design of the booklet, he liked the simple, clean and clear aspects of the booklet and the fact that it was easy to navigate and understand, just like a guide.

Throughout this session I didn’t have any negative or critical feedback, I was instead advised by Britton to look into the Fluxus movement of the ‘60s and how that influenced the idea that “everyone is an artist”. I was suggested to look into the post-Russian Revolution graphics as a reference.

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Tuesday, 27th June: Ideas Foundation event at the Manchester Museum of Science

 For the project, Digital Designer in Residence I collaborated with the Outreach department of Manchester School of Art, The Whitworth Art Gallery and Ideas Foundation.

Ideas Foundation whose ethos is to “bring industry relevant support schools and teachers […] in developing collaborative projects which fuse innovative digital design practice to the needs of the creative curriculum in schools”.  

Today, Ideas Foundation grouped all its ambassadors to review and celebrate all the activity happened this year. They invited not only all the designers in residence but also students, pupils, head teachers and all the benefactors founding the projects happening across the north west.  During the event, was attending also one of the pupils involved in my project on self-portraits. Him, among to other young students, was called to talk about the impact of these projects in his life, talking about the importance of this project in his particular case. The students were then asked to summarise in one word the most important value out of their project, Danish, part of my group, underlined the importance of “sharing”.

The celebration was a great event to look out at other projects, but as well at making valuable connections for me. More than one person was particularly interested in how I developed the project and especially by using identity as a theme to teach and convey digital graphic design skills.

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If you missed #McrDegreeShow17 then fear not! Check out this film captured by students from Harrop Fold School.

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CDDIR Digital Self Portraits