Job - Designer
Monday - Wednesday
Hours in - 8a.m. - 10p.m. (14hrs each day total)
Thursday - hours in 10a.m. - 5p.m. (7hrs total)
Friday - hours in 10.am. - 5p.m. (7hrs total)
Fort Amherst Project -
I started my own self initiated project proposal for Fort Amherst, this project is to help me gain skills and knowledge of how to develop a well rounded project proposal for a self initiated idea. Being able to make a project or idea happen yourself is just as important as being able to work to someone else's idea or design.
My proposal is for a dragon themed educational multi cultural egg hunt around the fort.
On the Monday I found out that I no longer had the 3 weeks I expected to have to put together the ideas for the project and in fact only had 3 days until I would be presenting my ideas to the people at Fort Amherst.
On the Monday I spent the day gathering research, I put together 2 pinterest boards - a Dragon board and an Egg board gathering some rough ideas for how the eggs and dragon could look and to get a feel for possible ideas. I took pictures from these and printed them and developed 2 mood boards in my sketch book about these ideas.
I then gathered ideas about the countries I would look at developing ideas for eggs. Checking statistics online, I put together a list of the largest ethnic groups in the Kent area, I then took these groups, and found famous national items to use in the designs, so that their eggs would be understandable by young children, an example of this is using a Shamrock for the Irish egg. I printed these and stuck them to their own pages, which I later shall put up my ideas for the eggs on.
Tuesday -
On the Tuesday I started drawing up design ideas, 2 ideas to each country, and 4 dragon ideas in total.
These designs took me the majority of the day to draw up, and by the end of the day when I was starting to colour them I realised I was running out of time, and decided that instead of colouring them all in and possibly ruining the designs I had I made small colour swatches to show the colours I would use on the eggs.
Wednesday -
On the Wednesday I wrote out a list of possible materials that I would need to make up the eggs and dragon, working on a £2000 budget, this budget also including the marketing fees, and the fees for paying any staff needed for the project. I split up the budget, to the areas, I developed a rough budget sheet, which helped me to develop skills using Excel which though I had previously used, I had not been confident with, however I am now very confident with this program.
I then did some research into marketing strategies, looking at 'flash mobs' and large scale installations to promote the event. Putting the research into my book, I also developed a separate rough budget for the marketing, however only noting down the basic marketing such as flyers, posters and stickers, leaving budget for the possible marketing strategies.
I also printed out images of possible locations and placing tracing paper over these drew out rough ideas of how it could look, to give a sense of how the hunt may be laid out.
I also drew out a rough possible map, however this is subject to heath and safety as well as the thoughts of fort staff.
Once done I made up a large mood board of ideas and possible marketing that I would be able to talk through on the Thursday.
On this board I put design ideas, research and examples my mood board and answering the questions of the Ideas Test format my project is following.
- Questions
On this board I put design ideas, research and examples my mood board and answering the questions of the Ideas Test format my project is following.
- Questions
1.
What do you want to test and why?
The idea: A dragon themed egg hunt.
Throughout
history all countries have acquired their own myths and legends, whether
they’re about sea monster, fairies, or witches, undoubtedly the most famous
mythical creature is the dragon, almost all countries in the world have their
own stories, Poland, France, Japan and China, this is why I feel the dragon
best suits my idea.
The egg hunt
is intended to draw together different communities, and people in the area and
further. Having looked into prominent ethnic groups in Kent I have taken 12
counties and developed ideas for specific eggs that shall represent them, using
recognisable motifs and items that portray them in a way that will be
understood by children and adults alike.
Families
shall be lead on a tour through the fort and grounds. The children shall have a
list of the eggs they’re looking to find along the way, before they finish the
tour at the amphitheatre location, in this location they shall find the dragon
rising from the ground. The dragon is the link that ties all the countries
together as well as the fort, as the dragon shall appear to be part of the fort
itself, with elements in its design that reflect its location.
My hope is
that the experience will be educational for the children, and families,
learning new facts about the countries whilst also helping to raise money to
fund the renovations at the fort.
2.
What is innovative and different about your
project?
My project is about educating children about the people
around them and bringing together communities in the celebration of
imagination, myth and education. Creating an immersive experience through art,
theatre and technology, whilst using the history and location to aid the
imagination of youths. It is community centred and seeks to bring together
groups of people who perhaps wouldn’t have previously enjoyed the same
experiences.
3.
How will people benefit from your project?
The funding of the event shall go to the renovation of the
fort, helping to give the local community the benefit of preserving their
heritage, as well as gaining new space, studios, theatre space and so on. It
shall also benefit the fort, drawing in people who likely wouldn’t have gone to
look at the fort without the event and shall hopefully boost the number of
visits through the attention gained, with people going to take the tours and
look at the fort itself when the event isn’t on.
4.
How is high quality art/creativity a part of
your activity?
My activity invites children to use their imaginations
becoming part of the immersive event, hunting for dragon eggs though a real
fort whilst also being taught facts about countries and being active with their
families and other families.
There is also a possibility of involving volunteer theatre
students or aspiring actors for them to gain experience in live events and
create an exciting environment for the kids to enjoy.
5.
Are there gaps in your knowledge and plan, or
other risks you already know about?
There would need to be tests done regarding materials used
that will be suitable to the environment they’re in and any weather conditions
for those that may be placed outside. These materials would also need to meet
any health and safety regulations that the fort has.
The path would likely need to be cordoned to stop any health
and safety risks involving trip hazards with rubble, keeping the group together
and stopping people wondering close to any areas that may not be structurally
sound or pose a threat to themselves or the fort.
6.
Will you be able to carry out this activity in
future with more public funding?
This activity is one that would be able to run again in the
future, whether the funding goes towards the renovations of the fort again or
is just put on as an event by the fort does not change the event. Preferably it
would be a summer event however, as warmer weather is more likely to benefit
the number of families and people who attend.
7.
What would help you in your plan?
The activity would need promotion through any social media
that the fort has, as well as on their site to draw the attention of those
already linked to the fort. It would also be appreciated to promote the event
through any linked sites to the fort, as well as posters and flyers in the café
and such. There would need to be one paid member of staff working on the event
to help volunteers, with any training that will need to be done.
Thursday -
On the Thursday I went into Uni at 10a.m. for a briefing on the Farnham project, I had the possible spaces talked through with me, and was explained to what exactly was expected/wanted out of the designs.
11a.m. we walked over to Fort Amherst for the presentation of ideas. I explained my ideas and discussed the possibilities of how the project could be developed, it seemed that my ideas were received well and there were many ways that they could be taken forwards and used, such as involving schools to develop their own ideas for the eggs, basing the event around Chinese new year, or St Georges day, and involving the community, doing crafts and other classes at the event as well as other ideas, I found that there were areas I feel I could have explained more and this experience helped me to better prepare myself for future presentations.
Farnham
In the afternoon me and the rest of the Farnham group sat down and spoke about the project again.
This project is for the Farnham UCA students who are doing a popup festival, what we are expected to do is find a link that we are able to tie all the different popup performances together with, be it a motif or item that we have that runs throughout and makes the statement that something is going to happen in an area to help draw in crowds and students to watch their performances.
We found this difficult due to not knowing the spaces we're designing for, as well as finding that there is very little link between the performances they are doing, to help start to develop ideas we decided on one link, using the colours that are in one of the quads to connect all the spaces, we went and gathered images for a mood board, after we sat and wrote up a list of things that we know about the locations and a list of things we would like to know, and things we can guess at, I found it difficult to work with 2 of the members as they didn't seem interested in the project, as they wouldn't be around the week after, one of the group members seemed to contribute very little and the other seemed to spend more time on her phone than paying attention.
Our mood board
Friday -
On the Friday we sat and went through the ideas that we had gathered and decided on a smaller list of possible ideas, due to having very little time to put together the project, we had to make sure the idea was simple but had impact. We settled on a list of 5 things - Plant pots, pinwheels, wellingtons, ribbon and lampshades, however after deciding that the wellingtons and lampshades would likely cost more, these were quickly scratched off the list, me and another student, developed some ideas for the spaces, as another student there seemed to be very uninterested in the project, and another student was unavailable that morning due to having a talk to be at instead. We printed images and using acetate went over the images giving a rough example of the ideas. We wrote out a list of materials we would need to buy so that I could later draw up a rough budget for the project, whilst drawing up idea we kept in mind any possible health and safety issue we may run into with the designs.
There are a few concerns with this project, regarding time needed to create, and people that would be able to work on the project, as well as the time we've had to put together ideas. However for now I shall just focus on putting together the ideas.
