MA Project 480/270 @ The Making Space (Huddersfield) continued

WE showed our pitch to the Making space people and thankfully they were very positive about what we proposed so now the hard work begins.

I have started to put together some ideas for posters and flyers for our event,I have kept them text free for the moment just concentrating on the Visuals the text can be added later as and when we decide on what they will be used for ,or even if they are good enough to use,we are all getting a few ideas put forward this week when we shall really start to  move forwards.at the moment though every idea is just a proposal for posters ,flyers and advertisement.

so here’s my poster/flyer rough drafts

Rene Magritte influenced idess based on the oceans having plastic bottles rained down on them polluting the seas and oceans for years to come these first draft posters are all variations of that theme.. Plastic Bottles take over FOUR HUNDRED and Fifty years to degrade……

as above but posterised in Photoshop

A different wave pattern and some different colours for the bottles,also some bottles floating on the waves My current favourite.

 

 

Minor varriations

 

A Darker version and not just in colour  this one is an idea for showing a Dirty Ocean/sea

Basic versions of an Idea all can be changed and altered as the master Images are on PSD files and contain all the Photoshop layers used and a few not used.

on Friday we attended the

Culture

Community

Creativity

Conference

organised by ROTOR our local arts council funded transdiciplinary Dialogue and Debate Group

I have been fortunate to have been involved with ROTOR before at a  minor level taking photographs of one of their events and of the artists involved one of MY photographs was used on the website advertising the event too see it here http://www.culturecommunitycreativity.co.uk/

screenshot of my photo on website and the real thing below

a nice surprise to see it on the website but would have been nice to be credited.

two of these Events are discussed in older writings in this Blog (see if you can find them 😀 You might like what you see)

some very good and very interesting speakers ,the opening (act ? 😉 ) speaker was Marsden’s own  Internationally renowned Poet …..  Simon Armitage.

Simon did a great job of opening the Event , I’m not a great fan of poetry but he did a very good speech and showed how much depth has gone into his poetry and also into where his poetry, in this case carved into rocks in the great wild outdoors of northern England is situated.

Phil Wood followed Simon and gave a brilliant speech full of wit and wisdom and a nice (if somewhat politically biased) trip down Huddersfield’s memory lane

other speakers followed, with interesting examples of how community arts work  (and sometimes don’t work) in different areas not just of the UK but also we had two speakers all the way from Amsterdam.

all this followed by workshops and a chance to discuss our own project , somewhat timid-ally with the great and good on the panel which consisted of:

Adele Poppleton head of culture for Kirklees

Our own (Huddersfield UNI) Professor Donal Fitzpatrick

Sue Ball Director  of Creative regeneration practise Media and Arts partnership.

as well as the Conference organisers

Dr Ana powell, Sara Pennington and Lee Corner

The event had a wonderful little booklet which came with it giving us all the information about the event and had some good photographs in it. I was once again surprised to see one of my own photographs from a previous event in the booklet (see below) once again without credit.

and a cropped version of one of my photographs (which I took for Rotor for expenses only whilst doing my degree) without credit as photographer.

below the photo before cropping to vertical

and again with rough crop lines

A bit of a disappointment that I didn’t get credited as this would have been a good place to have had my Name mentioned.

Apart from that little niggle and moan the show was well worth going to,and I met a few interesting people and learned a little about how they do things.

 

 

 

MA Project 480/270 @ The Making Space (Huddersfield)

St Valentines day February 14th 2018

Yesterday (14th) we got to present our pitch for the Event/Exhibition Idea with our partners “The Making Space(Huddersfield)”

Our Final Power point is as follows with a brief description of what was pitched.

Opening slide just to show our logo and who and what we are

General pitch before we tell them what our story is

The Hook …

showed the slide then had a brief pause before asking if those figures meant anything to anyone on the Making space panal.

when they said no

All was revealed.

480 is the number of plastic drinking bottles used by the average household in the UK per annum

270 is the number of those bottles that are recycled per household,per annum

The Idea.

Aims and objectives.

our pitch was to have an event at “the Making Space” consisting of artistic reuse of    Plastic Drinking Bottles, an event whereby local people are invited to creatively make art from plastic bottles and raise awareness of the pollution problem caused by said bottles.

More info on the pitch as to how it covers our UNI brief and also manages to raise public awareness of the problem,while bringing people together to make Art.

Quick dip into our research of other Arts based groups and of environmental Artists enough to show that we had researched our brief but not too much to make our pitch too long and loose peoples interest, these things can and will be gone into in detail at another time.

Other Artists work just to show what can and is being done(referenced at end of Power point).

Mandy Barker international artist who we have been in contact with, and who is too busy to be  with us, but is willing to make comments and take an interest in our work through our social media and our website.

The Event

“Making at The Making Space”  possibly “Making @The Making space”

 

An event for the creative people of Huddersfield to come together and make things, sculpture and art work made on the day using plastic bottles, also art work made for the event but not at the event can be brought in beforehand and displayed on the day.

The making of art on the day will be documented visually via photography and possibly video streams.

Using our plastic bottles to decorate the ceiling of the Making space following the theme of  480 bottles to raise awareness of the amount of plastic waste made by each household in the UK.

The Exhibition

Made at (@ ?) the Making Space

Display at the Making Space of artworks made for and at the event, photographic documentation of the event and the artwork, written descriptions and artist statements

The displays at the exhibition will also be available online at facebook, Instagram and other social media and also on our own website, creating an opportunity for people to leave comments and feedback.

How we intend to promote our event and our Exhibition

An open invitation for Questions by our hosts and partners from “the Making Space”

Que to open conversation about what we have presented and also how.

references for images used in Power point presentation.

Well it was St Valentines day after all and it’s not too arrogant to say our hosts at the Making space … loved it

 

 

 

MA Project The Making Space (Huddersfield) second edition

    Our rough outline of  what we are going to do

 

 

A project organised by MA Digital Media Students:

The Making Space is a collaboration of artists working from an open plan indoor space in Huddersfield.  We are a group of 6 MA Media students, with a brief to work in The Making- Space, to create an environment to host an event on March 14^th. The purpose, is to engage with the public and community groups, using different creative, practical disciplines and trades, including: textiles, fine artists, visual media and lens-based practitioners.

 

What are we looking for?

We are looking for 2 wall areas in the venue to be creatively transformed, to convey, Huddersfield’s Past, Present & Future. The approximate sizes of the work needed in the space would be 7ft*10ft, using the walls as the canvas. It would be entirely up to you, to decide on your own approach and creative influence, but the work should in some way, tell a story of Huddersfield through its changing states or stories, using some of the following themes:

 

• People

• Engineering
• Textiles
• Music
• Design
• Media
• Education
• Landmarks and geography

 

How many could be involved:

That’s up to you, it could be done your own, in pairs or a small team.

 

What do you get out of it?

• Free Materials for this project

• A chance to apply your own creative talent, on a project that you can direct.
• A means to promote you and your work.
• Working with different people, on a live brief.
• Exhibit your own work in a public place.
• Be promoted through marketing material we develop.
• Photographic publicity for you to use. (if you want)
• High quality digital copies of your finished work.
• Feedback from the MA students and the Public.

 

Dates:

Event:  Wednesday 14.3.18 (7 weeks, work to be finished within 4 weeks).

 

Commitment:

We ask, if you want to be involved, to make sure you’re able to follow through and complete your work in the time available.

 

The Making Space

 

 

MA Media students involved:

Assunta, Laura, Chris, Richard, Tom and Ashleigh. (around Wednesday’s and Friday’s).

 

Materials:

Free for this project.

 

Please reply by:

5.pm Thursday February 7^th through Gill Sampson or directly by email.

 

Contact email:

Any questions? just ask.

Chris:   U1775280@unimail.hud.ac.uk or Richard: U0776676@unimail.hud.ac.uk

 

The Venue:

A short walk from 21 Market Place, Huddersfield. Available weekday’s 9.00am -7.00pm

http://www.themaking.space

 

Above is our Brief

After much discussion and various ideas brought up and discarded we are now getting a little bit further along with the project

mind map below shows thoughts and ideas as we came up with them

Our rough idea for   the brief as always with these things we will add to it and discard from it as things evolve.

 

Summary

 

To help reflect on the presentation today, this summarises our rationale and proposition to engage creatively with the community.

 

Outline:

The proposal highlighted the scale and impact of consumer-led plastic waste, that always starts locally.  Plastic we suggest, is not the problem, it’s every community’s attitude towards a throw-away culture.  In our collaborative response to the brief, the group proposes to engage the public and creative-art’s community in Huddersfield, through an issues-based awareness approach.  The event and supporting exhibition, centre on the very current, local and-global issues of plastic pollution.

 

The event, to be held in the Making Space, seeks raise awareness, through creativity and engaging individuals in making creative sculpture from everyday plastic bottle waste. We hope Huddersfield’s creative communities, will express their identity and creative interpretation to a wider audience through this work. We feel, combining Huddersfield’s creative manufacturing culture, with The Making Space, would encourage local people to apply themselves in changing habits, that effect places beyond the pride of their own town.

Proposal

Or priories are based on responding, demonstrating and qualifying an interdisciplinary to:

1. Social impact   Community awareness       3. Execution        4. Cross disciplinary thinking.

 

Initial and ongoing research suggest a greater need for commercial efficiencies in mostly all communities. Part of this research discovered, that despite the symbolism, connotation and importance of the Lion Statue, in the town centre, this is also made efficiently from a form of plastic composite.   We would hope, the event using plastic bottle waste, allows individuals to re-cycle and make their own statements, rather than thrown away without a thought.

 

 

 

Event                             Exhibition                         Sharing the work others               Feedback mechanisms

we are getting nearer to the pitch to the making space people and have put together the basis for a power point presentation

seen here below

so far so good but still a long way to go

helpful hints on making a presentation provided for us by Assunta

24.1.17 The Enterprise Workshop  

Presentation Skills Helen Walker, Staff development manager.

Top tips for planning a presentation.

The five cardinal sins

• No clear point
• No audience benefit
• No clear flow – audience can’t connect if there is no structure. Don’t throw balls at them, idea after idea. Do tell them a story.
• Too detailed
• Too long

To detailed and too long are connected. Do not data dump. Do not show graphs or write paragraphs on the slides. Eyes will glaze over. Don’t bullet point, be more creative. Put up single words.

Planning

Do not open your computer and start by creating your first slide.

Instead get a pen and paper and ask yourself:

Why am I presenting?

What am I trying to achieve?

How am I credible? (confident, knowledgeable, enthusiastic)

What is my key message? (The one thing you want them to take away.)

WIFY

What is in it for the audience? (e.g. Academic tutor, are we meeting the module brief? How does it benefit The Making Space?)

What is important to them? What are they looking for?

When you have the answers to the above, think content.

Content

Always look at content before structure.

Brainstorm with post-it notes, then find links. Link in different ways.

Presenting is about taking the content of your brain, putting on the post-it notes, linking and deciding what you are not going to talk about. Do that by asking yourself: What is my focus/purpose? What is important to the audience?

Structure

Let the audience know your structure, tell them the journey you are going to take them on.

Start with a hook, get their attention. Can be something funny.

Establish credibility by saying what you’ve done. Keep it short and snappy.

Pitch Solving a problem, how is your solution better/ different from others. (build relationships).

Practice your pitch, over and over to build confidence. Preparation is key.

End by telling them what they get out of it. Finally, Are there any questions?

 

More to come later this week so hold onto your hats 😀

 

 

 

A few new abstract and surreal photo artworks

Not been blogging for a while

I have just completed my Degree in photography at Huddersfield University so been busy

so here’s a few of the Abstract and Surreal photo art I have been trying my hand at

 

So if you happen across this blog please let me know what you think of these art works

not sure how best to describe them artworks ? Photomanips? any suggestions

 

Visit to Britain in Focus opening night at the Media museum Bradford

Last Thursday 16 march 2017

I was invited to the Representation of Photography on Television  talk and exhibition opening at the National media Museum Bradford

Britain in Focus: A Photographic History, created in partnership with BBC Four, explores the changing ways we make, view and share photographs

here’s a link to the official web page

go have a look   http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/planavisit/exhibitions/britain-in-focus-a-photographic-history/about

“See photographers John Bulmer and Eamonn McCabe in conversation”

love that bit 😉 saw em and heard them too great to hear about how they went about the Television show ,and an interesting discussion among the great and good who were also there to speak

spoiled slightly by a bit of feminism trying to hi jack the discussion .. there should have been more female photographers etc… fair point but there wasn’t that many female photographers about in those days ..that’s just the way things were historically.Things have changed and hopefully someone might do a whole program on female photographers  Julia Margaret Cameron was one of the few female photographers in the Exhibition  and to be fair she was there on merit not as a token female go have a look at her work if you are not familiar with it  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Margaret_Cameron  

The Great and the Good John Bulmer and Eamonn McCabe in conversation with Anne McNeill, director of Bradford’s Impressions Gallery (three in center)

http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/planavisit/exhibitions/britain-in-focus-a-photographic-history/special-event

Quite a good turnout unfortunately only me and Andy from our university

Peter Mitchell’s photos amazing photographer  He had a retrospective at the Impressions Gallery Bradford earlier this year which was stunning (see my earlier blog)

a special thank you to  Anne McNeill, director of Bradford’s Impressions Gallery for putting that exhibition on 

the crowd mingling and enjoying the exhibition

Pictures at the exhibition

The last of the three documentary’s in the series will be on BBC4 about 9pm on Monday 20th  I believe this episode brings the series into modern times and includes the work of peter Mitchel so don’t miss it ….. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08h95c3

So if anyone is reading this blog …  is anyone reading this blog ?? (let me know what you think of it if you are)    go see the Britain in Focus Exhibition  at the National media Museum  why not make a day of it and visit the Impressions gallery too.

 

      

 

 

14-03-2017 A Visit by Charlie Meecham and a bit of Brexit too

Interesting week not just at uni but for the country as last night we took the biggest leap yet towards independence.

so as my Major project is about “Britishness” (not Nationalism I might add) I thought i’d show some of the “Relevant” and topical photos from my project

I think we are no doubt as to which way this household voted

A little more subtle I think

I also took a more humorous photograph of British iconography somewhat subverted

with this lovely idea of  painting “Portaloos” as K6 iconic British Telephone Kiosks

those of us old enough to have used such things will remember the smell of urine that they often reeked of .. due to drunks using them as urinals .. somewhat ironic then to decorate the “portaloos” as Telephone Kiosks.

Away from my work and back to last week at Uni

we had our visiting lecturer Charlie Meecham  who not only gave us advice about his print making business but had a look at our work and gave opinions and advice

heres a link to Charlies work  http://oldhamroadproject.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/blog-post_15.html?m=0

 

https://photoworks.org.uk/charlie-meecham-sue-packer/

and a couple of his photographs

Wonderful stuff and a very nice Bloke to talk to too

 

This Weeks Photographic Blog

06-03-2017

getting a bit behind with the blog

things are getting busy at Uni

we have had a few people coming in to give us lectures

last week we had  Danny Treacy come in to give us a talk on his work

cant say I was that interested at the thought but luckily I went along any way

An excellent talk and a very interesting bloke so glad i went

have a look at some of his work http://www.dannytreacy.com/

strange and Interesting   http://www.thecentreofattention.org/exhibitions/Danny.html

he’s a good talker too so the lecture was  good to listen to and he showed a good selection of his work

 

Danny works mainly with found items which he then turns into clothes and photographs himself wearing

as i said strange but interesting .

This week on tuesday we have a visiting lecture by Charlie Meecham

the lecture is mainly going to be about Charlies printing studio and on prints but my main interest is in his photography which is the nearest in style to what my major project is about

http://oldhamroadproject.blogspot.co.uk/

sort of street documentary so it will be good for my practise if he gets to have a look at my work

and here is a couple of mine in a similar vain