I was recommended through my MA work to connect with the education faculty at the University to work on a project called, #SeeMe.
The project, ran by Sarah Martin Denham set to develop a set of workshops and projects for schools and young people to use. The participants had been excluded from schools and the project was developed to help them to be seen and to raise their voices. This worked very well with my MA work and I thought, even though I would be working as an artist externally on this project, separate to my MA plans it would be a great way for me to test and develop my set of workshops.
I developed a workshop in which participants would use the WeType font to create a set of posters. These posters would help the students to tell others about their hobbies and interests,, and also big part of the project,, what made them happy?
The lesson plan was written up for both older and younger students,, asking younger students to use the shapes to create pictures if they were not at a developed age for text. They were first asked to write a mind map around different things that made them happy and given prompts such as, people, places, food or sounds... These were then edited to create a short phrase to use to create the poster.
The plan at first was to develop the rubber stamper kits as previously developed in DESM14 to use to then print the posters. The timescale on the project was only a few weeks and I had been asked to make kits for around 90 children, so this had to be changed as I struggled to find a company to cut the rubber and working to a short timescale I didn't want to bring issues into the already tight timescale.
I decided to use gummed paper instead to create the shapes needed, I cut around 9000(!!!!) shapes as I knew a lot of shapes would be needed as eg. certain letters such as an E would use us 3 shapes per letter.
These are the seven shapes that make up the WeType font...
I printed a Riso WeType alphabet, which also was included in each kit so that the participants could refer to this for each letter in the alphabet and see which shapes were needed (100+ prints)...
Image of the cut shapes and individual envelopes for each pupil with screen printed front..
I asked my daughter to test the workshop out, knowing as she is younger than the other participants it would be a good test to see if any issues arose...
I also went through the workshop sheet with her,, my answer obviously involved cake..
I used the screen exposed for the Common screen print, to print onto the envelopes to hold the workshop materials for each participant (100+ envelopes)...
The workshop lesson plan and materials were given to each of the 9 schools taking part and I wasn't present at the school during the delivery of the workshops. This helped with the research I have been developing into the authorship of the work and outcomes, looking into how much of a hold the designer has on the work and if the work can truly be participatory if the participant cannot really structure or change the outcomes. It was really nice to be able to give the workshops away to be delivered and to see how the students would work with the materials, my main concern was making sure that the workshop was clear enough to be understood yet still leave place for the participants to put their own mark on their workshop and voice.
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