Midsummer

People and Place

 

Graduation Ceremony

Today is my MA graduation ceremony at the South Bank Centre, London. I have chosen not to attend. I graduated from KIAD in 1991 and did all that then, except it was in Rochester Cathedral and looking back, all very lovely. I shall celebrate my achievement in another way, another time.

Today has been very busy organising the structure of the business, trying to see order in a whirl of ideas, contacts and prospective meetings.

Gathering up on the Saltway for Midsummer.

Clarity

In looking forward to the project that I am working on with Arlette George in Scotland, I have had the chance to reflect on the Saltway route that I used as a case study for my MA project. Looking back to that structure has clarified the methodology of the design system that I am now employing to look at the Ardnamurchan Peninsular in the Highlands.

It has also dawned on me that this case study is an existing project that needs to be completed. It would then become a good example of what the design system can produce and will hopefully encourage other people to engage with the place that they inhabit.

We watched the sun go down on the longest day.

Storywalks

I worked with Christopher Jelley on the Saltway case study to create a narrative which can be accessed as you walk the route. It is a site-specific form of story telling, accessed via a smartphone or tablet. Chris is an expert storyteller and has created a portion of the tale to tell for my MA. Now I am impatient to know how the story ends and want to find funding to allow him to complete the task. It is a valuable part of the design system, a chance for people to connect to place through their imagination.

 

The Saltway seen cutting through the ripening wheat.

Funding

Coming from a design consultancy world I haven’t, before now quite understood the reasoning behind funding! I have always understood that businesses need to be financially sustainable through the work that they do. My work is paid for by a client, mainly based on an hourly consultancy rate. But now, with a project that I have researched and understand to be valuable in people and place terms and have worked on since my MA finished in September 2013, I recognise some form of funding to sustain the project. Creative projects need funding to become realities. It’s that simple. I will be visiting a Trust tomorrow who may be able to advise on this subject.

Next Monday I will be attending a day course in Margate titled ‘Sustainability Projects Accelerator training. An introduction to funding.’

So hopefully, by the next blog entry, I shall know far more about their benefits and understand the application process for funding.

 

Offering blessings to the midsummer fire on the Saltway.

Midsummer

It’s that time of year again, where the longest daylight hours can be witnessed.

Last year, part of the MA research into how people can connect to place through physical engagement with walking a route was put into reality by my creating an event on the Saltway. Many of the participants expressed a desire to meet again at the next midsummer to walk a section of the route again. I thought it was a wonderful idea, so at 8.30 pm on the 21^st of June a group of 7 women walked slowly in procession up the Saltway to the plateau of Golden Hill and watched the sun go down, had a small fire and counted their blessings. It was a very beautiful and special time.

Throughout the time up on the hill we heard curious noises from the sea. We could hear the last performance of the Whitstable Biennale 2014 even there, up on the hill. Their event took place out to sea, it was called ‘Whitstable Sounding’ and was by the artist Richard Wilson. The ships that took part had been modified to become playable musical instruments. One of the ships made a irregular deep, deep noise that sounded like an elephant calling, it was unexpected and quite surreal! As we walked back down the path the finale ‘Whitstable Sounding’ included setting off numerous flares which seemed to go up and hover directly over the path that we were walking down. It was a fantastic end to a wonderful experience.

Flares lighting up the sky over the Saltway path.

I completed my MA last September and recorded the last two months of it in another blog called thesaltwayfarer.blogspot.co.uk

Please feel free to look at that anytime, as it is from that, that I am where I am now.

updated link

People to Place

The correct path to this very special story event!

 

Introduction

People to Place

 My new brand logo.

Introduction

This blog is to record the start of something big.

Something has been growing, quietly and steadily since I completed my MA last September.

I recorded the last two months of my MA in another blog called thesaltwayfarer.blogspot.co.uk

Please feel free to look at that anytime, as it is from that, that I am where I am now.

I would like to think this big thing will change how people perceive themselves and the place that they find themselves in.

It is about using imagination, creativity and location to understand more about themselves as individuals and where they are.

The path to a story event in Somerset.(blog 20/05/14)

 Serendipity

I regularly attend a networking group led by Yvonne Fuchs called ‘Blue Banana’. Yes, a rather peculiar name and it gets people talking, which is the main idea of the group. I have known Yvonne for many years through our connection to Transition Whitstable. She knows me as a designer and artist, trying to find my own way of working in two very competitive industries. The Blue Banana group were there as I mulled about validating my 25 years of design experience with a postgraduate qualification. They were there as I questioned what I was doing once I had started the part-time MA and are still there being supportive and encouraging as I step into my dream, that of making my MA design project, a reality.

Stepping onto the path, populating the ways.

Yvonne had been and still is regularly mentoring a lady called Arlette George in London. Yvonne told me we were working towards the same goal and at times it was as if she was hearing Arlette and I talking to her ‘one of you in one ear and the other in the other ear’. She recognised we were talking the same language and she kindly put us in touch with one another. I see this as a classic example of serendipity. We had our first meeting at the end of November last year, 2013. Since that time Arlette and I seem to have communicated consistently in all forms bar Semaphore, (now, that’s a challenge!) I have even travelled up to her family home in Scotland with my own family just before Easter and visited the areas in which my MA design system will be adapted into a commercial model and used to support her need of gaining the Ardnamurchan Peninsular a name for both sustainable tourism and community engagement.

 Swotting up on the area before our trip up North.

The mossy magical woods of Ardnamurchan.

I will write this blog a couple of times a week and will chart how this idea becomes a reality. It may be more humble to hope that the project works, fingers crossed and all that, but the reality is, it needs to happen.