Lammas

Harvest

It is now Lammas-tide, the time of harvesting. Lammas used to be celebrated with a festival at the beginning of August in rural communities. I recognise that this is significant timing for my project too. I am now surrounded by an abundance of information that I have gathered. 

 

An abundance of flowers harvested from the garden.

I have made many very interesting and useful contacts, had conversations about funding, projects, ideas and now need to harvest it, gathering it together, sorting out the wheat from the chaff. It feels similar to the feeling that crept up on me whilst doing my MA, as I realised I had to stop researching, focus on the end goal and write my own project up. It is a form of being overwhelmed, but in a very excited and relieved way as the major background work is coming to a temporary end. It will never be a final end as the design process is an ongoing, changeable beast, with projects like this. Good design requires feedback, use and adaption to become its best workable solution. But this harvesting will signify a step onto the path. I am at least moving forward.

Route-finding

The path that I follow now has to be found. As far as I am aware, this project doesn’t exist anywhere else. So I shall have to find my own way.

 

Direction is needed to route find.

Route-finding is an early part of the design process for the pathways project. So it is with excitement and trepidation that I will now set off and work out the route for the project itself. I know the outcomes I want from my project and these will be clarified as I fill in specific fund raising applications. I have been given advice and contacts from the many individuals that I have recognised as being significantly supportive through my research period and I thank them all.

The Old Ways

A couple of days ago, one of these generous individuals sent me a newspaper cutting from The Guardian newspaper. It was a book review by John Mullan on Robert Macfarlane’s ‘The Old ways’.

A wonderful leisurely read.

I have written about Robert’s books before on this blog, so I know of his writing. I read sections of this book early on in my study. Unfortunately, I was under time pressure then and the text didn’t feel academic enough to allow myself to enjoy reading it all the way through. For whilst studying I had so much reading to do that to read something for pleasure, amongst the background of writing quotes, using the Harvard referencing system and putting everything in context, seemed like an improper use of time! But in this newspaper cutting what I liked best was the phrase John Mullan uses to describe this type of writing. He called it ‘Perambulatory writing: a type of descriptive text that follows the path of the writer.’

Perambulation

This word conjures up images of Victorian prams and piers. The pram that I used for my two sons was a Silver Cross Perambulator.

 

Silver Cross Perambulator.

It was about 30 years old when I first used it and didn’t look too out of place in Whitstable, but it would look unusual now as in the last 10 years it is more fashionable to own a highly engineered, colourful, transformable ‘buggy’. Perambulation was something that people did then and we do now, but have a simpler term for it.

Victorians built piers just for this purpose, to perambulate on for pleasure, out over the sea, to experience a panorama at the end, which was also often used as a landing point for paddle steamers. The pier was designed as a place to walk out on, a path to follow, out, around and back.

 

Deal Pier, not last week.

We walked out on Deal pier last week, to the restaurant at the end where we enjoyed the waves all around us and felt that we were on deck of a ship. But it was safer than that, we didn’t roll and heave with the waves, we enjoyed the experience without any discomfort. As I sat there enjoying the view I understood even more the appeal of pier building to the Victorians. A mixture of grand engineering gestures to embrace technology of the time and pleasure taking for those who could afford the time to perambulate.

Walking App

There is an opportunity to design a walking app as part of this project. Again, I have been given invaluable advice from professionals that I have had contact with over the last few months. But still it feels daunting, mainly because of the technology, which I know nothing about.

Walking...

I design to a brief from the client and as yet I haven’t received one for the walking app. So in the meantime I will need to research other apps and see how they work, then I will work out the best way to use this app with the project I am working on. The production will be a collaboration I expect and may be seen as relative to the Victorian model, seen above. It is also a mixture of grand engineering gestures to embrace the technology of the time and pleasure taking for those who can afford the time to perambulate! I could name it a ‘perambulation app’, if one doesn’t exist already!

Blog

It takes time to write this every week. I enjoy doing so as it is a chance to reflect on my progress with the project. It has become a way to gather thoughts and scribblings and put them into order. Since reading ‘The Artist’s Way’ by Julia Cameron about 12 years ago I have written ‘Morning Pages’. These are one of a number of creative tools that the author advocates in the book to keep personal creativity flowing.
 

Another reminder of the way.

Writing the blog can sometimes be inspired by these early morning scribblings, but often I sit in front of the computer and desperately try and make sense of my wandering thoughts to create a worthwhile read. So it was with interest and amusement that it was suggested that I should write a book. That is some thought. But, in the past, when I have taught spatial design, I have encouraged everyone to think about the contents of their homes. What do the objects signify? Is the home full of original collected artwork, is this a hint that the person would deeply love to create art themselves for example? I mention this as yesterday; I went to the local library to take back a few books and bought 4 more books from their ‘withdrawn’ section.  My house has too many books now for the overloaded bookshelves. Maybe this is the hint I need to think seriously about writing a book. Or maybe I just need to buy more bookshelves!

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

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