The following study explores a new form of urbanism that can take over the Glasgow city center. The study is based on observations and modeled with reasoning studying theories that back the reasoning. The study looks at modeling an architectural form that amalgamates architecture and play using an array of curated elements, thresholds and functions. The study is developed in 3 stages:

Stage 1: Observations The observations collected have been collected post exhaustive exploration of Glasgow’s city center, especially its history, culture and development over time. The site was analyzed for its land use, junctions, accessibility, density, pedestrian and vehicular traffic, larger city connections as well as the differences in elevations. These observations culminate in raising a series of questions. These questions, in turn help in pointing our certain obvious issues with the urban fabric. The lack of open to sky spaces, the rising levels of density, the lack of breakout spaces and the diminishing centers of public assembly. Conversely, the observation couples with questions helped the analysis of site in terms of identifying its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Moreover, the observations, lead to the exploration of play as an architectural element. The observations prove to be an important stage of our study as they are notes to fallback on and model design developments from the perspective of children and adults, in adherence to their movement and activity across the site.

Stage 2: Literature Primary and secondary data collection was all done in adherence to references and citations that have explored similar strategies in similar situations to create new forms. The study of literature culminates in the analysis of site that provides us with a formidable hypothesis – architecture and play can be amalgamated to create an urban form. The urban form itself is developed from experiments around expansion and contraction of spaces that respond to changing vision cones. The composition and organization of architectural elements is curated to efficiently engage user groups and functions. Furthermore, the parameters set for data analysis emerge from the surrounding buildings and site barriers, thrusting the study us to adopt and iterate Stallan Brand’s design proposal.

Stage 3: Modeling parameters The architectural language is developed as a result of user movement, site massing, and composition of the form. Plot divisions, accessibility, and functions give an order to aesthetics and design. The massing itself is a response to the urban fabric. It is an attempt to play with surfaces that integrate seamlessly into one another and the streetscape. The urban form generated as a result of design development addresses the notion of play at varying thresholds. It imbibes the childlike wonder of being in spaces, exaggerated through modeling of masses, portals, and thresholds in accordance with a user experience that looks at users to develop their own navigation system based on the order the form adopts from materiality and color. It is an attempt to curate scales such that it creates a paradigm shift in the way we look at Glasgow’s urban fabric.

Conclusion

The form is majorly modeled to be an open public space that curated movement by instilling a sense of navigation on its elements. The entire form can be collectively viewed as a coming together of the smaller kits of parts and engage with one another at varying scales. Each part has a certain role to play in hosting children and adults and activating multiple functions using materiality and color.

The integration of play through the urban form is rooted within the response the form offers by opening up its ground plane and terraces (both of which are internally connected as well). The permeable nature of the built form, in terms of both structure and the skin, develops from contracting and expanding spaces based on the site parameters and the surrounding built form. Furthermore, distinct circulation blocks double as navigational nodes that engage users and help them develop a sense of wonder through navigation.

The attempt is to create a new sense of urbanism amidst the city center, one that is more inclusive and active in its approach and management of users, that provides breakout spaces at varying scales and forms to develop niches that can best activate the structure in terms of aesthetics and functionality. There is a careful consideration given to threshold treatments and their engagement with the user is particularly curated to create memorable experiences through exaggeration of scale and modeled features such as furniture, walls and openings. Holistically speaking the urban form is an experiment that stemmed from the observations of Merchant city’s urban fabric. It is an attempt at bringing curiosity back into the users by appealing to everyone’s sensibility, vision and movement to narrate a sequence of urban play.

The most important point of urban building is its response to the urban environment, culture, and history. The main purpose of urban building is to better integrate the building into the surrounding environment, maintain the continuous urban streetscape, create attractive architectural spaces, while also contribute to the creation of a beautiful and harmonious urban environment.

This portfolio is mainly about the design of an urban building for health and well-being located on Clyde Street in the city center. Start from the urban background scale to the specific block scale, discussing the selection of site and the potential of the site. Then, by introducing the site research, analyzing the current problems of the site and possible causes, and providing certain solutions to these problems. These research lead to the selection of the program. Finally, combined with the analysis of the urban context, a design scheme is proposed.

Clutha is one of Glasgow’s first bars and has long witnessed the development of Glasgow. Over the years, the disrepair brought about by history has become an obstacle to the development of Clutha, and many problems have gradually surfaced. The project will start with an in-depth analysis of the historical context of the site from the historical culture of the area where Clutha is located, and find the uniqueness of Clutah. While analyzing the regional conditions, the unique network of Glasgow’s music development was analyzed, making the project have a good internal music network system architecture and become the core of the new Clutha. Next, the project reconstructed the function and form of the building from each floor in turn, incorporating a richer space and Clutha’s unique musical attributes into a limited space, thereby building the new Clutah into an emerging music and cultural center in Glasgow.

‘Connecting New Centres for Tradeston & Laurieston’

How might hierarchy of urban form introduced into Glasgow’s gridiron diversify pedestrian movement and experience? is the question to the design project in Tradeston & Laurieston located across river Clyde in south-side of Glasgow city centre.

The non-hierarchical system gird has the overall similarity of sizes and visuals on most streets, which makes harder for pedestrians to perceive a sense of hierarchy and difficulties pedestrian movement.

In Consequence, the author believed a city without the sense of hierarchy of urban form reduces the diversified pedestrian experience.

Recognised by the street user, the quality of varied diverse experience of pedestrians because people remembering the image of identity of different places. Glasgow’s gridiron which is essentially a non- hierarchical urban pattern, lack of the hierarchy of urban form. Missing of the secondary and tertiary street, the city loss the opportunity to introduce more diversity in the street network.

The hierarchy allows for the great decision by the pedestrian when travelling from their location to destination. The variety of street types have corresponding building typology that enclosed the space between buildings.

This design project aims to investigate how pedestrian movement between two neighbouring districts of Tradeston and Laurieston in Glasgow has been affected by an existing grid-iron morphology.

The project introduces a hierarchy of urban form including central square with primary public buildings; primary streets, mid-block lanes to plays as shared space and building variety at the scale of the block into the Glasgow grid-iron system.

Reflection on the success of the design project will allow conclusions on the applicability of a similar method to the understanding and transformation of other locations of under-performing gridiron morphologies.

The ‘Other’ Playground: An Interactive and Heterotopic Right to the City

This project speculates about the exercise of the public’s right to play in the city through an interactive three-dimensional design proposal. Developed out of a rich understanding of the host space, the project combines the ideas of community gardens and sculptural playgrounds, to convert a previously in-between, overlooked or interstitial space in Glasgow into a site of rich cultural activity.

Through embodied experiences of play, the design aims to engage and stimulate an interaction amongst the local population and the site; improving and enhancing the relationships between the body and the urban fabric, whilst giving the users a voice to celebrate their own imagination and creativity.

Based in Possilpark, the project takes advantage of growth opportunities and embraces innovative ways of working to develop a model for finding sustainable, attractive and economically viable ways to re-engage interest in lost and forgotten civic spaces. Until around 1870 Possilpark was no more than a mansion house and home farm with few residents.

Since the 1950’s Glasgow, as with many cities across Scotland, has seen the demise of its industrial sector. The inter and post-war period was the most traumatic for the industries and although Glasgow clung onto being the “workshop of the Empire”, by the 1990s most of the engine shops were derelict and the shipyards reduced to wasteland. The most rapid deindustrialization took place during the 1970s and 1980s, with many of the traditional industries drastically shrunk or completely closed down. Although many initiatives promised revival, a shift towards a new service-oriented economy emerged to replace traditional heavy industries. This left many Scottish cities peppered with derelict spaces and industrial wastelands.

Possilpark was unable to avoid this pattern of urban decay, and today 100% of residents live within 500m of vacant or derelict land. The district is also one of Scotland’s most deprived areas with 15% undeployed.

The site is located on the intersection of Allander St and Barloch St in Possilpark.

Previously supporting the east corner of a tenement block, demolished in 1970, the stalled space currently functions as a car park.

Along with the scale and derelict condition of the space, which provided a huge canvas for the project, the fundamental reasons for choosing the site was its location in Possilpark and the area’s social demographic context. At the epicentre of one of Glasgow’s poorest neighbourhoods and running parallel to Saracen Highstreet, the site provided the opportunity to benefit an extremely diverse and deprived community.

The site, as with many streets throughout Possilpark, had become an avenue of anonymity, rather than a place of rich culture and activity. After visiting the site and talking to local residents it became apparent the traditional sense of a community had broken down. The increased transience of people in and out of Possilpark had developed a situation of people living in close quarters to each other but operating very isolated and separate lives. This ultimately breeds fear, contempt and frustration, bringing on a sense of alienation and powerlessness within the community.

This observation drove the development of a community based, public spaces project. These spaces are important assets to the urban fabric, providing people with opportunities to come together and engage with the community. When successful they can become a ‘self-organising public service’ for everyone in the society to participate in, learn from and to help create local attachments.

In Topographies of Contemporary Architecture Ignasi de Solà-Morales says architecture has gone silent. However, have we in fact just become deaf to the spaces around us through a lack of interaction and embodied experiences of play?

Relying less on visual stimulation and targeting a wider range of sensory stimuli the proposal shows how adding something new and enhancing the existing can positively change the way we experience and interact with the built environment.

The visuals explore the finer details of the design, whilst showing the inhabited capacity and tactile nature of the space from four different perspectives. To represent the demographic of people in Possilpark the images are populated with a range of figures, of varying heights, body shapes and abilities. These figures animate the design; suggesting how the space could be used and the rich variety of experiential goals the design can yield.

The project did not explore the technical details and specifications of the designed objects; how they would be made and what they would be made from, however, the visuals suggest a pallet of materials and textures which would achieve the goals of the space and design.

A conscious decision was made to crop the images and shape the field for view. Stepping away from a rectilinear frame not only avoided traditional presentation aesthetics, in line with the motifs of the project but also listened to David Hockney’s criticism of ‘traditional’ photography’s static field of view, revealed during early research into collage. Furthermore, the use of organic shapes to frame the visuals playfully focuses the attention on the designed space, drawing the eye into the centre of the space and reducing the attention given to the surrounding buildings.

After graduating from the Glasgow School of Art in 2019 with a first-class in BA (Hons) Interior Design, I am extremely proud to have completed my masters of Architectural Studies at the Mackintosh School of Architecture.

Having spent the last two summers interning at Interior Visions in Thailand and Waldo Works in London, I’m currently looking to widen my knowledge and experience within the growing discipline of design and architecture.

Creative Urban Practice.

An artistic exploration into urban space.

The production of a series of digital screen prints to create opportunity for speculation on how terrain vague urban spaces are viewed.

The considered urban spaces are ‘terrain vague spaces’. These spaces are often under appreciated, or misunderstood. They are overlooked.

This project consists of a series of images to provoke the viewer to consider these ‘terrain vague spaces’ differently, to contemplate value in otherwise undervalued spaces.

The artistic process allows characteristics of terrain vague spaces to be revealed. Highlighting the spaces value, and prompting these spaces to become part of the city in a way that wasn’t previously considered.

The final output of the project is three series of art practice, digital screen print images, which challenge conventional readings of urban space. Each series draws attention to a key principle of terrain vague spaces evident across three studied sites.

The images use abstraction to allow for the displacing and realigning of knowledge to realign thought. Specifically, this is the realigning of logic from spatial knowledge to re-frame thought on urban space.

Printed editions at A0.

Activating Edges and Shadow

Resolving the Western M8 Corridor in Glasgow

Glasgow’s City Centre has the majority of its area devoted to roads and parking. In order to prioritise social and spatial justice, Glasgow needs to manage its walkability, safety, sustainability and quality of public spaces and places. This is how the city will be able to tackle current challenges, as well as creating robust infrastructures which allow flexibility for future needs and uses.

The lack of quantity and quality of public spaces across the stretch in study creates a hostile place to be. The traffic of motor-vehicles dominates the surrounding areas, leaving pedestrians to dark underpasses or bridges, neither being DDA accessible. In order to enhance quality of life and attractiveness, Glasgow needs to promote healthy lifestyles through its surroundings. The control over noise and air pollution is also essential to create welcoming and pleasant spaces for people. Increasing the amount of open green spaces which also work as connectors between neighbourhoods could transform the city boundaries and shadows from hard & dead, to soft & vibrant places.

Could the activation of the M8 Motorway corridor in Glasgow resolve its unjust, segregated and car-dominated city fabric? This is the current thesis aim when activating the West M8 motorway corridor in Glasgow.

‘Edges’, through the knowledge from Kevin Lynch (1960), this author understands the M8 corridor as the fragmented edge of Glasgow, segregating and isolating neighbourhoods and uses. Therefore, when ‘activating edges’, new purposes and uses are introduced to the M8 corridor, ‘stitching’ the urban fabric and aiming to transform it into a uniting seam.
‘Shadows’, in this context, being the forgotten undercroft spaces from the M8 corridor, having the understanding of the great spatial qualities inherent to these spaces with the intention of also integrating them back to the urban fabric.

The research for this design project includes three main methods: expanding knowledge through key literature; analysing case studies; and utilising methods of engagement with citizens from the areas adjacent to the M8 corridor.

Important concepts from Henri Lefebvre (1971), Edward Soja (2010), David Harvey (2012), Richard Sennett (2006), Christopher Alexander (1977), Jane Jacobs (1961), Jan Gehl (2010) and Kevin Lynch (1960) have been noted. The case studies selected have similar physical settings to the current proposed site, which means, case studies of car-dominated barriers between neighbourhoods or between city and river. Lastly, a community engagement study gathering public opinion over urban settings was undertaken in Anderston, one of the neighbourhoods next to the M8 corridor. This study was made in partnership with the community centre ‘The Pyramid’ based in the same neighbourhood. This study utilised of an online map of the neighbourhood, where citizens could add comments at locations which they felt needed improvement. The project created by the Glasgow City Council called ‘Connecting Woodside’ was used as a key reference.

As a result of this investigation, this research found how important open spaces are to deliver greater justice within urban environments and how the human dimension should be a priority when coming to urban design. It also found how adaptability, flexibility in program, relationship to its surroundings and placing essential amenities are important to deliver density, and therefore diversity to the chosen site. Lastly, this design proposal has answered successfully, within its own means, the research question: yes, it is possible to achieve better justice, integration and pedestrian-friendly city fabric through the activation of the M8 Corridor in Glasgow.

However, there are points in which this proposal could be further developed. This author understands the need for deeper community involvement. The current research, due to COVID-19, could not deliver the full picture through its current methodology. This author also understands the degree of importance of topics such as gentrification and policies in order to truly deliver justice within cityscapes, therefore, further studies are necessary in order to implement this proposal to Glasgow’s urban fabric.

Revealing Peripheral Space: An analysis through drawing of threshold spaces  across the buildings of the Maiden Lane Estate

The goal of this research project was to explore the threshold spaces within housing which are peripheral to the dwelling spaces themselves. The analysis is focused particularly on public housing, or council housing, in London. This analysis was undertaken as a series of drawings which isolate these peripheral spaces across several development stages of the Maiden Lane estate in London. By abstracting these spaces from the housing blocks the aim was to reveal the various types of threshold spaces present and their arrangement across the different development phases.

The estate had originally been planned as one large development, designed by Benson and Forsyth, but was realised in three different phases. Phase one was a reduced version of Benson and Forsyth’s original plans, built by Camden Council and completed in 1979. Phase two was also designed by a team from Camden’s architect department but without Benson and Forsyth. This phase was overseen by Daniel Usiskin and was completed in 1983. The third and final phase of the estate is much more recent, completed in 2017 by PRP architects with Camden Council as the client.

Each phase of the development has been categorised by the house or block typology. The block have then been drawn in plan, isolating only the peripheral spaces and layered across different storeys. These plans have formed the templates to produce a set of axonometric drawings, coloured coded to show the various types of threshold space, along a scale of public to private. These drawing highlight the differences in spatial design across the different phases of the development. The resulting drawings provide a comparative study of the earlier and later phases of the project. Shown here is a selection from the complete set of drawings. The accompanying design report can be found via the link below.

The rapid development of the global civil aviation industry has led to a surge in the number of airports. Airport departure hall consumes a lot of energy throughout the year due to their large size, complex function, busy business and long operation time. Among other functions the energy consumption for artificial lighting and air conditioning is one of the main factors leading to high energy consumption in the terminal. Skylight lighting, as a common way of lighting, is also different from ordinary buildings when it is applied to departure halls. At the same time, there is a special relationship between the energy consumption of air conditioning and the energy consumption of daylighting due to environmental conditions in low latitudes, and skylight lighting has a better energy saving potential in low latitudes. In view of this, this paper studies and analyzes options of skylight design for a typical airport departure hall form and layout. Based on the study of the design of departure halls and the theory of natural lighting design, the elements of daylighting design of skylights of the departure hall are summarized, and the natural lighting effect of the three skylights are discussed.

Manwei Ou is a womenswear designer who graduated from MDes Fashion and Textile of Glasgow School of Art. Inspired by the curtains blowing in the wind of Gabriel Lester’s installation , the designer decided to research the concept of frozen in time and space and experiment with capturing old clothing in the mid-air through photography.

These images selected from the impressive shape of thousands of pictures lead to a sensitive collection of twisted, flexible silhouettes dresses and hats. The shadow cast by the clothes on the wall in the photo also contributed a lot to this collection.

The work refers to revoke the warm memory and the unforgettable moment of urban people, as well as the concretization of personal abstract emotions, second-hand garments’ rebirth. Time is unstoppable, but we had this moment.

Shanxu Cong, also called Vivien.

As a women’s wear designer, she is concerned about women’s freedom and protection, and she also explores the development of underwear style structure to convey women’s pursuit of free life attitude.

In her opinion, the sexiest moment of a woman is the moment when she comes home, takes off her clothes one by one and lies lazily in her delicate bedroom. With this in mind, she conducted an in-depth visual photographic investigation of the process of undressing.

This is the moment to show the beauty of the female body line, but it is not limited to age and figure. The structural change of folds is a good way to express these body lines. She loved the wrinkles, whether they were in the fabric of clothing or on human skin, and she didn’t see anything bad with them. Just like she loves everything about herself.

Menswear designer Wentian Song released a mono-material Menswear range for his Master collection at the Glasgow School of Art.

Being inspired by melting ice caps and the effect this is having on the planet, Wentian Song explored different forms of primary research by freezing garments and different objects, such as silicone blocks, few pins and photos, which related to his secondary research where he looked at historical photographs of workwear.

With consideration of maximizing the recycling of garments and making garments more easily degradable, Wentian Song applied mono-materiality into his design, by using straps and knots in his garments instead of traditional buttons and elastic bands.

In order to maximize the application of mono-materiality, Wentian Song deconstructed a pair of second hand suspender trousers and removed the original trouser legs to the armholes and sewed them into an oversize jacket. Then he sewed the pocket linings as a high collar along the neckline of the jacket. Similarly, after he got a first idea, he continued to do the second one and the third one until he got the oversize silhouette and the street look balance that he want.

Where it was necessary to use multiple fabrics, removable elements were designed by using buttons and zippers on the hem to connect the linings instead of sewing them together directly, this is so the components could be removed so the jacket could be recycled more easily.

Currently, the fashion industry is one of the most wasteful industries in terms of resources. Most brands launch new products at least twice a year or more. Garments are losing their value through time because popular trends are always changing. Chao’s designs are inspired by the traditional Japanese patchworking techniques, such as “Boro” and “Sashiko”. Those techniques link to the traditional Japanese aesthetic “Wabi-Sabi”, which embraces imperfection, incompleteness, and impermanent beauty. Chao uses “Boro” and “Sashiko” techniques and the concept of “Wabi-Sabi” to repurpose textiles, deconstructing and reconstructing garments to give new lives to old pieces of clothing. This practice can produce numerous designs, giving a new life and purpose to otherwise disregarded clothing.

Gaultier asked a famous question: “What is masculinity and what is feminization? Why shouldn’t men show their vulnerability and sensitivity, and women shouldn’t show their own intelligence and strength?”

This is a fashion series about gender fluidity, the designer hopes to finds a balance between the hard characteristics of masculinity and the soft characteristics of femininity, combining the two and displaying them in clothing.

In her development process, she used the basic suits bought from charity shops to transform the human body, combining two different color suits to produce deformation, to create new silhouettes and structure. She added to these suits by creating some extra features such as historical sleeves, ruff collars draped sections to the front, side, back, to combine with other structures and enhance the sense of design. She explored the characteristics of masculinity and femininity on a body through dress up exercises to investigate the blending of these two characteristics, from this she extracted the most successful elements to generate collage work and initial design ideas about cut, shape, color, fabric and silhouette.

Her design allows people in the current society who are afraid to express their true selves to express their bravery in the public with more confidence through dressing.This designer hope she can break through the public’s traditional solidified thinking about gender, through rejecting gender labels, and moving towards a wardrobe of gender freedom.

The designer graduated from Master of fashion and textile in Glasgow school of art. With the main direction of silhouette design, her design is focusing on the relationship between human body and clothings and balancing traditional tailoring elements with dramatic design ideas to achieve the purpose of both wearable and conceptual design.

The name of the project is “Body in desire”, which came from the story of lustful people transformed into monsters in the anime “Devilman Crybaby”. Therefore, the designer used the change of human bodies in desire to combine with the elements from traditional tailoring jackets to present the influence from desire to human bodies by the hyperbole and abnormal silhouettes of the design work.

The designer thinks that everyone is equal in front of desire, there is no difference of gender, age, nationality and body shape, thus, she wanted to do gender less design with not only oversized clothings, but the garments structure that independent from human body, so the visual effect won’t be influenced by human body shapes. Therefore, all the datas came from different body shapes with various sized, height and genders, so the prototypes were also tried on various bodies to achieve the most balanced result.

Yasmine Amani is a textile artist and expert embroiderer, specialising in hand embroidery and embellishments. In her work, she combines traditional hand intensive embroidery methods with contemporary and current concepts, aiming to entertain and captivate the viewer. She has previously worked on commissions for the BBC, including embellishing a jacket which was worn by Susan Calman on BBC Scotlands’ Hogmanay.

Inspired by iconography and the decorative opulence of Faberge eggs, Yasmine Amani’s Master’s project looks to turn the chicken into the icon of the 21st Century. Inspired by films such as ‘Chicken Run’ and ‘Marie Antoinette’, she aims to reimagine the chicken with a new found sense of sophistication, glamour and grandeur.

Through a limited palette and material choice, subtle changes in the differing tones, weights, textures and transparencies of ribbon can be detected, echoing the beautiful plumage found in chickens. Influenced by designers such as Simone Rocha and Valentino, her fashion visualisations aim to manifest a sense of importance in its wearer.  With an emphasis on volume, her textiles are integral to mirroring the voluptuous qualities and plumage of the chicken, adding to the overall impact of the garment. Additionally, with the exclusive use of hand embroidery methods, she creates the look and feel of a sumptuous body of feathers throughout her collection, elevating the once humble chicken to a level beyond its popularity as meat.

Yasmine practices responsible methods in her work by using second-hand materials wherever possible, sourcing these through Ebay, charity, thrift and vintage shops. Additionally, by exclusively using hand embroidery methods in the making of her textiles, this excludes the need and use of machinery for the whole textile process. Furthermore, due to her style of embroidery, it would be hoped that the longevity of the item would span out many years and cherished by whoever it remains with.

THE AMAZON IS ON FIRE. SAVE AMAZON.

In recent years, Coronavirus, Australia fire, dramatic temperature change and amazon rainforest destruction rate have returned to their peak. The frequent occurrence of disasters on earth made me start to think about human beings and the environment. How to balance the relationship between human and nature? How can the situation of the “future” not be worse than that of the present?

My topic is about the deforestation of Amazon rainforest. The number of fires in the Amazon rainforest increased 30.5% in 2019 from the previous year, while deforestation rose 85%, according to recent data released by Brazil’s space research agency INPE. The Amazon rainforest is far away from our lives, but its roles the lungs of the earth. Where would we be without it? My project is to make a publication–THE AMAZON IS ON FIRE( bilingual edition in Chinese and English)–to make more people aware of Amazon rainforest.

“The Fire” does not only fire in the Amazon rainforest but more importantly, the amazon is in a state of emergency and need of rescue right now.

Xiaoxin Wang is an illustrator and visual designer from China. She is currently working as a freelance illustrator. She explores the use of comics to tell stories about what happens around her. She uses irony and humor to take us into a surreal space. Her work aims to give the reader an emotional identity. She was shuttling back and forth between reality and the surreal.

Xiaoxin graduated from Hubei Institution of Fine Arts with a degree in Visual Communication Design before completing her GSA master’s degree.
“My works focus on the study of all kinds of emotions brought by the society. Through the observation of the people around me, I find that some of the pressures brought by the community are very subtle by looking at these stories and adding some emotional content. It is the most exciting thing to let the work wander between the real and the surreal. “

Nina Klaff is a photographer, filmmaker, and writer currently based in London. Drawing from her background in digital anthropology and cultural analysis, her work addresses social issues in an experimental and evocative manner, with an ethereal aesthetic grounded in digital art. Her most recent Masters projects have revolved around the question of human connectivity in the age of social distancing. Her professional work includes portraiture, production photography for theatre and music, events, and creative writing and image-making for print and digital publications internationally.

Giorgia Tonolo is an Italian Graphic Designer mainly interested in editorial design. She graduated at IUAV University in Venice in 2018. She has also experimented professional life for a year in Italy, where she learnt to deal with clients.

She is organised and determined, she offers refined and minimalistic design projects, based on a clear structure. During her master at the Glasgow School of Art, she experimented more, trying to break the mold. She changed her way of thinking, by starting designing and thinking through the making. As a matter of fact, this year helped her experiment with new printing and binding techniques. She experimented even more in her last project. Starting from a science experiment she made, she made some mould grow and then she decided to recreate their texture and shapes through the embroidery, learning it by making. This experimentation lead to the realisation of a fabric poster and a small publication.

She worked on different topics, from daily psychological obsessions to moulds and science to common and anonymous objects. She changed her approach to the graphic design field, by focusing more on conceptual works, based on a strong visual language. In the future, she would like to deepen the type design field, as part of her passion for book design.

Pauline Levy is a French multidisciplinary Graphic Designer, currently based in Paris. Keen on experimentation, she explores different mediums such as sculpture, drawing, and photography, and plays with materials and colours, as part of the research process. Publications are often the outcome of her projects, because of her high interest in Editorial and Type design, discovered during her bachelor degree in Art Direction at Penninghen (Paris). Meanwhile, her passion for Dance, and more widely performing arts, led her to focus on movements, space, and body. Feet were her main interest of studies during this year, bringing her to a developed and various reflection presented through two different supports: a publication and a dance performance. At the moment, the dance performance is presented as a score, and will evolve into a video, in collaboration with some dancers. Next steps for her are to increase collaborative and interactive projects, in the dance field in particular, and to discover more in Type and Set Design.

Yu Xie is a photographer from China. His works focus on how do we look at the current social situation and its impact on individuals? We re-examine our way of life from the perspectives of individuals, habits, groups, urban structures, international news, etc. Explain, embody, analyze and criticize what is applicable to the individual’s emotions, the connection with the group, and how the individual can explore and respond to the next potential crisis in the context of the individual or the relationship between the individual and the urban development.

INNER CITY

In this project, he initially focused on an exploration of the ubiquity of architecture and urban objects within the city. Through constructed image making his project has morphed into a wider critique of how we see cities and the symbols within them. The images explore liminal or transitional spaces and their meanings are interpreted through his subjective perspective. His hope is that the viewer looks at the world he have constructed, and sees a world of absurdity, fiction, reality and fantasy. Something that is both familiar and unfamiliar, unnerving and uncanny. An inner city born of my observations and imagination.

Normal

After the covid 19 outbreak and subsequent pandemic, the whole world seemed to stop, but in the wider expanse of history, what has felt like forever, has in reality been just a few short months. Time did not stand still. His life and the world changed quietly. His room effectively became his world as he gradually crepts towards his new normal. This normal was uncertain but not unfamiliar. The objects and space were effectively the same, but how he viewed them had changed. Through his camera he sought to try and make sense of his surroundings and state of mind. Using primarily still life, his photographs look for clues and explore metaphor through the daily narration of his new normal life.

I have a deep passion for trying to tackle the climate crisis. I consider it my way of contributing to that, by acting as a communicator and advocate for the greatness of change and alternatives that lie ahead of us. As an Illustrator, I want to utilise the ability of art to tap into people’s emotions and reach their guts – to influence a decision-making process and to motivate people to fight apathy and to find perspective. What I personally like so much about art, as a tool, is that it can easily be used to show a way of growing out of, instead of fighting against, whatever has to be changed. This follows the principle that whatever you give your attention to will expand. It is the perfect possibility to generate a new reality by feeding people‘s imagination – making something that might be yet invisible visible. “Homo sapiens rules the world because it is the only animal that can believe in things that exist purely in its own imagination, such as gods, states, money, and human rights.”, says Noah Yuval Harari in his book “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind”; hence, all systems on our planet earth (except for the ecosystem) once were just ideas in someone‘s mind who then acted upon them, convinced others of the ideas‘ strength, and therefore created a new reality. With all of my projects, I aim to contribute to creating such a new reality; one that is not based on exploiting people and planet, but one that is built on social, sustainable, and equitable values.

If this made you curious about more: Chrysopoeia is my recently launched caboodle of work where I will showcase all of my future projects.

Jiayi Cai was born in Guangdong Province, China. She studied fashion design and garment engineering in China before completing the Master of Design in Photography from Communication Design at the Glasgow School of Art.

After graduating from university, she decided to come to the UK to study fashion photography. In stage 1 and stage 2, she devoted herself to finding her visual language and working hard to learn to create narrative fashion photography works.

She works across disciplines, her practice is process-led, trying various methods and techniques to develop ideas. She likes to dig out the relationship between fashion and humanities and create emotional works on this basis.

Compared with the undergraduate study of visual communication in a comprehensive university, the postgraduate study of graphics in Glasgow School of Art has brought Renyu Tian a greater space to explore and professional perspective.

The exit of graphics is not limited. Renyu believes that the information conveyed by graphics is diversified and can be very personal. When expressing views on some social phenomena, such as the infodemic and the conceptual change of marriage to modern people, she is more inclined to start from her senses and feelings.

Ciara Davin McLaughlin designs reflect her interest and ideas on social inclusion, environmental issues and sustainability. Aware of the impact living and working environments have on our health, her designs strive to improve not only the functionality but the aesthetic quality of indoor and outdoor spaces and present an alternative solution for people living in towns and cities. Good design and beautiful environments are important for health and wellbeing and should be accessible to everyone.

The place where you live can change the way you behave and whilst architects strive for the utopia of modern high rise living, the reality for many of the inhabitants is a dystopia of poverty and social division. The topic of this investigation focuses on the inequalities of social housing and in particular the architectural designs of high-rise builds in inner cities and how this has the potential for contributing to wealth inequality, social segregation, violence and discord.

An initial research report preludes the problem on how to socially level the high-rise through examining case studies of post war architecture in inner cities and the effect on society’s well-being and behaviour when there are restrictions and barriers to social connectivity. The research and studio practice relate to theoretical studies on the inequalities of social housing. In particular, Jane Jacobs book ‘The Death and Life of Great American Cities’ which examines the flaws in urban renewal and the deconstruction of potentially healthy cities through urban planning.

The study then focuses on the fictional ‘High Rise’ by J.G. Ballard. Using literary interpretations of this novel and the floor plans and set designs in the subsequent film, a graphic analysis of this fictional building was undertaken to establish how the Architect’s vision and design of utopian living descended into a nightmare of chaos and social division.

The High Rise was then redesigned, removing the barriers, both physical and psychological to negate the oppression for the people inside and create a new way of living that connects not only the physical floor levels but also the human diversity of our society. This is established through sketches, sketch book work, experimentation and a portfolio of CAD developments and final design.

Boyi Zhou comes from China. She has background and a Bachelor degree in Furniture and Product Design. Through her placement year working as a Visual and Merchandising designer in IKEA, she has gained an interest in spatial design. Therefore, she determined to conduct her master studies in Interior Design at The Glasgow School of Art.

“Virtual space design: an exploration of future living space” is her graduate project, which aims to investigate the future living environment under the influence of rapid development of internet and technologies. The final outcome constructed a future community in modular design. There are five main modules: Entrance, Information Center, Entertainment Center, Working Area and Living Area. Each part is important and indispensible. In this vertical structure, this community could extend upward continuously to adapt to the flexible populations. People could realize everything in this community without moving to anywhere, which means the reduction of fuel costs, pollution, time wasted, transport infrastructures and so on. Thus, this project also has a close link to green cities and smart cities.

Topic: Creating a vision of multicultural coexistence in community.

This research project aims to propose a hypothesis about the community designed for people with different cultural backgrounds. By creating a narrative and exaggerated multicultural community through overall planning, to explore larger aspects from a broader perspective, in order to stimulate a diversity of thought in community identity. The purpose is to provide a new perspective and strategy for the integration of multi-cultural communities. It’s more like a metaphor of the cultural coexistence. Moreover, this approach can open up discussions about multicultural communities and trigger new questions in areas like interior design theory, and apply to any other cultural communities.

Supervisor: Thomai Pnevmonidou

Mengqing Wu is a Spatial Designer who was graduated from Decoration Design in Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts(China) before obtaining in Master of Interior Design in Glasgow School of Art. She has studied in many art-related fields and has been extensively exposed to sectors of spatial design such as installation and artwork, giving her a different perspective of architecture and interior design. As an amateur photographer, she focuses on the composition of geometric elements as well as light and shadow and its relationship with architecture. During the master study, she is keen on exploring the relationship between culture and architectural space based on the context of the social issue.

As a designer, I try to use the environment to tell stories to build a connection between people and space. I like old places in cities because there are always stories behind them. Space is a powerful narrative vehicle because of its multidimensionality. Now, I am exploring how to apply this spatial narrative method to exhibition design.

In this project, I tried to apply a nonlinear narrative to an experimental exhibition about the novel Invisible Cities (Italo Calvino 1972), and transform the description in the novel into the atmosphere, experience, and sound in the space. Compared with an exhibition with only one fixed path, a non-linear exhibition gives visitors more possibilities to piece together and explain the content. Visitors may go around in the exhibition, and all narrative order becomes uncertain. By doing this, it gives visitors more power to express their own meaning and independent understanding in the exhibition. Besides, the project changed the traditional experience in literary exhibitions that visitors just read text while standing. The translation of the novel text into spatial scenes provides visitors with a multi-sensory interpretation.

Born in Romania, Paul Armand Georgescu graduated from the University of Art in Cluj Napoca before pursuing a master’s degree in Interior Design at the Glasgow School of Art.

With a special artistic sense (winner of several awards in the field of artistic painting) and with a passion for discovering how and for what things are made, Paul tries to establish his own point of view and develop his own design personality and aesthetics.

“Inner Forum” is an exploration of the home environment during atypical circumstances. Trying to of­fer a comprehensive image of communication during lockdown, the project creates and curates solutions for life during lockdown, seeking not only to answer questions that come up in 2020, but also to prepare for the future.

This pandemic has challenged us to change behaviours, spaces and perspectives, impacting life in a complex manner across multiple areas. In relation to design, it made us question the future of home planning, its adaptability and interactivity.

What’s happening to our homes as we are forced to live inside for months? It becomes clear that some changes must be made to the way we relate to the spaces as the center of interaction has shifted from the public to the private, promoting a sense of disruption to our privacy and inner spaces.

Imagining various homes with the stories that come with their inhabitants allows for scenarios of life in quarantine to play out, while also keeping in mind the future evolution of the spaces. The aim is to create a cohesive multisensory experience that triggers the same brain response as face to face interactions.

Introduction 

The Re-Building project is looking into how interior design can act as a therapeutic space for those struggling to live a happy life due to a traumatic event they have experienced. This space teaches people resilience towards trauma and helps them develop protective factors to allow a healthier response to traumatic events in the future. This space focuses on empathy and experience to promote healthy emotions and behaviours. In a physical term, Re-Building is used to renovate old, unwanted, damaged, or abandoned buildings. In an emotional term, Re-Building is a safe zone where people can identify the effects of a traumatic event and learn how their body needs to respond through a natural and safe release of energy to build resilience.

Aims and objectives 

The first aim of this project is to build resilience in people through a therapeutic encounter with the interior of the selected building. This research developed through several experiments of expression and gathering of feedback from both human and computer-generated software to understand how human emotion can be translated into an inanimate object.

Plato, the Philosopher, once said that there is a metaphysical realm of Ideal Forms. These Forms are universal and unchanging. Based on this, the second aim of this research is therefore to pursue the meaning of the Ideal Form and more specifically the Ideal Form of Interior. To do this, it was important to start this research by gathering insight on ornamentation, beauty, purpose, function, form, evolution, and future of any building to highlight the important factors in each of these categories.

The objective was then to create ornamentation of the human emotion so that both human labour and human emotion can contribute in the construction of the Ideal Form of Interior and to discover if Interior design can come closer to the Ideal Form by implying that function follows human needs and form follows human behaviour.

Trauma 

A traumatic event is a deeply distressing or disturbing experience through an emotional shock or a physical injury and there are three key therapy types for this. Somatic experiencing therapy focuses on bodily sensations, rather than thoughts and memories about the traumatic event. By concentrating on what’s happening within the body, there can be a release of trauma related energy through shaking, crying, and other forms of physical release. Cognitive-behavioural therapy helps people to process and evaluate their thoughts and feelings about a trauma. And finally, Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing incorporates elements of Cognitive-behavioural therapy with eye movements or other forms of rhythmic, left-right stimulation that can “unfreeze” traumatic memories.

For Erika, it is important to highlight the potential in old and abandoned buildings to avoid further damage to the environment as sustainability should be the bases of all future designs while maintaining the design variety of the past. Throughout each of her projects, Erika has the passion to make a difference by learning about personal issues of the public and tackling them one by one using interior design to create awareness with the aim to stimulate people to live and socialise in an emotionally healthier way. She aims to continue discovering new ways to help people through the adaptation of designs of the past, maintaining that the user’s well-being and happiness is a priority.

Based on the current situation of COVID-19, my project analyzes the reasons why people do not want to stay at home,  explores an  alternative ways of being with flexible and mobile interior. As interior spaces are regarded as people’s second skin, this thesis examines how to get closer to space, and create a skin-friendly space which is totally for our body, which can meet more needs and eliminate bored.

Windsor participated in the MDes Interior Design course after completing her BA Hons degree in Interior Design at Glasgow School of Art. She grew up in America and was highly involved in the performing arts, which initially sparked her interest in spatial and interior design. She still works in the performing arts as a dance teacher and choreographer between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Her design interest include movement through space, interior mise-en-scene, scenic design, fictional interiors and places, and experimenting with alternative ways to present and understand interiors through elements like sound and film. She investigates ways to re-see interiors and space by applying techniques and theories such as defamiliarization, The Uncanny, and studying the mise-en-scene of film especially in the horror and sci-fi genre.

Project: A Glitch in the digital world is a temporary malfunction or fault, but when applied to a different context the term glitch takes on a new meaning. A glitch in the physical form or glitch in the universe (space and time) is an unfamiliar thing or coincidence that grabs our attention, and could possibly be rationalization for unexplained occurrences or alleged paranormal encounters. Once we are in the fourth dimension and beyond there can be an overlap of dimensions causing or appearing to be what I claim is a physical glitch. This opens up an argument of an un-tangible space where mysteries, conspiracies and the paranormal could possibly be explained. This also allows the concept of time and gravity within space to be considered essential elements of the experience of the interior.

Can the reflection and defamiliarization of self and space be used to gain a higher understanding of and effectively develop fictional space? Can a glitch act as a portal or communication to a new dimension, resulting in an uncovering of what cannot be explained? Does a glitch make us more aware of reality and our existence, including the space around us and elements that surround it? For my project, the protagonist The Glitch is the evolution of a human subject, myself, once inhabiting another dimension deemed The Graveyard of Molecules. I am using myself as the subject for the project as a metaphor for The Glitch, which will be the protagonist in a personally developed narrative in order to provide a relatable framework for the definition of the glitch. I am also considering the digital glitch’s purpose in relation to the physical glitch, and the possibility that the digital glitch is an attempt of communication from the other dimensions.

Through this project I am challenging the boundaries of interior and spatial design by seeing if it is equally as relevant to occupy a non-tangible space, and if that is possible to effectively visualize while also challenging the relationship between the body and space, and how they affect one another. I have embarked on a journey to discover self-identify reflected in space, using defamiliarization of self and space to gain a higher understanding of the concept of space. My own narrative brings understanding to the experience which is developed through different elements of lived in interiors of my past, mixed with newly designed scenes from the future. These designed visuals create the mise-en-scene of my narrative, influenced by scenic design and my personal art direction.

Yining Fang is an interior designer who has 2 years of retail design experience (Tesla, Gap, Nike) and now doing a master degree in Interior Design at GSA School of Design. She cares about the natural ecological environment, has high sensitivity and response-ability to the environmental issue. She is good at expressing the concept of works through various media. In terms of skills, she is proficient in various drawing skills and has a certain extent graphic design ability.

The Isolated Island

Introduction

This Research Project will be mainly focusing on the topic of the changing marine environment: How the living spaces of the marginal people in the super coastal cities will change step by step, and take the palimpsest as the carrier, to record this possible “history”, which is 80 years long. This research project will focus on the period from 2020 to 2100 when the sea level will gradually rise by 8m. When this climate crisis becomes more severe and affects the Shikumen community’s life, these changes are what this project most interested in: how are they preserved in the form of memory? Shanghai Shikumen is interesting as the product of the times and it has sufficient content to be explored.

Methodology

This project first used the resident interview. The interview brings an overall comprehension about the living environment in the Shikumen community, most people lived here for generations, and their differences in the acceptability of technology or other new things are striking. Some participants were nostalgic, while others are determined to abandon the obsolete products and follow the trends. It can also extend to their attitude and storage approach towards past memories. Apart from that, when they were asked about the repair history, almost everyone mentioned the government /housing management departments seek only superficial harmony but avoid inner chaos.

The second methodology is the theory study about archaeology and palimpsest. Susanna Bortolotto mentioned that archaeological reading is a valuable tool, which can not only re-evaluate existing hypotheses but also provide a clear direction for further investigation in order to propose a more optimized scheme for preservation and renovation of modern ruins；And emphasize the complexity of iteration during the building development, which can be linked to the notion of palimpsest. Ancient people used a unique approach to erase words written on parchment to provide space for new text, so they keep covering the new layer on the existing one. After a thousand years, old layers have emerged rapidly, then formed palimpsest. Besides, this term is also used in the architecture field. People continually alter the structure of the original building for various incentives, and these changes would be recorded as the structure changes. In design practice, the notion of palimpsest could be reflected in both outcome and methodology.

Design Process
This project proposed a fictional Shikumen house. Based on Isozaki’s theory in his book “unbuilt”, this project assumed 4 phases, present (2020); City in the air (2050); Computer-aided city (2080); Fictional & mirage city (2100), and imagine the possible changes in each period.

Outcome
A 10mins long animation has been produced. The story is in 2130, for the new documentary “When the Water Come”, Noah, the compere, come to Shanghai to interview Lee4, the last guardian of Shikumen community, and tried to explore some memories which would soon disappear.

Significance
The significance of this project is to present a new possible scenario from a more realistic perspective, show the possibility of memory being spatially recorded as a palimpsest, emphasize the importance of preserving the existing building. Meanwhile, its experiment with the potential of section drawing.

Bibliography

Ballard, J. G, The Drowned World (New York: Liveright Pub. Corporation, 2013).

Bortolotto, Susanna and others, Learning From The Building: Direct Sources For The Preservation Project. The Experience Of Besozzo’s Town Hall, 1st edn (Milano: Researchgate, 2011) <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267843189_Learning_from_the_Building_Direct_Sources_for_the_Preservation_Project_The_Experience_of_Besozzo%27s_Town_Hall_Varese_Italy> [Accessed 8 August 2020].

Isozaki, Arata, Unbuilt, 1st edn (Tokyo: TOTO, 2001).

Lambert, Léopold, “A Palimpsest Called Paris | DAMN° Magazine”, DAMN° Magazine, 2015 <https://www.damnmagazine.net/2015/01/05/a-palimpsest-called-paris/> [Accessed 9 August 2020].

View the complete portfolio:

https://issuu.com/home/published/the_isolated_island__research__-_yining_fang

https://issuu.com/home/published/the_isolated_island__design_process__-_yining_fang

My name is Chrissie Jacquet, I am a Franco-Scottish designer interested in the conservation of period buildings, as well as slow and sustainable design. That is why I chose the Egyptian Halls as my theatre of experimentation for this project. The purpose was not only to design a space for sustainable makers and craftspeople but also to question the sustainability of my practice. The project therefore acts as a manifesto for sustainability.

The Project
TORC addresses the issues faced by front-line hospitality staff in loud social venues when it comes to balancing adequate hearing protection with their ability to effectively communicate with customers and other staff members.

The noise level in many social venues such as restaurants, bars, and clubs often exceeds 95decibels – enough to cause permanent hearing damage after just 15 minutes. Staff have the highest exposure time to this noise however less than 30% report using hearing protection provided by their employer, a frequent reason being that it interferes with their ability to communicate verbally with others.

TORC aims to alleviate this issue by providing a ‘hotspot’ style solution that facilitates direct communication between the staff members and customers. It achieves this by using a mixture of technology including microphone array beamforming to filter customer voice from background noise, ultrasonic speakers for relaying staff members voice directly to the customer contact free, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons for hands-free intelligent operation, and a staff-worn headset that provides hearing protection and connectivity.

For more on the project see Design Process Journal 10-Page Summary

About Me
I am a product design engineer though and through having graduated with a 1st Class BSc(Hons) in the subject from Liverpool John Moores University in 2018. Before deciding to return to study for a masters degree, I worked for 2 years at a company in North-West England designing bespoke digital signage and interactive kiosk solutions supplying UK and worldwide brands including McDonald’s, JD Sports Group, Bibliotheca, Vue Cinemas, Tesco, and Google.

During my time at GSA I have been able to further my understanding of both the product design and engineering sides of PDE. Bringing these two disciplines together during the design process is what interests me the most – developing well thought out technology solutions based on a user-centred design approach.

Following the completion of my MSc, I am primarily looking for roles in new product development that could involve working on projects of all kinds from initial concept and user research through to manufacture and support.

For more about me see my LinkedIn and for previous work check out my Behance page which is being continuously updated.

Many people have mentioned that sleeping on a plane can be a painful experience, leading to the need for a deep rest when you arrive at your destination, which is bad for jet lag.This product promotes the secretion of melatonin by regulating human body temperature, so that passengers can have a good quality sleep during the long-haul flight.

Technology: Add an air pockets layer in the middle of the aircraft blanket, and control the insulation of the blanket through intelligent breathing:  introduce and outlet air from the blanket.This process is completed by intelligent air pump, which is connected with user smartphone and sensor. Also, the light belt on the pump can tell flight attendants whether to wake you up for meal. Controlling air content in the blanket can control human body temperature, promote the secretion of melatonin, thus promote deep sleep, and adjust human biological clock during the flight.

After graduating from the University of Dundee in 2019, with a BEng (Hons) in Mechanical Engineering, I am extremely proud to have completed my masters in Product Design Engineering at Glasgow School of Art. Having worked within a range of companies over the past 4 summers, including Camlin Technologies and Bell Architects, I am excited to further use the skills I have developed to widen and grow my knowledge of the field of design.

CITRUS
Turning Citrus Peel Waste into Valuable Kitchen Cleaning Products.

Inspired by a juice bar throwing a lot of orange peels every day, a thought was triggered. How can those peels, the material gifted by nature, be thrown into the trash can without thinking about it? This kind of natural material, called ‘waste’, deserves to be treated more appropriately.

In terms of chemical properties, orange peel essential oil have excellent antibacterial properties that can be used as natural substitutes for chemical detergent. In terms of physical properties, the treated orange peel can be transformed into biological materials.

So this project will take advantage of the chemical and physical properties of orange peels. Firstly, extract the essential oil from the orange peel which has antimicrobial property as a natural dishwashing detergent to replace the chemical dishwashing liquid. Then, convert the remaining orange peel after extracting essential oil into a dishwashing tool to replace the non-degradable polyester sponge.

This project presents a peel waste recycling system that is neglected in daily life to users in the form of products. It hopes users can more truly experience the process of giving peel waste a second life.At the same time, hopefully, the peel recycling process will get people thinking about: how can we redefine the use of this so-called waste? And how can we collaborate with beneficial natural systems to create more sustainable material prototypes?

Hi everyone! I am Adarsh Vijay and I am a Product Design Engineer with a background in Biotechnology engineering. My ambition is to work in the medical devices and in-vitro diagnostics sector. Design for the medical industry is my aspiration. Designing equipment and devices interlaced with biological processes and human anatomy and morphology makes up for my redefinition of User-Centred design. If you would like to know more about how my services can help your company, please send me an email at adarshvijaykl@gmail.com

About the project:

Sharps are medical devices that are used to puncture or lacerate the skin. They include hypodermic needles, scalpels, contaminated glass, guidewires and other medical devices. The World Health Organization estimates that 16 billion injections are administered world wide every year.

The major problem with sharps waste is sharps injuries which causes transmission of Blood Borne Viruses such as HIV, Hepatitis, Epstein Barr virus among many others. Sharps injuries are responsible for 16,000 HBV; 6,600 HCV and 5,000 HIV infections worldwide annually.

From 2012 to 2017, NHS had 1,833 injury claims which cost the NHS £4,077,441. NHS estimates that 40,000 needle stick injuries occur within the workplace per year and recognizes that the true figure may be twice this due to under reporting of injuries.

The main causes of sharps injuries as listed by the NHS are:

Non-compliance with standard infection control precautions
Inadequate disposal of clinical waste
Overfull sharps bins
Not using safer sharps and
Not using Personal Protective Equipment.

My design is that of a sharps bin that uses a needle remover to immediately isolate the needle to prevent further injuries to Health care workers and sanitation workers. It also helps to segregate the wastes. The product itself can undergo steam sterilization for disinfection thereby making it reusable. At the end of life, the DSharps bin is recyclable.

This product can help the NHS to eliminate sharps injuries through a sharps bin and create a safer environment for the Health care workers. With the ever increasing mountain of plastic waste, this immediate segregation of wastes will provide more options for recycling thereby help saving the environment as well.

PROTECTOR

A pair of smart rings could remind you to do not touch your face and wash your hands for 20s

About my design: These smart rings mainly have a fluid sensor and a Three-axis accelerometer and gyroscope sensor. It can detect the tendency of face-touch behavior and also the handwash case. when you have the tendency to touch your face it would vibrate 0.5s to remind you that you have the unconscious face-touching behavior. when it detects that you are washing hands it starts to count and vibrate for two seconds at the twentieth second to tell you that you can finish washing your hands.

Background: People are worried about back to work as the epidemic is not over yet. I also found that people would quickly adapt to the work environment and their awareness of self-cleaning protection may decrease although they said that they are worried about back to work at the beginning. During the observation, I found that what we really need attention is the potential danger of our unconscious face-touching behavior, besides wash hands for 20 seconds is also needed to reduce the risk of unconscious face- touching behavior but most people can’t accurately account to 20s for hands washing. So what if people could be reminded to do not touch their face and also could know whether they have washed hands to 20s.

How to use: As for how to use it, if we start it for the first time it will automatically go into setting mode, and what we need to do is to follow the instruction to record two positions, and the red led would flash to lead you. once you complete set you can start to use it and next time you can click it three times to reset the positions again if you want. Now we can start to use it, we don’t need to do anything in this stage, just wear them on our hands, once you have the tendency to touch your face, it would vibrate 0.5 seconds to remind you, of course, you can choose to continue touch and put your hands down, if you choose to touch your face it would not vibrate, cuz at this time you already realize that you are doing the unconscious face-touching action. And it would only vibrate again the next time you have the tendency to touch your face. And for the wash hand vibrate remind, once it detects that there is handwash liquid and starts to count, and once you use it wash for the 20s it starts to vibrate 2s to remind you that you can finish washing.

My portfolio:

Portfolio of my final project, more details information about my design process and also the product

I am a MSc Product Design Engineering student originally from Toronto, Canada. I have a bachelor’s degree in Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo and over 3 years of work experience as a Software Developer and Systems Engineer. Before starting my master’s degree at the Glasgow School of Art, I spent the past year and a half leading a cross disciplinary design team – specializing in designing websites, mobile and desktop applications. It was during this employment that I found myself more interested in design and user experience.

For my MSc Major Project, I worked in collaboration with the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery to develop a museum display case to tackle the issue of displaying light-sensitive objects in the presence of natural light. Through stakeholder discussions and a user centered design approach, the Setaka Smart Display was created. The final product uses two types of smart glass technology as well as an integrated IoT system to protect artifacts from both natural and UV exposure.

More examples of my past project can be found at: https://www.thanuree-pathiranawasam.net/

If you are looking for full time hires for September 2020, be sure to email me at: tppathir@gmail.com

is a British Product Design Engineer with a background in Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, whose MSc final project is titled ‘Designing For The Homeless‘.

It was identified that the Glasgow housing crisis is particularly affected by two key problems; a poor perception of the homeless by the public and homeless sleep deprivation. The negative connotations surrounding the homeless population and a resulting lack of human contact makes it difficult for them to get the support they need. Sleep deprivation is an unrecognised concern for most homeless people. Rough sleeping is mentally, physically and emotionally draining, and the constant exposure to noise leads to ailments like insomnia that further impacts the homelessness stigma.

Introducing Caraid; a system that utlises RFID technology and white noise sleep therapy to address these issues. An associated service was designed which sought to change the way the public interacts with the homeless, by encouraging empathy and initiating contact.

In solidarity with those embroiled in complaints against GSA we present a collaborative piece of writing that came about as part of a conversation responding to Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s text ‘The university (last words)’ and our own experiences of the institution.

This text is available to listen to as a special edition of the Art Writing Soft Shell podcast here.

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hang on can’t hear back in a sec 
Radically detach
Rejecting the gowns the dress
I think just stop paying
the feedback is the grades / collective feedback takes its place
If we accept
experience economy
Access to your peers
in a pragmatic way
undermine value of credential
What is required
Using the university as a hermit crab shell
university as hermit crab shell
university as a hermit crab shell
occupy
carapace
Any kind of shell
something useful that can be carried off
steal from the university
Access to each other
beep
you’ve all been expelled
refusing
refusing to end
Refusing the discipline
sticky question
extracted as currency
extracted from you as the university’s currency
Submit awful work
Do your best work in secret amongst each other
do your best work in secret
then you lick it
the university as guard of resource
University as guard to be undermined
break down barriers of access
Disperse them outwards
I can let anyone into a zoom
physical barriers
Robin Hood it
What they hold
authorship
people on the inside giving away for free
Intellectual property
how are those entangled
Property ownership authorship
property ownership authorship
Collective authorship
complicity
Talked out of it by submission
voices that join in with each other
hierarchy of work
Work rises
hierarchy of work
What it means to have an art practice
arts ed capitalises on “my work”
the privilege of being paid to work/research
academics rise
Individuality of submissions
Read by a higher reader
even if working as a collaboration
the individuality of submissions
can’t submit as one
Property–>value
the labour isn’t equivalent
From the beginning we are learnt to say ‘my practice’ ‘my work’
You go in holding this thing
disrupt and defer
the language of “my practice”
a practice of individuation
language of practice is the language of funding applications
we don’t present without names
We don’t present nameless
Naming as a form of violence
naming as ossifying
fixing to commodify
Acknowledgement as first step
Overcoming our complicity
my work/my practice,
What could it become
many many terms
Different ways to conceptualise it and put it into language
what role does language have in all of this
a manifesto
manifesto as movement to a different language
language of movement of criticism
Instead of floating through it
what we understand collectively
our own our practices
maybe just not paying
if you’ve got a problem you assume there’s a specific solution to that problem
Step outside – the potentials get bigger
meet in the car park
Stepping around the problem
increasing surveillance of students
Restriction of access
ways to work around that
movement around the campus is documented
Not a given that that’s okay
surveillance – it’s not a given that that’s ok
you start at group and end at solo
whole artist trajectory is group show towards solo show
start at group and end at solo
Art – start in group move to solo / it’s all pushed that way / it’s a tradition – proponent of larger apparatus of making solo
a larger apparatus of making solo
Abolish the solo show!
(Dorothea Lange, at her big moma retrospective, insisted on including her assistant’s work in it)
Presented to a student, to take part in – take part, scoop
student paying for the conversation / staff being paid to ‘give the conversation | taking part is the language of the university
Conscientious and active students paying
often not lines defined by the students themselves
this weird accountability thing
Its not a mutual thing
staff student ‘relationship’
the beginning of being solidified
We’re in the beginnings of being solidified
the early fizzy stages
it didn’t feel fun anymore
The work, my work, a unit of work
play
Resisting articulation or end
the structures that make things not fun anymore
Sustained practice (SH)
fun and play as subversive strategies
What about anger
what about anger
Anger within play
Play assumes we’re happy
where is anger within play
an indulgence
pastoral care as pull / indulgent
someone to care what you’re doing
you can’t show anger bc you’re getting pastoral care
It puts you in a clinch
play as in mess with it
Other ways to be antagonistic within the structure
it ultimately benefits the uni
Never made the actual work
withheld the work
benefited the course – won prizes
To not make the final product
it is very slippery
that’s not really the fucking point
The inconvenience of anger
the inconvenience of anger and of not playing
Of not giving back
Inconvenience of giving something back that’s not palatable
Not playing
Not user friendly
how do people think it’s different and why
remove reference to it
The institution are uncomfortable so trying to remove reference to them / keep it in house
the idea of looking back
Alumnus are used
alumnus – they let themselves be used
that doesn’t make any sense chronologically
University relying on complacency on a more giant body of students
university relying on complacency of larger body of students
like business does
I’ve just got to get through this
the individuation of it
I’m gonna carve this time out
I’m going to carve this time out
the sacrifices people have made
the sacrifices people have made
money/time
Relies on the sacrifices
A bind
competition, apathy
Some people aren’t in a position to reject it
powerless within that
to be in a specific place
What can we do as a group to disrupt or reject that
on a day to day basis
habitual things
Habitual actions
What habitual things over a long term force change
the privilege to be able to protest
the privilege to be able to protest
it’s about access as well
access to these thought processes
Access to these discussions
organising outwith the institution
Brief moments of interactions have sometimes been more worthwhile than 2 hr seminars
that spontaneous conversation that arises
the stuff that’s around the institution the para
is probably most valuable
The stuff that’s around the institution /the para part of the institution
Those spaces, they’re spontaneous
there’s something and it’s a bit sideways
make the structure make less sense
Let it go let it stop being property
how you articulate where your position in the university is
How you articulate what your position in the university is
what agency or organisation could look like
Let the property go
can ‘an organisation’ not have property
divert you from your aims are usually the three p’s: property, prestige, power
digital exclusion
Who’s left behind
The shifts that have had to happen
Necessary adaptation
false sense of agency
fob us off
Property when it’s not investment
property when it’s not investment
GAS – things are housed there
can an organisation or an institution be a free entity if it doesn’t have property?
keeping that space safe
is the issue not with the property but who controls the use of the property?
How do you make an open and radical accountability process?
a radical accountability process
those issues come up very much in the virtual space
not as free as the university would like you to believe
Property is theft
property as a thing or a space that can be collectively owned
property as something you own and others don’t (property is theft)
it is a long change
decentralising who holds the power
it didn’t just appear as we know it now
Rely on a common thought
I’m such a good product of capitalism
how much I’m a good product of capitalism – following through a structure –
radical complicity
Underpass learning
nowhere to gather
what you fund to keep going
the whole text is an echo in a way

Collectively authored by the current and continuing 19/20 Art Writing MLitt cohort.

IMPORTANT LINKS :

www.pauseorpayuk.org
www.alt-d.online
gsashowcase.net/louie-tyssen/
gsamfa.net/

In solidarity with those embroiled in complaints against GSA we present a collaborative piece of writing that came about as part of a conversation responding to Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s text ‘The university: Last words’ and our own experiences of the institution.

This text is available to listen to as a special edition of the Art Writing Soft Shell podcast here.

hang on can’t hear back in a sec
Radically detach
Rejecting the gowns the dress
I think just stop paying
the feedback is the grades / collective feedback takes its place
If we accept
experience economy
Access to your peers
in a pragmatic way
undermine value of credential
What is required
Using the university as a hermit crab shell
university as hermit crab shell
university as a hermit crab shell
occupy
carapace
Any kind of shell
something useful that can be carried off
steal from the university
Access to each other
beep
you’ve all been expelled
refusing
refusing to end
Refusing the discipline
sticky question
extracted as currency
extracted from you as the university’s currency
Submit awful work
Do your best work in secret amongst each other
do your best work in secret
then you lick it
the university as guard of resource
University as guard to be undermined
break down barriers of access
Disperse them outwards
I can let anyone into a zoom
physical barriers
Robin Hood it
What they hold
authorship
people on the inside giving away for free
Intellectual property
how are those entangled
Property ownership authorship
property ownership authorship
Collective authorship
complicity
Talked out of it by submission
voices that join in with each other
hierarchy of work
Work rises
hierarchy of work
What it means to have an art practice
arts ed capitalises on “my work”
the privilege of being paid to work/research
academics rise
Individuality of submissions
Read by a higher reader
even if working as a collaboration
the individuality of submissions
can’t submit as one
Property–>value
the labour isn’t equivalent
From the beginning we are learnt to say ‘my practice’ ‘my work’
You go in holding this thing
disrupt and defer
the language of “my practice”
a practice of individuation
language of practice is the language of funding applications
we don’t present without names
We don’t present nameless
Naming as a form of violence
naming as ossifying
fixing to commodify
Acknowledgement as first step
Overcoming our complicity
my work/my practice,
What could it become
many many terms
Different ways to conceptualise it and put it into language
what role does language have in all of this
a manifesto
manifesto as movement to a different language
language of movement of criticism
Instead of floating through it
what we understand collectively
our own our practices
maybe just not paying
if you’ve got a problem you assume there’s a specific solution to that problem
Step outside – the potentials get bigger
meet in the car park
Stepping around the problem
increasing surveillance of students
Restriction of access
ways to work around that
movement around the campus is documented
Not a given that that’s okay
surveillance – it’s not a given that that’s ok
you start at group and end at solo
whole artist trajectory is group show towards solo show
start at group and end at solo
Art – start in group move to solo / it’s all pushed that way / it’s a tradition – proponent of larger apparatus of making solo
a larger apparatus of making solo
Abolish the solo show!
(Dorothea Lange, at her big moma retrospective, insisted on including her assistant’s work in it)
Presented to a student, to take part in – take part, scoop
student paying for the conversation / staff being paid to ‘give the conversation | taking part is the language of the university
Conscientious and active students paying
often not lines defined by the students themselves
this weird accountability thing
Its not a mutual thing
staff student ‘relationship’
the beginning of being solidified
We’re in the beginnings of being solidified
the early fizzy stages
it didn’t feel fun anymore
The work, my work, a unit of work
play
Resisting articulation or end
the structures that make things not fun anymore
Sustained practice (SH)
fun and play as subversive strategies
What about anger
what about anger
Anger within play
Play assumes we’re happy
where is anger within play
an indulgence
pastoral care as pull / indulgent
someone to care what you’re doing
you can’t show anger bc you’re getting pastoral care
It puts you in a clinch
play as in mess with it
Other ways to be antagonistic within the structure
it ultimately benefits the uni
Never made the actual work
withheld the work
benefited the course – won prizes
To not make the final product
it is very slippery
that’s not really the fucking point
The inconvenience of anger
the inconvenience of anger and of not playing
Of not giving back
Inconvenience of giving something back that’s not palatable
Not playing
Not user friendly
how do people think it’s different and why
remove reference to it
The institution are uncomfortable so trying to remove reference to them / keep it in house
the idea of looking back
Alumnus are used
alumnus – they let themselves be used
that doesn’t make any sense chronologically
University relying on complacency on a more giant body of students
university relying on complacency of larger body of students
like business does
I’ve just got to get through this
the individuation of it
I’m gonna carve this time out
I’m going to carve this time out
the sacrifices people have made
the sacrifices people have made
money/time
Relies on the sacrifices
A bind
competition, apathy
Some people aren’t in a position to reject it
powerless within that
to be in a specific place
What can we do as a group to disrupt or reject that
on a day to day basis
habitual things
Habitual actions
What habitual things over a long term force change
the privilege to be able to protest
the privilege to be able to protest
it’s about access as well
access to these thought processes
Access to these discussions
organising outwith the institution
Brief moments of interactions have sometimes been more worthwhile than 2 hr seminars
that spontaneous conversation that arises
the stuff that’s around the institution the para
is probably most valuable
The stuff that’s around the institution /the para part of the institution
Those spaces, they’re spontaneous
there’s something and it’s a bit sideways
make the structure make less sense
Let it go let it stop being property
how you articulate where your position in the university is
How you articulate what your position in the university is
what agency or organisation could look like
Let the property go
can ‘an organisation’ not have property
divert you from your aims are usually the three p’s: property, prestige, power
digital exclusion
Who’s left behind
The shifts that have had to happen
Necessary adaptation
false sense of agency
fob us off
Property when it’s not investment
property when it’s not investment
GAS – things are housed there
can an organisation or an institution be a free entity if it doesn’t have property?
keeping that space safe
is the issue not with the property but who controls the use of the property?
How do you make an open and radical accountability process?
a radical accountability process
those issues come up very much in the virtual space
not as free as the university would like you to believe
Property is theft
property as a thing or a space that can be collectively owned
property as something you own and others don’t (property is theft)
it is a long change
decentralising who holds the power
it didn’t just appear as we know it now
Rely on a common thought
I’m such a good product of capitalism
how much I’m a good product of capitalism – following through a structure –
radical complicity
Underpass learning
nowhere to gather
what you fund to keep going
the whole text is an echo in a way

///

Collectively authored by the current and continuing 19/20 Art Writing MLitt cohort.

IMPORTANT LINKS :
www.pauseorpayuk.org
www.alt-d.online

In solidarity with those embroiled in complaints against GSA we present a collaborative piece of writing that came about as part of a conversation responding to Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s text ‘The university: last words’ and our own experiences of the institution.

This text is available to listen to as a special edition of the Art Writing Soft Shell podcast here.

///
     hang on can’t hear back in a sec
Radically detach
Rejecting the gowns the dress
I think just stop paying
the feedback is the grades / collective feedback takes its place
If we accept
experience economy
Access to your peers
in a pragmatic way
undermine value of credential
What is required
Using the university as a hermit crab shell
university as hermit crab shell
university as a hermit crab shell
occupy
carapace
Any kind of shell
something useful that can be carried off
steal from the university
Access to each other
beep
you’ve all been expelled
refusing
refusing to end
Refusing the discipline
sticky question
extracted as currency
extracted from you as the university’s currency
Submit awful work
Do your best work in secret amongst each other
do your best work in secret
then you lick it
the university as guard of resource
University as guard to be undermined
break down barriers of access
Disperse them outwards
I can let anyone into a zoom
physical barriers
Robin Hood it
What they hold
authorship
people on the inside giving away for free
Intellectual property
how are those entangled
Property ownership authorship
property ownership authorship
Collective authorship
complicity
Talked out of it by submission
voices that join in with each other
hierarchy of work
Work rises
hierarchy of work
What it means to have an art practice
arts ed capitalises on “my work”
the privilege of being paid to work/research
academics rise
Individuality of submissions
Read by a higher reader
even if working as a collaboration
the individuality of submissions
can’t submit as one
Property–>value
the labour isn’t equivalent
From the beginning we are learnt to say ‘my practice’ ‘my work’
You go in holding this thing
disrupt and defer
the language of “my practice”
a practice of individuation
language of practice is the language of funding applications
we don’t present without names
We don’t present nameless
Naming as a form of violence
naming as ossifying
fixing to commodify
Acknowledgement as first step
Overcoming our complicity
my work/my practice,
What could it become
many many terms
Different ways to conceptualise it and put it into language
what role does language have in all of this
a manifesto
manifesto as movement to a different language
language of movement of criticism
Instead of floating through it
what we understand collectively
our own our practices
maybe just not paying
if you’ve got a problem you assume there’s a specific solution to that problem
Step outside – the potentials get bigger
meet in the car park
Stepping around the problem
increasing surveillance of students
Restriction of access
ways to work around that
movement around the campus is documented
Not a given that that’s okay
surveillance – it’s not a given that that’s ok
you start at group and end at solo
whole artist trajectory is group show towards solo show
start at group and end at solo
Art – start in group move to solo / it’s all pushed that way / it’s a tradition – proponent of larger apparatus of making solo
a larger apparatus of making solo
Abolish the solo show!
(Dorothea Lange, at her big moma retrospective, insisted on including her assistant’s work in it)
Presented to a student, to take part in – take part, scoop
student paying for the conversation / staff being paid to ‘give the conversation | taking part is the language of the university
Conscientious and active students paying
often not lines defined by the students themselves
this weird accountability thing
Its not a mutual thing
staff student ‘relationship’
the beginning of being solidified
We’re in the beginnings of being solidified
the early fizzy stages
it didn’t feel fun anymore
The work, my work, a unit of work
play
Resisting articulation or end
the structures that make things not fun anymore
Sustained practice (SH)
fun and play as subversive strategies
What about anger
what about anger
Anger within play
Play assumes we’re happy
where is anger within play
an indulgence
pastoral care as pull / indulgent
someone to care what you’re doing
you can’t show anger bc you’re getting pastoral care
It puts you in a clinch
play as in mess with it
Other ways to be antagonistic within the structure
it ultimately benefits the uni
Never made the actual work
withheld the work
benefited the course – won prizes
To not make the final product
it is very slippery
that’s not really the fucking point
The inconvenience of anger
the inconvenience of anger and of not playing
Of not giving back
Inconvenience of giving something back that’s not palatable
Not playing
Not user friendly
how do people think it’s different and why
remove reference to it
The institution are uncomfortable so trying to remove reference to them / keep it in house
the idea of looking back
Alumnus are used
alumnus – they let themselves be used
that doesn’t make any sense chronologically
University relying on complacency on a more giant body of students
university relying on complacency of larger body of students
like business does
I’ve just got to get through this
the individuation of it
I’m gonna carve this time out
I’m going to carve this time out
the sacrifices people have made
the sacrifices people have made
money/time
Relies on the sacrifices
A bind
competition, apathy
Some people aren’t in a position to reject it
powerless within that
to be in a specific place
What can we do as a group to disrupt or reject that
on a day to day basis
habitual things
Habitual actions
What habitual things over a long term force change
the privilege to be able to protest
the privilege to be able to protest
it’s about access as well
access to these thought processes
Access to these discussions
organising outwith the institution
Brief moments of interactions have sometimes been more worthwhile than 2 hr seminars
that spontaneous conversation that arises
the stuff that’s around the institution the para
is probably most valuable
The stuff that’s around the institution /the para part of the institution
Those spaces, they’re spontaneous
there’s something and it’s a bit sideways
make the structure make less sense
Let it go let it stop being property
how you articulate where your position in the university is
How you articulate what your position in the university is
what agency or organisation could look like
Let the property go
can ‘an organisation’ not have property
divert you from your aims are usually the three p’s: property, prestige, power
digital exclusion
Who’s left behind
The shifts that have had to happen
Necessary adaptation
false sense of agency
fob us off
Property when it’s not investment
property when it’s not investment
GAS – things are housed there
can an organisation or an institution be a free entity if it doesn’t have property?
keeping that space safe
is the issue not with the property but who controls the use of the property?
How do you make an open and radical accountability process?
a radical accountability process
those issues come up very much in the virtual space
not as free as the university would like you to believe
Property is theft
property as a thing or a space that can be collectively owned
property as something you own and others don’t (property is theft)
it is a long change
decentralising who holds the power
it didn’t just appear as we know it now
Rely on a common thought
I’m such a good product of capitalism
how much I’m a good product of capitalism – following through a structure –
radical complicity
Underpass learning
nowhere to gather
what you fund to keep going
the whole text is an echo in a way
///

Collectively authored by the current and continuing 19/20 Art Writing MLitt cohort.

IMPORTANT LINKS :
www.pauseorpayuk.org
www.alt-d.online
gsamfa.net/

Kat Zavada (b. 1990, Poland) is an independent curator, researcher and spiritual technocrat based in Glasgow. She uses speculation as a method to investigate radical & fringe concepts. Her current research examines “humans as data beings”, dataveillance and post-work imaginaries.

After her first Master’s in Social Communication at the Pedagogical University of Cracow with a dissertation titled “The political image of the alt-right movement in Poland”, Kat went on to study MLitt Curatorial Practice Contemporary Art at The Glasgow School of Art and the University of Glasgow.

Recent curatorial projects include: Data Beings – collaboration with artisit Letta Shtohryn (in progress), Works On Work – collaborative research platform (ongoing), Hyper Hyper podcast (ongoing). She conducted a research in support of the COP26 related programme during her internship at the CCA Glasgow (disrupted by COVID-19). Kat contributed to the organisation of several arts and culture projects such as Cracow Gallery Weekend (2018), she founded and organised the visual art & experimental music festival Nadmiar/Excess (2017 – ongoing).
Portfolio: www.katzavada.com

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Curatorial Statement ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Curation for me is a form of critical enquiry, knowledge creation and exchange.
I use speculation as a method to investigate fringe or radical topics – to question the present by constructing alternative realities. My process bounces between academic rigour and humour, as I tackle academic themes in a sometimes non-academic manner.

My curatorial process has a rhizomatic structure, an assemblage of the political, economics, sociology, philosophy and pop culture. My research spans neoliberal tech utopias, South China Post’s newsletter, Reddit memes, Reza Negarestani’s tweets and conspiracy theories. I’m intrigued by topics related to post-work, late capitalism, data colonialism and post-Anthropocene imaginaries.

Each new project has its beginnings in a ‘curatorial crush’ which is born out of excitement, uncertainty and true admiration for an artist’s practice. This, I believe, leads to a dynamic collaboration full of challenging discussions and intellectual stimulations. Through my curatorial practice, I strive for genuine relations built upon trust and mutual respect, but foremost, openness to honest feedback and constructive critique.

I don’t have just one curatorial methodology and I do not believe in a one-size-fits-all model. Instead, I approach projects by learning the process and needs of my collaborators. I listen, respond and adjust to find a comfortable and effective way of working for both sides. It is a flexible and empathetic way of working. This creates a solid base that allows for exciting explorations and the creation of new knowledge.

Hemp Rope 

https://hemp-ropes.com/

Curator’s biography

Kehan Liu is a curator based in Shandong (China). He graduated in Photography at Qilu University of Technology in 2019 and is currently pursuing a MLitt Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art) at Glasgow School of Art. Recent projects include:

Team project “Authority&Freedom: Testing the context”(Glasgow, 28th October 2019) curated by Beatriz Lobo Britto, Jiaying Cao, Kehan Liu, Marianne Vosloo, and Pui Ying Claudia Chan with artists Andrew Crane, Martha Panagiotopoulou.

Cross-cultural project “CROSS or NOT TO CROSS”(NGS East, Glasgow, March 2020) curated by Kehan Liu and Jiaying Cao with artists Qiushi Chen, Yuanjie Li, Xueling Wang and Yihang Hu.

Curatorial statement

My curatorial methodology is based on interactive dialogues, and gradually elicits my own thinking about the “local” art ecology and the development of curatorial practice. My curatorial methodology provides a solid theoretical foundation and practical skills for my next research. In the process of applying the curatorial language to the next curatorial practice, I try to obtain more resources by expanding the research themes and curatorial direction to improve the overall curatorial ability.

I actively participate in retrieval and theoretical work, hoping to balance practice and theory to determine a more suitable station method for me. The theme of my project is the development of local art ecology and curatorial practice. In the process of combing the theory, I found that this theme can be extended to the national or even world levels. Curation should be understood as art, it should be creative and creative, and convey the information of artistic elements through the curatorial language.

My curatorial projects and investigations revolve around the content of interviews with artists and curators. In the process of dialogue, I capture the core thesis and creative information. At the same time, the conversation with the artist can also enable me to reflect on the shortcomings of the project and investigation to improve the project planning further.

The textual interview content is displayed to the public, and the audience can intuitively see the impact of the curatorial practice process and interactive thinking. I display the project in two different languages so that audiences of different cultural backgrounds can obtain Different feelings, thereby increasing the diversity of the project. Using textual content as the form of the exhibition can also allow the audience to see the deficiencies of the exhibition more intuitively. Through the feedback in the later period, I have gained more significant improvement.

Hannah Braithwaite is a curator and writer working on a Master’s in Curatorial Practice at the Glasgow School of Art. She is currently based in Tkaronto/Toronto. Her previous exhibitions include Looking at People Looking (Or Not Looking) At Art More or Less 1 Mile from Here (2019), (Dis)CONNECT (2018) and an unrealized project with the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow. She holds a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Art History from Concordia University. She is interested in queer archival practices and storytelling, domestic spaces, craft and their political importance.

Her most recent project, having been touched on the surface, is a zine and online appendix for queer women to reflect upon the spaces they inhabit and create. Initiated by Hannah Braithwaite in collaboration with and featuring new writing from Hannah Karpinski and Isabelle Joy-Stephen, the project explores queer friendships, ephemera, and domestic space, inspired in part by José Esteban Muñoz’s text “Ephemera as Evidence”. Ephemera, defined by Muñoz, accounts for the residues of queer life. In having been touched on the surface, ephemera takes the form of sewing patterns, shared clothing, and familiar routines. The zine will be published in a limited run in September of 2020 and will not be available online, rather distributed locally by the collaborators.

The accompanying online appendix shows fragments of the many works that inspired and innfluenced this project. It can be found at surfacezine.tumblr.com.

Beatriz Lobo (b. 1994, Brazil) is a curator, museologist and researcher. An enthusiast of non-hierarchical thinking, she believes in the equality of ideas and non-linear ways of composing and organizing them. Interested in performance art as a form of critique, and guided by a theoretical approach, she works under an intersectional feminist framework. Her most recent research investigates strategies to decolonize the curatorial through Brazilian art practices.

Beatriz holds a BA (Hons) in Museum Studies and her professional experience extends from community-based museums to private collections. For more information, please refer to the website.

DISSERTATION TITLE

Performing Refusal: Lygia Clark’s practice as a decolonial tool within the curatorial

ABSTRACT
Although decoloniality has been a prominent topic in the arts since the 1990s, the major studies and publications on the topic have been led by institutions from the Global North. Despite the increasing amount of exhibitions by artists of colour and other minorities, the internal structures of these institutions are still white-male dominated. This paper introduces Brazil’s political scenario since the 1960s and, under the Black Feminist Poethics methodology, discusses strategies of decoloniality within the curatorial field. By building a parallel between Lygia Clark’s practice and conceptualising refusal aligned with the Practicing Refusal Collective, it proposes refusal as a generative tool. Finally, the research is brought to a contemporary context, presenting the COLERE Project, a curatorial initiative that has emerged to perform the theory and methodology discussed in this very paper. It concludes the fundamental importance of people of colour and other minorities to lead discussions that concern themselves. Ultimately, this paper demonstrates that visibility is not power, suggesting alternative ways of working in the arts, going beyond exhibiting unprivileged artists, and placing them in a role of knowledge production and decision-making instead.

BIO

Kate Holford is an artist and writer based in Glasgow, UK. She is Founding Art Director at Stillpoint Magazine (2018-ongoing), an international, digital publication that inhabits digital spaces to build public knowledge rooted in psychoanalysis. In December 2019 she co-organised the symposium Racism and Ecology in Berlin as part of Stillpoint Magazine’s Issue 003: FALLOW, and currently facilitates an Antiracism Reading Group for psychiatrists with Editor-in-Chief of Stillpoint Magazine Anne Marie Wirth Cauchon. She was curator of Imagine the Future, a performance event and exhibition of moving image installations by Jessica Holdengarde, Glasgow (2020).

As an interdisciplinary artist, she utilises curatorial strategies of connection-making and practice-led research methodologies to develop projects which often manifest as multimodal publications across print and digital formats. Much of her work appears in the written form, merging critical reflections and poetical forms. Recent research has been concerned with modes of correspondence and autotheory, in relation to intimacy, surveillance, extraction, and vulnerability, manifesting in the project Dear Lithium,. 

She was previously the Deputy Director of Stillpoint Spaces London, a psychotherapy, coworking, and events space, where she was Curator of the in-house exhibitions programme. In 2018 she held a solo exhibition of her work In The Stories There Is An Abundance; and produced Offerings, an accompanying pamphlet of poetry. She has exhibited in group exhibitions in London, Bristol, and Falmouth, UK. Previously she has been a Bookshop Manager. She completed a Master of Letters in Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art), co-convened by the Glasgow School of Art and University of Glasgow in 2020, and received her BA(Hons) Fine Art from Falmouth University in 2013.

DEAR LITHIUM,

I: Publication: a collection of texts and analogue images that form a single ‘object’, brought together in the shape of a envelope. This object can be found in a public book exchange near the site of the UK’s first pilot lithium extraction plant, United Downs, Cornwall. This is the only edition in circulation.

II: dear-lithum.exposed: a website interrogating the effects of the digital/non-digital divide on experience of place, intimacy, and togetherness, in an age of increasing reliance on technological interfaces for creating and maintaining relationships with others.

Cat Dunn is an eclectic mix of jewellery artist, activist, researcher/producer, public speaker and social justice art curator. She holds a BA Hons in Jewellery Design and Silversmithing from The Glasgow School of Art and is currently enrolled at both The Glasgow School of Art and University of Glasgow on her Master’s studies in Curatorial Practice(Contemporary Art). As a jeweller, her love of the Victorian Era, architecture and historic construction can be seen within her pieces.  As activist and curator her work seeks to engage and create dialogue through engaging with subjects as diverse as the civil rights movement, slavery, racism, and feminism, often investigating those aspects that are all too frequently hidden or misrepresented.  The overall basis of her practice is grounded on creating or adding to Black Space where inclusivity and diversity are key; with her varied and diverse approaches to making jewellery; installations; and curatorial projects, the context of the work must have an impact on the viewer.

Recent curatorial works include:  The Hunterian Collaborative Project, 2020; Reclamation – A site specific event with Artists Ashanti Harris and Georgia Robenstone, 2019, In Residence – POC Collective-Project Space 1 – 16 Nicholson St Gallery – 2018, New Dreams – Clarke and Fyfe Gallery, Kelvin Gallery – Glasgow University, 2016.(More info below)

Recent curatorial jewellery works include: Jewellery exhibition – New Ashgate Gallery Trust, 2019, Jewellery Exhibition – Truman Brewery, London, 2019, Jewellery exhibition – Llantarnam Grange, Wales, 2019, Degree show – Reid Building, The Glasgow School of Art, 2019, Facets – The Glasgow School of Art, 2018, #tehknelogy – Project, Space 3. The Glasgow School of Art, 2017, Thinking Through Making exhibition – Reid Building, Glasgow, 2016

SELECTED PROJECTS:

NOWYOUSEEUS

NOWYOUSEEUS is an online research led activist project about identity as seen through the lived experiences of womxn of colour with Afro-Caribbean textured hair, and will grow in content and material over time. A bespoke online platform was created for NOWYOUSEEUS and comprises of newly created artworks, from international artists across a range of genres; a group audio chat inclusive of personal reflections and memories, an artists’ talk inclusive of lived experiences; a clinical dialogue with a respected Scottish dermatologist; historical context; narratives and archives; and personal hair recipe cards.

Overall, all of these elements work together to speak to the idea of identity through the experiences of black/brown womxn with Afro-Caribbean hair. The project therefore hopes to educate wider publics on the historical facts of Afro-Caribbean textured hair while introducing them to new artists inspired by, and using this texture of hair as a muse, and by doing so, it aims to break down stereotypical barriers, showing and celebrating the beauty and diversity of Afro-Caribbean hair through art, language and memories.

NOWYOUSEEUS can be viewed on http://www.nowyouseeus.org

In/Visible, April 2020, The Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, (cancelled due to Covid19)

Curatorial Team: Carol Dunn, Claude Chan, Hannah Braithwaite, Shalmali Shetty

The curators aimed to achieve an experience that welcomed and created room for conversations and discourse amongst people from a variety of disciplines.
This project focused on dance and performance, one of the most significant and developing art historical fields of this century. “A new performative turn” has emerged; strongly correlating with shifts in performance, discourses, and broader society, especially in today’s world of divisive politics. This project was carefully positioned within the current political climate, especially within the context of the Windrush generation, and Brexit, and the current feeling of imposed isolation. The curators felt it was important to explore contemporary dance and its history within a gallery space and use it as a lens through which we can better understand bodies in a gallery, and the challenges of existing within an institution or art space. What does that mean for someone who does not feel as welcomed in the gallery/space? How can we help people feel welcome?

Unravelling the related history of performance as part of visual arts, and in the process to point out and extend the boundaries of what is possible in the paradigm of art and performance today. The project hoped to introduce a new type of audience to the educational yet historical space of Kelvin-Hall Complex and aimed to break down the barriers by showing that everyone deserves the chance to be welcomed in an art setting.

In/Visible was inspired by the works of artists Jimmy Robert and Georgina Starr where the curators created a one-day event focusing on the idea of visibility and presence within a gallery space; They divided the day into four categories: a zine-making workshop, a film screening, a talk followed by a Q&A session, and the display of visual materials/ artwork and zines. They saw all of these elements working together to speak of the idea of visibility/ invisibility. The curatorial approach also revolved around the concept of hospitality and the gesture of welcoming people into a space. The curators believed creating this environment was essential.

The proposed day would have started with a zine-making workshop. This event was free but ticketed, and they were looking to involve about 20 participants, for whom stationery would have by been provided by them. They were looking to collaborate with the Glasgow Zine Library who would facilitate the workshop. The motivation behind the workshop was to allow participants an opportunity to explore the idea of visibility/ invisibility and what that means to them on a personal level.

The film screening was to be led by and (scheduled in collaboration with) Glasgow-based curator Lydia Honeybone , organizer and founder of Queer Classics film screenings series. The film screening revolved around works that pertain to the idea of queerness and performance. Drawing inspiration from Jimmy Robert’s own work as a gay black performer, the curators wanted to highlight this facet of performance art/ history and demonstrate works of other queer performers. This functioned within the concept of ‘making visible’, or present that which is often left out.

London-based Kate Coyne was due to lead the talk, the final event of the day. Coyne is the principal dancer for Michael Clark and Company (currently one of the leading contemporary dance companies in the UK) and formerly a principal ballerina. Coyne’s talk also focused on the theme of visibility and invisibility within professional dance. Speaking of her experience in many areas of the dance world, as well as showcasing the invisible labour of professional dance through behind-the-scenes footage. This talk was to be followed by a question and answer session or a long-table discussion encouraging engagement from the audience.

The visual displays and artworks for the event would in part be provided by Glasgow-based artist Ashanti Harris . Harris suggested a video work that dealt with the idea of presence and visibility through an interactive video. Not only will Harris’ presence as a black performance artist be important and significant within the context of this event, but the piece itself intended to allow for visitors to become participants and be made visible in the gallery through the artwork. The displays would have been showcased throughout the day.

The audience itself would have been diverse. The curators were seeking to engage with an audience that includes Glasgow’s dance, queer, and art loving communities, and aimed to include/ welcome people who may not feel welcome in a historically academic/ colonial space of a formal art gallery like the Hunterian. They wanted to welcome an inclusive and diversified audience who reflected the kind of practices they wished to put on display and as such, had intended to send invitations to the dance communities around Glasgow, as reaching out to their students and welcoming them into this space would have proven invaluable.

Through creating this project, the curators gained an insight and valuable experience of working within an institution and the benefits and challenges that come with that. We were able to practice curatorial and writing skills following a project from conception to its very final stages.

RECLAMATION, November 2019, Rockvilla site, Whisky Bond Complex, Speirs Wharf

Curatorial Team: Carol Dunn, Kate Holford, Grace Jackson

The aim of RECLAMATION was to disrupt the notion of safe space, as propagated by the frameworks of educational institutions. By initializing performance and interactions with the site of Rockvilla School – the ruin of a Victorian school building designed at the same time as the development of teacher training programmes of educator David Stow – we wish to pose some of the following questions to our audience: is our site of education (Stow College, named after David Stow) a ‘safe space’ for learning? Is it equal? Do you feel free to test things out in your space of learning and voice your ideas or identity? Is this the same for everyone? Why not? Are there unspoken rules that govern how you exist within an educational space? We sought to instigate these thoughts through the lenses of feminism and post-colonial theory, referring to the specificity of being a person of colour, and/or woman, within spaces of education and related knowledge-power structures.

Exhibitions have become the medium through which most art becomes known, where signification is constructed, maintained, deconstructed, becoming part spectacle, part socio-historical even part structuring device. These establish and administer the cultural meanings of Art.

As a result, exhibitions are examined more in depth with what largely remains unexplored, that is the interconnected manifestations between curators, institutions and the artists.
As curators we did not want that scrutiny on or for our own project.

Rockvilla had key elements that made the site a viable option, with a history of gender discrimination, lack of inclusion and issues of self-worth.
As such we choose to petition and work with two women artists of different backgrounds but with the same ethos of working with vulnerable women and showing them as being powerful. Our chosen artists Ashanti Harris and Georgia Robenstone had worked within the confines of gender issues, as had Kirsty Henderson at The Whisky Bond.

We wanted to create an inclusive, safe research space where each artist could attempt something new, or re-visit something that they had perhaps done historically but attempt with a different twist. Our only curatorial intervention was allowing these artists the freedom to discover and explore the site, to have the option to use movement, voice, sound or image to assist with their project.

Bio

Cecelia Graham (b.1994, Belfast) is a curator and researcher working in Glasgow. Her practice applies science fiction and feminist theories of physics to curatorial methodologies. Cecelia’s research looks at the material processes of speculative objects in science fiction to create a framework through which to look at the local spaces they inhabit.

Recent curatorial projects include Slow Glass Edition One: Some Triangular Thoughts by Lauren Gault (2020), Over or Under (2019) with Molly O’Leary and Dominique Rivard, co-curated with Ali O’Shea and Joe Henry, Mythic Processing (2018) and the facilitation of exhibitions with the Student Led Gallery at Camberwell College of Arts where Cecelia worked as Exhibition and Event coordinator (2016-2019). This includes Collectives at Camberwell with Working Class Artist Network and Alter Us (2019) and New Camberwell Art (2018-2019). Cecelia recently worked with LUX Scotland looking at artist moving image practices in Scotland.

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Slow Glass

In 2020 Cecelia founded Slow Glass, a publication series named after the same material that appears in Northern Irish writer Bob Shaw’s science fiction story Light of Other Days. The publication aims to provide a space for artists and writers to explore shifting boundaries of time and place. In doing so, Slow Glass acts as a lens through which to orientate memories and look at a place anew. The first iterations of the publication look towards Northern Ireland, beginning with Some Triangular Thoughts by Glasgow based artist Lauren Gault.

Slow Glass also forms a separate ongoing body of research that proposes the glass as a curatorial method. This will accumulate in a piece of writing that looks at the materiality of the glass and the movement of light through and around the material to shape an ethical mode of curating.

This research is informed by Karen Barad’s writings on diffraction, as well as the writing of Donna Haraway and Ursula Le Guin. Cecelia continues a science-fiction tradition of re-writing to consider slow glass as a material that focuses on care and responsible interactions with the non-linear entanglements of time.

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Slow Glass: Edition One
Some Triangular Thoughts by Lauren Gault

Slow Glass publication series begins with Some Triangular Thoughts by Glasgow based artist Lauren Gault. Some Triangular Thoughts draws on Lauren’s ongoing research surrounding Martha Craig – an explorer, scientist and sci-fi author as well as Lauren’s great, great, great aunt. Lauren’s writing transports the reader through a vortex of refracting and interacting narratives that oscillate between the writings and lectures of Martha Craig, memory, materialist philosophy and scientific findings on bio-electricity. It is a journey through the micro and macro, told between layers of lanthorn, an ancient material that predates glass.

Some Triangular Thoughts by Lauren Gault will be released on 31 August 2020.

Updates will be posted @slowglass_

Enquires email slowglasspublication@gmail.com

Publication design by Bianca Winberg

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Lauren Gault bio

Lauren Gault (b. 1986, Belfast, N. Ireland) is an artist who lives and works in Glasgow and frequently in Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland.

Gault works in installation, writing and live works. Solo exhibitions include: C I T H R A, Gasworks, London 2020; drye eyes, Grand Union, Birmingham, 2019; O-n, curated by David Dale Gallery, Glasgow at The Workbench, Milan 2019; present cOmpany, CCA Derry-Londonderry, Derry, 2018; sequins, (with Sarah Rose), Glasgow International. Group exhibitions include: Risky Attachments, Like A Little Disaster, Foothold, Polignano a Mare, Italy, 2018, STEM, (with Sarah Rose), Baltic39 (2017); A Pattern Withdrawn, American Medium, New York (2016); The Health Benefits of Eating Silica (event), TRAMWAY, Glasgow International (2016); January Blues, Frutta, Rome, (2016); read the room, you’ve got to, curated by Quinn Latimer, SALTS, Basel (2014); Portraits, Still Life and Landscapes, Usher Gallery, Lincoln, (2014); Gault has an upcoming exhibition C I T H R A, The Tetley, Leeds in 2021.

Hu Yihang is a “silent” pseudo curator and radical post-idealist in a sense. His practice investigates “redundant events” arising from the ontological contradiction of ideological intervention in communities; His recent research centres on the reconstruction of the body caused by epistemological and aesthetic conflicts, the ontology of organic bodies and digital simulacra and the dialectic of texts as visual and phonetic act in the exhibitions.

He is also a co-founder of curatorial community /nfornonsense/ & founder of /Stray Dogs’ Garden (野犬花园)/ & 1/3 of curatorial collective /the_bricolage/.

Recent produced exhibitions include: /My Truth is Your Story/ (Britannia Panopticon Music Hall, November 2019), co-curated with Hannah Benassi and Shalmali Shetty; (online project, March 2020); /Phenakite are Forever/ (online project, August 2020); /Bon Voyage/ (Wooton Gallery, January 2021).

yihang.hu29@gmail.com
Instagram: @yihanginthewild

About the Project

Roc Blackblock– Barcelona; KMG – Edinburgh; Priestcorp – Glasgow; Siguel – Poland and Dr. D – London

Running through autumn 2020, Art of Defiance originated in Glasgow as a progression of creative responses centred on the ideas of connection, disruption, influence and change within the period of the Covid-19 pandemic. The project is curated by Marianne Vosloo and has developed through close collaborations with artists spanning a range of backgrounds, whose practices seek to create spaces of resistance and forms of disruption in the physical and digital public spheres in a time of crisis.

Art of Defiance takes the form of a series of poster interventions in advertising sites situated on the walls of the railway arches in Glasgow’s Eastvale Place. This small dead-end street is tucked away in between a diverging point of two railway lines next to an old industrial site, now a multi-disciplinary arts venue called SWG3. In addition, the project takes the form of web postings on social media and a customised website, developed collaboratively with each artist. The project connects a group of visual artists, street artists, aerosol artists and communication designers with overlapping subversive practices. Art of Defiance captures creative reactions to concealed, pre-existing and invisible issues further exposed by the pandemic, personal experiences, contemporary events and public discourse.

The zero in A0D represents artists, practices and voices not fully recognised in the art canon and, those who prefer the shadows of artistic anonymity. At the same time, zero is the new beginning of unlimited possibilities and visions for the future.

Curatorial Rationale

The emergence of coronavirus rapidly grew from a highly infectious disease into a set of circumstances and restrictions worldwide that would affect everything that we know and all aspects of our lives. What surfaced as a result of this turmoil was an unmasking and magnification of social and economic inequalities, with many levels of injustices made visible by an “invisible agent” (‘The Pandemic’s Invisible Agent‘, www.hyperallergic.com). The humanitarian crisis that unfolded simultaneously presented new possibilities to unsettle, subvert and transform systems and structures of power in creative ways, whilst concurrently revealing acts of resilience and new visions for the future.

The development of Art of Defiance started in the street; directly engaging with the strong imagery of placards and protests seen in early 2020. Most memorable was the political graffiti slogans painted in protest onto the monument of the Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, as part of numerous 2020 protests against police brutality in the U.S.A.  The discarded placards around the toppled Edward Colston statue in Bristol similarly highlighted the strong presence of art in protest. This builds on evolving political struggles, acts of intervention to raise awareness of repressive and regressive acts of selfish capitalism, and an emerging satirical theme in activist art. Art in public space continued to emerge resilient and unrestrained, despite pandemic restrictions, while the rest of society viewed it on the internet under lockdown.

The placement of artwork into advertising sites such as billboards and bus stops in the urban environment is a disruption and repurposing of the commercial space. At the same time, the content of artwork created specifically for Art of Defiance is in itself seeking to disrupt, defy and challenge the major social, economic and political manipulations of 2020. A0D is the beginning of a community beyond the local, and which engages in the broader discussions around public art emerging during the pandemic.

Each of the artists has devised a poster intervention considered as an act of defiance in itself, which directly addresses the pandemic period. They have produced a piece of artwork during 2020 whilst remaining in five separate locations in Europe, working under different lockdown restrictions and limitations. The production of the artwork as posters connects with the history of artistic protest posters used at times of major social change.

A0D is both an arts commission and a shift towards a movement in public art. The platform gives a collective voice to artists working in different parts of the world, and that is my contribution as curator. The project goes beyond curating the poster interventions in Glasgow, to try and connect with, and actively contribute to, a broader conversation internationally.

The major global events arising throughout 2020 alongside coronavirus fears, have motivated a surge in activist contemporaneous research across public sites as well as newly formed online artistic platforms, creating an ideal recipe for Art of Defiance: for artists to shout back, to escape the limitations of daily life, and to challenge authority. And possibly to signal the start of a major new cultural revolution?

Curatorial Statement

I am a South African with an extensive interest in subversive and activist art practice, especially in street culture, public space interventions and the involvement of art in pivotal contemporary events. This interest emerged in my formative years in the Limpopo and Gauteng Provinces of South Africa where my awareness of the powerful effect of art in communal space developed into a fascination for art as a disruptive force. My visual experience of art as a tool of protest against the Apartheid regime and as part of a wider internal resistance movement fighting for change, established my desire to seek out art on the unconventional fringes of the mainstream. My curatorial practice explores interdisciplinary connectivity, transformational shifts and social engagement through art with a particular interest in artistic practices identified as marginalised, alternative, or part of DIY urban sub-cultures. My current research-led projects focus on anti-establishment art and creative activism within spaces that seek to defy and undermine dominant systems of influence and control on society.

Biography

Marianne Vosloo is a freelance curator, artist and event organiser, and an arts programmer at SWG3, Glasgow. She is the co-organiser of Yardworks, an annual multi-disciplinary live arts event at SWG3, showcasing Visual Art, Street Art, Design, Typography and Aerosol Art in public space. Marianne has a degree in Art History and Visual Communication from the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Recent exhibitions include Authority & Freedom: Testing the Context (Underneath M8 motorway and A804 Phoenix Road, Glasgow, 2019) co-curated with Beatriz Lobo Britto, Jiaying Cao, Kehan Liu and Pui Ying Claudia Chan, and Control Alter Delete (The Photography Studio, SWG3, Glasgow, 2020). The latter event linked the work of a satirical artist, illustrator and writer, a subvertiser and visual activist, painting and printmaking students and a street artist to showcase overlapping subversive responses to structures of power and authority.

I present two virtual spaces : mind map and lockdown

projects 

They retrace and archive my mental mapping process.

It involves a rhizomatic dynamic where images, concepts

and objects are woven into each other.

Mind map originally ran parallel to my sculptural research.

Throughout the lockdown, I decided to give it a

proper space to exist and evolve independently.

Lockdown projects is a new creation that zooms in on my

lastest projects.

Taking found images, early renaissance paintings and personal memories as source material, this series of works attempts to disrupt the grand narratives of historic paintings by borrowing their compositions, figures and techniques but orienting them within the worlds of today’s young adults and older people. These are often points of painful life transition that are universally experienced. In un-magnificent, ordinary scenes I aim to convey the contrast of the grand narrative to the colloquial.

My main influence for this body of work has been the serene, pensive figures from early renaissance painters such as Piero Della Francesca and Giotto as well as later historical artworks, such as late paintings and etchings by Francisco Goya that thematically explore the folly of man, alongside references to 20th century artists such as Winifred Knights and Justine Kurland and the poem “Musee de Beaux Arts” by W.H. Auden, particularly the first four lines which read:

“About suffering they were never wrong,

The old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position: how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along”

Exploring island living (both actual and perceived) through a contemporary art lens, my painting, textiles and digital interventions merge object and experience. Through collaboration I form relationships and conversations between material, place and people to question single artist ownership.

As an island artist, the internet acts as an integral disseminator to my work, to broadcast my practice and reconsider both the art audience and the gallery space — challenging the art worlds reliance on being physically present.

Since the onset of Covid-19 I have been actively campaigning against GSA mismanagement and the lack of support and care they have shown toward their students. For more information, visit https://www.pauseorpayuk.org

For more of my work, follow the links below:

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All of this work is viewable on my own website, as an interactive 3D space, and a video version if anyone needs it more accessible.

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My recent work has been rooted in coming to terms with lockdown, and thinking a lot about my own domestic environment, and how to present work at a time of separation.

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I have built a 3D rendered digital tenement, that incorporates video game based elements to allow movement through the space. It is a reproduction of my flat, filled with uncanny experimentations, manipulated 3D objects, video projections, and gateways to the physical. Within the space there are hyperlinked objects that take viewers to a contact form, which offers the opportunity to be sent, in the post, a variety of physical objects I have made.

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I have wanted to consider how to break down the boundary of the screen in a time where we are, more or less, restricted by it. I want to create a very direct dialogue with the viewer, a chance to experience an assumed tactility of the objects within the digital space, and more of a link with the anonymous maker behind the screen.

After finishing my BA in Industrial Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, I pursued a Masters in Design Innovation & Citizenship at The Glasgow School of Art. Together with my partner Kat Zavada, we organise Nadmiar/Excess – contemporary art and experimental music festival. I was part of the editorial board of Formy.xyz – Poland’s first peer-reviewed design journal (2018–2019). I held design roles at Ergo Design and Comarch. Together with Tillman Kratzer and Kat Zavada, we are preparing to launch Works On Work – a collaboration space for people pursuing projects related to the topic work.

For me, Design isn’t necessarily about finding a solution nor about solving problems. It is about creating space or situations where conflicting views and power relations can be discussed and renegotiated. I oppose the idea of the designer as a facilitator who seeks consensus between different actants, for it blurs authorship and what follows – responsibility. My practice is not about creating consensus or pleasing all parties. On the contrary, I see great value in conflict and dissensus as vehicles for liberation.

My master’s thesis looks at the idea of wellbeing appropriated by the contemporary mainstream managerial discourse, where employees’ happiness is perceived as something to be quantified, managed, and used as a productivity-enhancement strategy.

In opposition to the dogmatic aesthetic representations happiness related to a neoliberal moral fantasy imposed by those in the position of power, I propose taking a step back to anticipate and celebrate the spontaneous, unmanageable sources of joy and satisfaction resulting from autonomy.

The project aims to document minor everyday activities, techniques and coping strategies that go against the managerial regime – micro-disobediences that give one a sense of autonomy. Some examples may include: binge-watching Netflix during work time, taking unnecessarily long breaks, choosing different routes than the algorithm decides, being intentionally mean to your customer, acting grumpy when everybody is overenthusiastic or perhaps not participating in socials. And through these ‘coming-outs’ create a space free of slack-shaming and overstepping guilt.

With this project, I want to provoke a further conversation about work dogma and the spiritual violence of positivity at work. Unguilty Pleasures is an (auto)therapeutic tool for many working people, including myself.

My name is Imanina. I’m a designer interested in designing for a post-capitalist society.

My most recent work explored media and democracy in the UK and looked at how alternative, citizen-owned media might provide a voice for the mis- and under-represented groups in society.

I’m keen to further explore how design might be used as a catalyst for social good, that is accessible for all and not just an elite few.

I originally graduated from a Graphic Design Masters orientated towards social matters. I developed a background in print and editorial design. My practice is now focusing on research, social design and community-based projects. I am interested in looking at how design can support emancipation but also how design relates to politics and democracy.

My Master’s research project looks at political representation and democratic processes. It challenges the concept of representation and majority as effective forms of democracy and proposes different frameworks for democracy and civic engagements.

Because politics is often pictured as a complex topic only accessible for experts to discuss, instead, I tried to look at it with a didactic approach.

The research presents two complementary approaches “From the System to the People” and “From the People to the System”. Ultimately, what I am asking is how to represent multiplicity? What are the obstacles and problems of representation? Why do they exist and how to go around them?

I first attempted to define the French political system of representation in principle and in practice as a case study. I looked at its history, philosophy, practices and the roles played by experts and public institutions hoping this will enable me to identify entry points or short-circuit for change and civic engagement.

As my research perspective shifted I realised people were affecting the system themselves. I researched around the problematics of participation and how, why, when and by whom they are currently fostered. I identified different discourses around participation relating to different ideologies.

To get perspective, I searched for analogies. I compared network theories, animal and vegetal philosophies with the different discourses and ideologies around participation and with the way our social and political systems function. This allowed me to anchor my topic in a wider ecosystem and to compare current interactions and modes of assembling, of co-existence, and see what can be improved or challenged.

If you would like to know more about my work, don’t hesitate to get in touch!

Since 1880, we’ve lost two thirds of our ocean’s fish biomass and if nothing changes we could lose 60% of our ocean species by 2100. Coronavirus led to a collapse in fish exports and many people’s livelihood is being used as a bargaining chip in Brexit negotations.

Within this context, I sought to ask: what is the future of our ocean industries and how might we take a more regenerative approach to harvesting our oceans?

To divine this knowledge I asked experts who work in sustainable fishing advocacy, seaweed harvesting and government bodies. I learned about Integrated Multi-trophic Aquaculture(IMTA): a means of growing edible seaweeds next to shellfish in a way that cultivates biodiversity by drawing new fish and plantlife to areas where it’s cultivated.

I then worked with budding crofters and people who fantasised about escaping from the city to navigate what they wanted and how they might take steps to reify their fantasies. There wasn’t an awareness of the possibilities that were available.

I propose an informational campaign that would help those who want to work closer to nature to take clear steps to starting an IMTA farm.

I am Mugdha Patil, a graduate of the Master of Design in Design Innovation and Citizenship course at the Glasgow School of Art. I completed my undergraduate studies with a Bachelor of Design degree in Furniture Design from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad (NID). I am a designer who believes in making social change through people-centered and people-led actions and policies. I design services, products, product-services, and experiences that promote social, ecological transformation by applying research that focuses on people and the ecosystems (social, cultural, economic, psychological as well as physical) they occupy.

Citizenship for me means having a sense of belonging to a society. Design can help bring that about. I believe that taking into consideration the needs of an ecosystem as a whole gives us an opportunity for creating lasting change that is not just environmentally sustainable but also economically feasible and socially equitable. I believe that the design process has a thousand endings; it simply doesn’t end with a product and I continue to absorb its messages and meanings beyond that.

About the project.

My project, The Design of Dissent, combines public pedagogy and participatory design to create a Museum of Dissent. The final proposal made is that of a co-curated and co-created space where citizens can educate themselves about the various ways of critically participating in government, engage in the causes they believe in, and commemorate people’s power and struggles from the past.

The overall aim of this project is to identify how citizens perceive their duty of participation in government, especially in terms of dissent and our civic education on this particular topic. My focus is especially on the process of collective legacy-making, trust in institutions, and different approaches to critical civic participation, in times of protest and social change.

Following a qualitative case study + participatory design approach, this research intends to build a rich in-depth investigation focusing on how civic education is realized in our political lives and how critical sentiments are expressed by the citizenry, through the use of interviews, workshops, surveys, and document analysis. The results of this project are intended to bring more clarity to the ‘design’ of dissent, legacy of people’s movements, people’s trust in institutions (or lack thereof), and the viability of leaderless social movements.

This project used design as a medium to explore the significance of ordinary furniture to residents’ daily life and the feasibility of sustainable development of furniture.

As a necessity of residents’ daily life, furniture hides many unknown stories and secrets and also carries emotions of different users. Every piece of furniture has a special meaning for everyone. However, the fast-paced life of modern society makes the circulation of products faster, and the replacement rate of furniture is increased so waste is inevitable. It is regretted that many furniture worthies of being preserved are therefore neglected and then abandoned. The reason for its waste is not only because of damaged furniture, style changes, and residents’ relocation but also ignore daily furniture and the lack of environmental awareness. Although there are endless related education projects, how to implement residents’ behaviours into daily life is the pinpoint of this project.

This project traced the circulation process of furniture, explored and redefined the meaning of furniture to residents, and finally designed a solution to extend the service life of furniture accordingly.

Dialect heritage aims to protect and promote dialect heritage. It focuses on remote communities in Scotland for their decline number of dialect speakers. Also, the research concentrate on Doric language as research example and the final outcome is related on it. The final outcome visualizes the idea of ‘dialect heritage make up a part of cultural heritage in the community’.In addition, this board game can be used as a catalyst, with youngsters meeting up with older native Scots speakers. During this process, youngsters have the opportunity to discover and begin to use new words, and the speakers found their inheritors and pass on their dialect knowledge. It could solve the problem of fewer dialect inheritors in remote communities.

A Fashion and Textiles Educator currently working at BPS Secondary College in Mauritius. As a fashion and textiles teacher she has always promoted the Green concept in students project work.

With a Bachelor degree in textile and fashion, she is always interested into studying the properties of fabric, basics of colour and texture.

This project began as an exploration of fabric construction methods.

It involves engaging stakeholders and collaborators in the processes of designing, making and testing of textiles. The strategy used is upcycling of fabric remnants sourced from the local textile mill in Elgin. The approach to upcycling, with which this practice is aligned, treats the textile source as laden with information that guides the form of new fabrics out the textile waste. Subsequently, the fabrics were sent for testing in Portugal for the creation of Almalaguês- Spanish sneakers.

Awarded as a Highly Commendable project in September 2020 for the SIE Fresh Idea Competition.

My name is Francesca.

I graduated in Industrial and Graphic Design in Venice, where I understood how good products and multimedia projects should be planned. I learnt that the formal aspect of a product depends on its function and the user experience. In my opinion, the most important thing is that the designer role is to produce something that is durable even if the time passes by.

During the final undergraduate year, I started to work for a year in an Italian company, that produces glass objects and technical lamps. This job made me realize that I would like to do something more helpful for people.

The link between urban spaces and wellbeing has always been interesting for me, so I decided to move to Glasgow and attend the Environmental Design Master. Here I focused on the way a city or space can affect our behaviour in a positive or negative way. I learnt the importance of exploring and understanding a specific context through qualitative research to find solutions that can solve real issues and truly improve people’s lives.

Actually I am based in Italy and I would like to find a job in the Architecture and Urbanistic field. To be honest I do not know where I would like to live or do in the future. However, I know for sure that I would like to travel and live in different places to do as many experiences as possible, to enrich not only my career but also my life.

With a curious mindset to unpick and discover hidden opportunities for design intervention, Fanechka seeks to understand behavioural insights from psychologists and scientists to nudge people towards a more sustainable form of living. Can Design play this role when assessing behaviours of communities collectively? She has a previous background in the interior design and architecture sector with her focus now shifted on projects that aim to understand the social and cultural complexity directly influenced by various biases, social norms and spaces.

Fanechka’s Final Project:  How might we promote pro-environmental behaviours to create sustainable neighbourhoods?

Communities and Climate Change are complex challenges that force us to act in a certain way due to various systemic issues. Based on the COMB model tool provided by the behavioural insights team in London, I directed my research to find motivators and opportunities that drove people to act a certain way.
Understanding and analysing these behavioural insights to drive social change has moulded this project.
Making the language of climate action and environmental sustainability more inclusive and accessible to groups of people from various class structures had built the foundation of this project. Can we multiply and amplify certain behaviours to create a new and pronounced sense of identity to those communities that are tied with complexities? This project does not intend to focus on one specific behaviour, as sustainability is a journey with one success action resulting in us taking the next action – this was uncovered through various forms of research.

Visualizing the whole community as a complex system within which a collection of design interventions take place would help in the shift towards adopting sustainable lifestyles. Collective behaviours could then influence individuals due to social norms or perceived values.
As the local council carefully creates change to its infrastructures it needs to also ingrain behaviours within this system simultaneously to have the community working as an ecosystem.

Proposal:   WHITE CITY CARES
The design outcome considers behaviours projected by citizens of a social housing estate in London. Based on these behaviours, there are 3 different parts that work in cohesion to instil certain values among residents i.e pro-environmental.

‘White City Cares’ inspires and empowers people from different backgrounds, cultural values and upbringings to inspire, learn and take action individually or collectively to help live as a part of the ecosystem.

Brief detail on the design process is mentioned under each slide.

I am a visual communication designer based in Seoul, South Korea. My current interests and practice are in socio-environmental design, especially focusing on the possibilities of collective changes that individuals’ behaviour can foster.

This project ‘Empathy-derived recycling model’ opens up the opportunities of personal connection between refuse collectors and the general public, for residents’ better understanding of what results their behavioural decision on waste disposal could cause. The research explores people’s cognitive and environmental behaviour change when no one intends to cause environmental harms but far too much waste that could easily be recycled is going to landfill. The system highlights the significant environmental impact of correct recycling and putting the stuff in the right bins, and the intrinsic drive for such waste disposal behaviour can be improved by building up the familiarity with refuse collectors.

“Please try your utmost to separate and wash. It’s not just us you are helping. It’s yourself in the future.” – Mr. C, Refuse collector

I have a background in Architecture and have always been interested in exploring lived experiences. I am inspired by how narratives can play a part in shaping culture, influencing change in systems and attributing new meanings to spaces.

My graduate project was focussed on exploring the gap between the representational aspects and the built material reality of cities. My effort was to mediate an experience through a dialogue between the city and its people by challenging everyday conditions in urban streets. The result was an audio experience that could serve to dismantle the built, objective perceptions of the city and re-orient human perspectives. It is rooted in the idea that people form dynamic, iterative relationships with the spaces around them and this can be used to transform the urban experience.

As a designer with a foundation in architecture, I am fascinated with how spaces can be well-utilized to improve the quality of life in society. I aim to understand how people use the space around them by applying user-oriented design research methods to everyday problems. As a graduate student in design innovation and environmental design, my goal is to uncover the layers to problems in food sourcing in crowded cities and arriving at creative solutions. I have explored possibilities for change and hope to continue learning and growing from the research done for this project.

INTRODUCTION

Fresh fruits and vegetables at your doorstep are what I consider to be a sign of progress. Getting your hands dirty and working towards ensuring that progress is how I envision the direction for society’s prosperity. Sourcing food in a sustainable way is something that a lot of designers and professionals have been trying to figure out. Farming locally can ensure not only a steady supply of groceries for yourself but also help resolve the shortage of resources in the world. I have always believed that together we can achieve more. The pandemic has shown us the importance of banding together as a civilization. The support and kindness we can offer each other collectively can prepare us for any unforeseen problems. This can be a broad concept and difficult to navigate where to begin with.

In this fast-paced and ever-changing world, the demand and need for basic amenities like food and water are increasing. There is tremendous pressure on the world’s resources, and we are not fully aware of the consequences that are yet to follow. I am interested in finding a way to live in a society where we can source our food ourselves. We are dependent on grocery stores and supermarkets for our daily fruit and vegetable needs. What if there is a way to find an alternate source of food that doesn’t rely solely on other systems. This idea of a sustainable way of living first came to me during my undergraduate studies. I visited a distant relative who was living in the countryside with a small farm in their backyard. They are an elderly couple who now use their retirement savings to live a clean holistic living by growing their own food. I was fascinated with this concept of sustainable living. But living in a city, I didn’t have enough resources to make this a reality yet. All my groceries have been store-bought. But amongst many reasons, not having the benefit of having your own plot of land to farm with all the right resources and time are some of the reasons I want to explore through this project.

The next experience showed me the importance of locally sourced produce in society. A few years ago, I was living in a community in the south of India called Auroville, outside of any Indian authority or laws and functions as an independent city. The philosophy of this town is to “a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realize human unity”. Here I was able to experience a holistic life where I ate locally sourced food. I witnessed a pretty different environment from where I grew up. In the city, slowly people were losing connection with their neighbors. When I was a kid it was a common practice to gather in common spaces and have a chat or share stories in the community. While living in Auroville, I witnessed the same feeling of togetherness with the quality of food we shared. Here, all the food was locally sourced, and the establishments were also privately owned. I witnessed a healthier lifestyle through food that was independent of any corporation or business. My mission to obtain a close-by supply of fresh fruits and vegetables was rooted more than ever with this experience of my life. I want to be able to use gardening as a tool to be the starting point to reach a sustainable way of life in the future. As a designer, I hope to use the tools and skills I have been equipped with to make a positive contribution to society, starting with the area of food and farming which is a topic I have always been intrigued with. Through various research methods, I have explored the various aspects and characteristics that are attached to growing your own food and the related services that are currently present.

PLANNING

INITIAL RESEARCH
Community gardens are a key part of urban cities that create a common space for growing your own produce. Such spaces help people who don’t have their own land because of space limitations in a city. They are an integral part of enhancing the beauty of a neighborhood. I came across a paper which explores the effects of a community garden in improving the collective development of an urban neighborhood. This paper informs the joined efforts of a diverse community is favorable for advancing future. The community gardens that were “multi-functional” and “met social needs” were most succeeding. (Yeager, 2020) I have tried to understand the connection between people and their community and how these existing resources can be enhanced to result in something beneficial for everyone. I am also interested in finding a way to live in a society where we can rely on each other when it comes to source food ourselves.

At the start of the project, I realized that I just had the bare minimum information on food sourcing or farming and had only the passion in the subject, to begin with. I started exploring different resources to broaden my knowledge to discover the possibilities I could go to. I found out about a webinar on Eventbrite organized by Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) called Food Sourcing Solutions which at once caught my eye. The topic that was discussed was a live project conducted by graduate students along with collaborators and stakeholders from their community in Chicago, Illinois. Attending this webinar proved to be instrumental in setting the ground running for me. I got a rough understanding of a design project similar to mine. Here, the students spoke about the multiple solutions they had arrived at by prototyping their ideas and concepts with the community they were designed for. Through desk research, I found various news articles, journals, and reports that were helping me further understand the different layers and scope for this project. As shown below, I sketched out a rough mind map of what aspects of food I wanted to address. This helped me gather my thoughts and focus on growing fruits and vegetables and how this could be achieved.

DESK RESEARCH
The relationship between sustainability and farming was my main concern to address. I began investigating the concept and value of sustainable farming. I came across one of Unilever’s initiatives that emphasize the positive effects and more importantly the urgency for sustainable farming practices. Reducing the effects of climate change and benefitting the farmer’s community were some of the topics they were hoping to be working towards to meet the demand for goods and services. They also mentioned how providing farmers with a better yield would not only improve their lives but also the surrounding communities. However, this highlighted the role of an organization with sustainable ways to source food which was not the direction I aimed for. Through this project, I was hoping to find a way to meet the world’s growing needs without destroying all of the earth’s resources through individual contributions. To better investigate the effects of food sourcing on a person and their community, I would have to study the different nuances of what sustainability means. All of the preliminary online search for buzz words like sustainability, community, farming, etc. swept up pages of information with relation to environmental or economic impact. I was curious to learn about the social connection to sustainability. According to this paper on placemaking, different factors are responsible for the outcome of urban community garden projects. Here the emphasize that a community garden’s success is not only measured on its scale or the yield of crops. By acknowledging the effects of community gardens, I want to explore a way to incorporate into a variation of “home gardens”.

The pandemic has taken its toll over the world and people over the globe have gone through similar experiences with the lockdown. Having to isolate from society is the sole connection experienced world-wide. But the importance of supporting each other is a core value we can learn from this catastrophic event. I had to enquire more about whether the attitudes of people were changing in a more positive light was accurate or just optimistic delusions. I came across an article published by Civil Eats, a news source sharing stories surrounding the American food system. Here, a group of commercial farmers who usually do not grow fruits and vegetables is now contributing to helping the nearby town in times of need. This showed the potential of battling a shortage of food as a collective effort.

But why choose to grow it ourselves? For starters, it is an opportunity to learn a new skill. To have the closest nutritious food source that can improve our physical and mental health is always a plus. It could be cost-effective if done using the right methods but more importantly making us more independent. This article supported that theory which speaks about a retiree in her 60s from Singapore who overcame a shortage of food at the local store by growing it herself. Previously, she was unable to find the time to garden more often. There were also several other examples and data collected highlighting people’s increasing interest in home farming. These stories substantiate my belief that farming at home is possible despite having no prior knowledge or space for it. Not only is it achievable but also has mental health benefits. An article from the Guardian demonstrated the health and socio-cultural benefits of growing your own food. This article was about a man renting out a small space and growing vegetables in the garden for himself and helping neighbors do the same. He was able to live a healthier lifestyle for an entire year without ever going to the store. This article supported my idea of bringing people together using farming specifically to become more self-sufficient.

The connection between urban community empowerment and the benefits of farming was the next area I was curious to get insights from. I read about a paper that examines the positive and negative reasons behind the development of a community garden in an urban context. This was necessary to contend my assumption that cities do not have enough space to farm individually. Hence community gardens could be a great alternate to not having a private plot of spare land to grow crops. The purpose and functionality of community gardens or allotments were the main focus on my desk research stage. I briefly researched organizations that contribute to gardening and urban development that came across 2 places that I was aiming to speak at a later stage of my project. ‘Urban Roots’ in Glasgow and ‘Urban Growth’ in London would have been a great source of information to understand the role they played in their communities. Unfortunately, this was the start of the lockdown, and all places were temporarily closed and proved to be a roadblock for me at this stage.

LIVED EXPERIENCES
I began combining my desk research with my personal experiences that could also contribute to my research planning. I had participated in a bamboo construction and organic farming workshop in June 2018. The workshop run by Ar. Richard Belho of Zynorique Initiatives at Nagaland, India. Here I got a better understanding of how farming can be conducted in a cost-effective and organic way that benefitted their community. The farm was in a small village where there were not a lot of amenities that we find easily in most cities. I got to be a part of every stage of the gardening process, from planting the seeds to plowing the land. Not only that but also every member of the staff was putting in their contribution towards the farm. They were able to save money; instead of buying tomatoes and chilies, they were growing it themselves. This is when I was able to see how a small community with limited resources was able to be self-sufficient by working together. Another experience I had was coincidently on my way to get groceries in Glasgow, where I came across Greyfriars Community Garden. I was amazed to see it thriving in the middle of a global pandemic unaffected. I went on to explore other community gardens to confirm my theory that these spaces were functioning successfully considering the current situation.

SECONDARY RESEARCH

FIELD OBSERVATIONS  
Assessing the current state of community gardens around me, I went through a report on Glasgow’s community gardens. The research conducted in this report was to expand on the connection between sustainability and the urban community. It also speaks about a grassroots organization called Just Food which engages in collaborative community projects to feed the local community. I stumbled upon ‘Stalled Spaces’, a Glasgow City Council project on the closed gate at Greyfriars community garden. Because the place was closed like every other establishment, I was unable to find anyone to talk to and I observed the surroundings to find any information. This project was started to support local community groups and organizations across the city to develop stalled, under-utilized spaces. These temporary spaces aimed to improve the health and well-being of the community by increasing community engagement. This space was meant to open up spaces for recreation and making them safer for the public. To my dismay, I was unable to find any proof that this city council project was a success. I visited 6 of the community gardens, based solely on their location to my cycling radius. The first 3 community gardens I visited were on the south side of Glasgow. These were located in the middle of residential spaces with abandoned plots. The current situation of these spaces was in bad shape. They were completely abandoned with no sign of greenery, and some were reduced to being unused spaces again. The next 3 community gardens were situated by the Scottish Canals. These were also located close to a residential neighborhood, but it was different from the other ones I visited. Spiers Wharf, for example, is inside a well-maintained residential area and is not easily available for everyone. Since it was temporarily closed for outside access, not much information about the garden was available.

After visiting these community gardens, I was able to gain some insights on what to explore next. I decided to look into a few other city council projects to see if there is a pattern forming there. This was meant to help me work towards a solution to design a more functioning community garden. I noticed some of these “stalled spaces” initiatives were in neighborhoods that were not maintained properly. I planned to explore the urban rejuvenation aspect of the project to see how to bring people together and make them feel safe and look for any opportunities to make these community gardens feasible and accessible for everyone. Based on this one particular city council project it was obvious that these spaces were not living up to the potential. My deduction by this stage was that community gardens are currently failing to be a good enough food source for a person. However, I had to be sure before making a snap judgment and dismissing community gardens altogether based on just a few visits. I created a rough stakeholder map that wasn’t based on a lot of data, but it was a base ground to look at broadly the end-user to my design idea.

ENGAGEMENT

INTERACTIONS AND LIVE CASE STUDY
My reasoning from the observations to know the exact direction I have to take to reach a long-term goal had to be explored further. Starting with interviewing people who are experts and non-experts in farming. I drafted emails inquiring for stakeholders to interview by branching out to my personal and professional networks. Not everyone got back to me, but I was able to get some interesting leads. But it wasn’t too much of an issue as I soon found out after connecting with my extended family and friends’ circles on social media platforms. I discovered an organic farm providing fresh produce in a locality in Mumbai. Through mutual friends, I asked to set up an interview, but it did not go as planned.

INTERVIEWS
My first interview was with my family’s longtime friend who shared the first experience I had that gave me the inspiration for this project. They were able to provide another perspective to mine. I asked them several questions by breaking it down to simple general questions to get them comfortable with the subject matter and then dug deeper to see the reasoning behind their responses. The first one was from the perspective of people who turned to become expert farmers without prior knowledge. They continue to rely on themselves to source their own food. They originally lived in a crowded city and were able to achieve this holistic living after moving to the countryside, where space was abundant. The second interview happened after I attempted other research methods because I wasn’t able to get people to agree to sit down and have a chat. The second interviewee was an amateur gardener from Woodlands Community Garden in Glasgow and has been using the community garden in their neighborhood for the past 10 years. They lived alone in the city, so the community garden activity was more of social activity for them rather than as a way to source food. I downloaded my notes and data collected into a “journey map” describing the key elements for each interview and the recurring themes from these separate worlds. The main element that started to inform the project’s main concern of successfully growing food was that the gardening plot was available in close proximity and it because it was a platform to socialize. Also, both were unaffected by any concerns with food sourcing in the lockdown.

ONLINE QUESTIONNAIRE
I created a questionnaire through Google Forms to branch out and reach out to more people quickly. The response from the questionnaire was overwhelming because in a few days I managed to get a total of 150 responses. This itself was a positive sign that people were interested in this area of food sourcing. Here again, 3 key themes jumped out which I felt were interesting to explore later. I discovered that people were:

·       open to the idea of avoiding supermarkets completely.

·       they were willing to share a space with their neighbors.

·       would welcome help and resources to farm at home.

ANONYMOUS USER EXPERIENCES
The form sparked a conversation amongst people and they happily came forward with their personal stories with farming at home.

Following are anonymous experience-based personas I drew out that addressed some of the insights I made from the preliminary observations and assumptions.

·       Persona 1

She is a middle-aged doctor who finds time in her busy schedule in a crowded city to grow a few essential used daily in the kitchen. Returning home, she plucks a few herbs in the community courtyard to prepare dinner. If shad more space and time she would love to grow more fresh ingredients.

·       Persona 2

Working professional woman who has now found time in the lockdown to grow an abundant supply of micro-greens and pulses using plastic containers piling up at home. She has coped with space shortage with resources at home which would otherwise just land in a landfill somewhere.

·       Persona 3

Stay at home mother of 2 young children who has converted the rooftop of her house as a farm. Living in the countryside which has a more favorable climate she has utilized her skills to source all of the groceries at home. Diary products and other food groups are what is store-brought, and she would love to expand into gathering those at home too.

LIVE CASE STUDY
Equipped with all the data I collected from talking and interacting with experts and stakeholders, I revisited my initial analysis from my field observations. In passing conversations with friends here in Glasgow, I was recommended to visit a couple of community gardens that disputed my theory that community gardens are a failing concept to grow food in the city.

WOODLANDS COMMUNITY GARDEN
This one was a well-designed space that showed an engaging community of people. There were other amenities provided which made the community engagement more of a success. Although they were currently shut, it was a beautifully designed space that is thriving with people socializing and growing produce. Multi-level spaces to maintain social distancing rules and enjoy the space were well-designed. A community garden with pizza oven and barbeque grill were also available as per the weather permits. Office spaces with a deck for social events are usually open to the public were closed now yet there were people using the space because of its design.

MARYHILL COMMUNITY GARDEN
This community garden I came across while cycling through Glasgow. It is located right by the main road blending in perfectly with the surrounding giving it a welcoming look. I figured this was thriving because of its positioning giving access to passersby on foot or in a vehicle. It also provided a green buffer space living enough to drown out noises and distractions from any traffic on the main road.

GARNETHILL COMMUNITY GARDEN
This one was suggested by a friend who lives close to it. This was smaller compared to the other 2 I visited but definitely functioning. It was beautifully decked with inventive planters made from recycled furniture and household fixtures. Though the place was small it was well-maintained from the conditions of the growing plants. The personalization of the space showed the investment of the community.

DATA ANALYSIS

EARLY INSIGHTS
I referred to IDEO’s Human-Centred Guide among other such toolkits I found online. I attempted some of the exercises and activities to understand navigating the data to reach the desired results. I started by attempting another way to address my goal for this project since the start of it. Asking “5 whys” was a useful tool to understand the depth of all the information I acquired from interactions and observing spaces. Questioning the first “why” showcased the reason to start was from a desire to learn a new skill. After digging deeper with each “why”, I was able to decipher core themes emerging from them. I put them in the form of “how might we” questions.

·       How might we create a sustainable food source through a community: to achieve a sustainable and healthy lifestyle.

·       How might we become less dependent on supermarkets: to become more prepared for the future.

·       How might we reduce food waste using gardening: to avoid a shortage of food.

This process helped me arrive at the long-term goal which was to work towards living in a self-sufficient sustainable community. But before that, I would have to prioritize the problem to reach that goal. With the “frame your design challenge” exercise, I tried to define the possibilities of taking practical steps towards making a change. I decided to concentrate on gardening as a stepping stone to reach the goal of an alternate source of food. I studied the changes in existing issues in the context of the stakeholder’s environment, currently getting in the way of being independent.

SYNTHESIS AND OUTCOMES

OPPORTUNITIES
The last exercise helped me identify opportunities to arrive at possible solutions. Changes needed to happen to the current systems in place to explore opportunities and solutions. I began asking the following questions like how might we make accessible space for everyone and keep people interested in learning something to be more self-reliant? To make these solutions a reality I had to uncover the actions required to be done. Following the worksheet “Impact Ladder” from the IDEO toolkit handbook, I looked at the changes that are deliverable in the stakeholders’ actions. My field observations in the start revealed that community gardens were not living up to its potential. Therefore, I needed to focus on the reasons for the ones that are functioning and contradicted my assumption. My questionnaire regenerated responses that supported my reasoning from the desk research. The perception that people were enthusiastic in gardening at home but for reasons like not having space, time, or confidence in skills to develop it further. My next motive was to find a way to generate a way to get people excited about it as a hobby but not let it fade away when other priorities take over.

I had to understand the different characteristics in the user’s environment that factored in their behavior towards gardening at home. But layering in this activity into a person’s life without making it tedious. I don’t want it to be a process of imposing my idea on people just because I had faith in it.  I had to make sense of the users’ context to begin forming a solution. Creating an ecosystem map suggested in the IDEO handbook, revealed the scope for change in the user’s environment, community, services, and institutions that contribute to their behavior in society. For the user to be consistent, they would have to have more access to the resources and time to be an expert. They should be aware of what is already existing in their community by better ways of communicating with other like-minded people in the neighborhood. As for the services and institutions that inform the user should be made available through a precise medium. So that they can be better advised on how to use the resources that they might not be aware of.

CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT

IDEATION
I was hoping to start a ripple effect in inspiring and improving the overall lifestyle and well-being of society. The close possible outcomes that can be generated to begin having that effect is what I explored next in this stage of my research. After refining the insights, I stepped into ideating the opportunities for change in the different stakeholder groups. I mapped out the shifts that needed to happen to arrive at the final goal in the form of a service or a product. Loosely following the steps in this activity guide (theory of change), I created some rough concept ideas against each of the shifts. These shifts or changes were a cumulative result of all the analysis and insights from the users I interacted with. In the map below, I placed red post-its’ on the concepts I wrote down that could have the most impact with “addresses this well” and the pink post-its’ on the concepts that have the potential to have an impact with “addresses this somewhat”.

FINAL ANALYSIS AND SOLUTIONS
Mapping out the concepts with the areas I wanted to make a difference in was starting to make sense after this exercise. I was happy to find out that I was arriving at some concrete deliverable ideas. In this next step, I bunched up the concepts that had the most impact (the red post-its).

·       Local neighborhood pamphlets/ newsletters/ advertising-

This service or product addresses the problem of misinformation because of technological issues or being unaware of how to use digital platforms.

·       Portable mobile structures in transition spaces-

This product addresses the need for a gardening space that can be flexible to the users’ limitations of space and accessibility. By allowing the user to place them in a familiar space, it has a better chance of blending into their routine and making it less of a chore.

·       Fixed structures placed strategically for different purposes-

This product would have to be placed after careful planning of each neighborhood’s shared spaces to ensure active participation. These zones will have to be either designed for specific vegetations or depending on the stage of growth.

After focusing on these 3 concepts, I began narrowing it down to one concept I can design now for this project. I started eliminating the concepts that I felt would not hold merit to be successful enough. Since all the types of vegetation require specific conditions for growing I researched the basic fundamental of gardening. A wide range of tutorial videos and hacks on how to garden are existing resources. I felt that designing a better medium through service just to spread awareness to people is not the direction I intended for this project. After watching a Ted talk on how Rob Greenfield transformed his life into becoming an expert from scratch was inspiring. The instructions and guidance from his blogs helped me design a few basic essentials I would have to incorporate into the final product. The elements that were necessary for a beginner were my base point for envisioning the final product. The first advice was to start small, next was to ensure there was access to light and to ensure a healthy growing plant. The last advice, which I thought was most important was to check locally what is available. The following are the key outcomes I would have to incorporate into my design.

·       From not knowing where to start to be able to see actual results: This would have to be a medium for people to socialize and learn to grow together. Thus, being well-informed combining with all the information found individually.

·       From not having space and time to be able to garden anyway: This would have to eliminate any space constraints in most urban cities and be an interesting and easy way to accommodate a busy lifestyle.

IMPLEMENTATION

CONCEPT ANALYSIS
The final concept I narrowed it down to with the help of the last exercise was to create an educational toolkit. This product would have the resources to start the process of gardening by including information, containers for planting, and a set of seeds for the basic ingredients for daily use. I wanted to focus on one of the facets of gardening. By concentrating on the “seed” stage of gardening I can contribute to changing an individual’s lifestyle.  I read a chapter from a report stating that the joint efforts of both the individual and their community are important in a successful urban garden. “Urban gardens can further serve as a vehicle to engage individuals and communities in efforts toward other social and environmental initiatives” (PDF) Urban Community Gardens as Multimodal Social Spaces, 2020) This helped me move ahead in the direction of addressing the problem in bite-sized solutions. The way I see it is that literally planting seeds is the first step to a green future.

DESIGN SOLUTION

FINAL OUTCOME
The journey map highlights the effects each element of the design will have on the user. The toolkit will hold containers that will be designed in a way so that it can be placed on a shelf or even hung from a hook. By making it mobile I believe it will be helping the users’ who lack space and natural light. This design will later suggest shared transition spaces can be used in case one does not have the conditions for the seeds to sprout after being tested out with the public. It would create an atmosphere to socialize, interact, and learn from each other. I believe this could bring people together to inspire more people. I would also integrate into the design a way for the user to personalize their containers to have a special connection to it. This way each person will hopefully have a personal intention to succeed with this experiment. I prototyped some alternatives to how these containers could be woven into the users’ life. One method was to place them along with shared transition spaces like corridors, parking lot, alleyways between buildings, provided that they have access to natural light and drainage. This would solve the space problem in cities. Another idea was to place the containers along spaces used in their daily commute like en-route to work, to exercise, or even just running errands. This would solve any more space issues by using place-making to ensure desired results. Also, these public spaces can be presented in a fun and interactive way to generate investment. I also had to consider the risks and pitfalls that can cause the product to fail or at least make the user demotivated to stay invested. The seeds would probably still not sprout in spite of perfect placement, they could be still be neglected after decorating and personalizing it. I would have to prototype elements of the design with different stakeholders to see how effective it really is. The stakeholders ranging from experts to amateurs. Since I was unable to prototype and reiterate the specifications, I got feedback for the design ideas from peers and colleagues with varied skill-levels in gardening. I would also like to take this forward and prototype the “container” at a local community garden.

I have broken it down into three main categories that will give a shot to capture the individual and their community’s behavior when it comes to growing food. The “seed” stage will help inspire aspiring gardeners to continue learning, the second stage of “sapling” when the seeds sprout will be pushed to a larger radius of using spaces shared with neighbors guaranteeing community engagement. Finally, the last stage of “yield” is the scope for design to be explored. Here I would like to design a system where it can work with the help of a community garden. Thus, forming a full circle of starting at home to end at a sustainable home outdoors. In the future, I would like to design a service that connects people and places iterating on different designs that blend with community engagement programs.

FINAL REFLECTIONS

FUTURE GOALS
For a community to achieve the kind of self-sufficiency where freshly grown food can be found at our doorstep is still a long way off. I believe that by having addressed even one small aspect of gardening at home can help solve problems in food sourcing. And by doing so, as a collective, we can be more self-reliant amongst each other. I would want to inspect the scope of gardening in different user environments like school or workplace. Learning to be skilled can be incorporated at an early age by introducing nursery beds in schools as well as in-office campuses. I also hope this research can collect feedback to see any development in society. Above all, I want to see this become a contribution to making lasting change in the world. Once the world gets back to its daily grind, I would like to develop on the scope of the project once we get back to our old routines. The importance of community togetherness should not be lost when the world slowly recovers from the pandemic. That would be interesting information to study and see if we would arrive at different solutions.

A multidisciplinary designer with a socially engaged practice. Her practice-led research looks at creating accessible and democratic engagement processes and toolkits for public space and land research to mobilize alternative voices and experiences of the landscape. From sensory and sound mapping to spatial imaginaries, she is exploring ways in which notions such as ‘having a voice’ can go beyond the metaphorical, and sensory engagement can create accessible consultation processes.

Having delivered a diverse body of collaborative work internationally she has worked with experts across art, design, architecture and science to create work that is socially and environmentally driven. This includes public installations and engagement projects for TATE Britain, London Design Week, Hello Wood International Architecture Summer University, KÉK – Center of Contemporary Architecture and Istanbul Biennale.

She received I-Portunus European Union artist mobility grant to work with CCA: Center of Contemporary Art in Glasgow – as part of their ‘School for Civic Imagination’ public engagement programme and was awarded IDENSITAT ‘Sound of our Cities’, a Creative Europe Cultural Collaboration grant to deliver an urban sound mapping project in Barcelona this year.

The Exploding School: The Potential for Outdoor Learning and Play Space in Dublin’s North East Inner City along the Royal Canal

Please find a short image diary of my process and outcomes at the bottom of this text.

Background and overview of project:

Note on Language: NEIC refers to the North East Inner City of Dublin, a geographical area with a population of over 18,000 people.

Covid-19 has exposed the quality and accessibility of our public spaces in Dublin. When schools in the Republic of Ireland closed on March 12th to prevent the spread of Covid-19,  the availability of outdoor space was thrown into stark relief. It was my assumption coming into the research that the NEIC was already suffering from a lack of public spaces and invitations to spend time in the area outside of commercial spaces. It was also my belief that this lack of possibility to freely gather outside without spending money disproportionately impacts young people.

I chose to focus my research on the needs of schools in the NEIC as major stakeholders who would benefit from an increase in outdoor playspace, interviewing teachers in the local community and young people who live and go to school in the area.  Through engaging with schools I found that space for schools in the NEIC is critical not just to facilitate play and engagement during Covid-19, but also to provide space to play for pupils, many of whom do not have gardens or are living in temporary emergency accommodation due to the acute rental and public housing crisis in Ireland.

Space to play and the possibility of learning through play is a vital aspect of a young person’s wellbeing and development. However research also shows its relationship to the wellbeing of the broader community. In particular, play in public space, either on pavement, the street, the immediate public realm has been shown to have a vital role in breaking down social isolation.

In the existing literature written on improving a young person’s experience in the NEIC, we often see a heavy focus on preventing “anti-social” behaviour and increased police presence. However the effect of this fear of people gathering outside has been to remove many places to rest or gather outdoors, leaving more vulnerable street users such as older people, children, people with specific mobility needs at a loss for space in the city.

When it comes to a young person’s experience of the city at street level in the NEIC, we do not find many playful touchpoints in the immediate public realm. Through speaking to teachers and young people themselves, I found many young people who live and go to school in the NEIC carry negative associations with the urban environment, often associating it with rising levels homelessness due to the ongoing housing crisis in Ireland. Many also associate it with negative interactions with police, experiencing or witnessing racism, or being hit by traffic.

A lack of public space which invites play and is accessible to young people leaves us with the self perpetuating narrative of anti social behaviour – if the urban environment is solely to be used for commerce or travel, we face the problem that anyone spending time in it who is not performing these roles is at risk of being seen as acting in an “anti social” manner.

To address this, I am proposing built interventions into the Royal Canal to create new opportunities for play and pedagogical engagement with the city.

As Ward and Fyson write in Streetwork: The Exploding School:

“Just as the school should be open to the community, so should the community be open to the school. All resources of the community are educational resources.” [Fyson, Ward, 1975]

I chose to visualise this possibility through the introduction of mooring points along a specific stretch of the Royal Canal. The site was picked after a process of mapping the schools and distribution on young people in the area. The Royal Canal was built in the 1700’s as a motorway of its’ time, to link Dublin port with North western counties, however it is now largely used for foot and bike travel. Focusing on the water of the canal based on young people’s observations around it, I chose to imagine mooring points for activities like boat racing and raft building, and as spaces that could add focus to the huge biodiversity of the canal beds.  Collecting and building objects is a tradition in the inner city particularly around October and halloween when bonfires are lit. These skills could be brought to raft building, or attention could be brought to the huge amount of native plants which grow along the canal as pedagogical activities and embodied learning.

I went through several stages of research from critical inquiry and interviews, to quantitative mapping of the area, to ethnographic observation and workshops with young people who live and go to school in the area.

It is the hope of my project that I will use the work and insights gained to build a proposal for a community build project in partnership with a youth project in the area. I am currently working on the proposal for this, and would be interested to hear of any similar community based building projects happening in the UK or Ireland.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to my project in particular the young people who took part in the workshops and teachers who gave their time to talk to me. For any further information or to read more about my process, please feel free to email me at rosi.j.leonard@gmail.com