7/06/21 (LAST REFLECTION)

As I began to consider how I would approach the Unit 4 Project I was initially very unsure of the direction I would want to be taking. Reflecting over the outcomes and projects within Part 2, I knew my interest was within working on more ‘real life’ themes and brining attention to details within our daily lives and activities to really connect with my audience. The starting points I took were from the Guilty Pleasures theme and the Post Secret blog as I thought the two concepts linked nicely in how human these are — everyone having their own quirks, guilty pleasures, secrets.

The aim began as a slightly more vague version of what it became for the duration of Part 3. I felt the theme of secrets would be fun to explore and could be approached in a playful and entertaining whilst also helping the audience to feel uplifted/comforted. This was too vague of a starting point I eventually realised after speaking to Will about my confusion in what outcomes I could be making. The mental block I had been having leading up to coming into the studio sessions again was because I hadn’t set myself proper guidelines for my theme and I then changed the focus to be more specific. I chose to direct the project towards covid-19 lockdown and secrets within that context. This was extremely helpful in finding myself a route into the working as well as a more focussed aim. I was directing the work towards almost anyone, as the effects of the pandemic have been felt worldwide, but mostly towards the younger community I identify with. My personal lockdown and pandemic experiences have been up and down (e.g. relating to my future, my online classes and loneliness) and I know this has been felt by a lot of youth impacted by restrictions especially like students from abroad. The aim developed into visualising secrets from lockdown to create a sense of unity and comfort for the audience in a creative/fun way, hoping to shed an uplifting and encouraging light on our collective experiences of lockdown over the last year.

I began my research from the starting point I had in the Post Secret blog and this then led me from idea to idea. Research was really important to me in this project. I found a lot of interesting links in practitioners and my theme through different mediums for communication — within text, sound, public interaction, collage etc. which was useful in developing ideas like in my primary research trying to approach the public through three tests. Looking back on it now I do think I could’ve been more thorough and pushed myself further with these developments as I can think of so many more things I would’ve enjoyed trying out now which I hadn’t put enough consideration into before.

The Post secret blog and Gillian wearing sign series were two important sources for me during this project as they provided my main starting point of inspiration in terms of my aim and the approach I took in interacting with the audience. But one of my other main sources of inspiration was also the collage book I found at home in lockdown. I loved the playful use of magazine and photo cuttings to create a narrative and I had the combination of these three as an influence for how I wanted to visualise secrets. My theory was that taking a fun and Open approach would help others open up about secrets in this way and would encourage more openness, specifically about what we’ve all been through during this period.

The main methods I used to explore the theme were stencils, collage, stamp prints, confession boxes and posters, online questionnaire, audio/voice memos, zine and comic style illustration. I don’t think there were many specialist skills I got to learn seeing as I was not able to partake in the laser cutting or screen printing however I did become more comfortable with stencil making and experimenting with visuals in my book and DPS layouts in my last set of mixed media secret visualisations.

I had issues at the beginning — I didn’t know which group I was in and then after quarantine and returning to studio session I realised I had misunderstood some of the part 3 project and had to catch up on a few things straight away which definitely felt like a set back in my mind. I missed out on the screen print but I ended up doing a stencil instead which took me down what I thought was a really successful path. I had a lot of fun making and developing the stencil/spray paint pieces as a result.

Time planning over the project was not so great. I didn’t keep to my structure as I had intended —I should’ve made a more realistic planner with better timeframes to avoid leaving things to certain days where id have to rush. It is slightly disappointing to reflect on this considering my plan had been to improve the habits I had at the end of part 2 so that I would be fully confident in my outcomes from this. Some weeks felt so difficult to come up with concepts and I struggled a bit with having some mental blocks but having a sort of checklist of outcomes did help keep me somewhat on track. My reflection could’ve been a more consistent which probably would’ve helped me in realising more potential outcomes/experiments whilst I would’ve had more time to follow through with them. I think the confusions and obstacles I dealt with at the beginning acted as a bit of a hold back for me mentally. In my BA course I think I will try to use a calendar more for time planning so I can see my timeframes more visually which helps.

I worked mostly with illustrative, print and collaged styles to help visualise the secrets.

My outcomes overall are quite fun and relate well to what the intention of the project was however I do think I could’ve pushed myself to come up with a lot more depth in my outcomes and explorations. Taking one and then working on it further in another way which I think I did not do enough of. The last visualisation book I put together could’ve been much more planned out in some of the design elements and the structure. In the end I was too rushed due to poor time management to fully complete it the way I had wanted to.

In the future, I believe the concept could be used for group therapy to make people realise they’re not alone in carrying deep secrets. Subsequently, the concept could be used to discourage feelings of guilt or shame through unity in honesty and openness. Reflecting back I could have experimented with a more diverse range of mediums and interacted with the public during research. I was also planning on making a video which would have visualised my concept in a more consumable form. Additionally, I could see my project improve if I had experimented with scale more and focused on a final outcome to visualise all the collected data.

Reflection

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