RSA Engage Leeds

Last night down at the Whitecloth gallery was another one of RSA's Engage events which is a combination of speakers pitching their ideas and the chance to network with like minded individuals. RSA is ultimately all about coming together to create/ share/ talk about ideas for social change. As this is what a lot of my practice revolves around this year, mostly my CoP but also my extended practice, it was a good chance to potentially get involved in some live briefs and to make contact with those with a similar mindset to myself.

Got Your Back

John from Eskimo Soup, a social marketing agency, discussed his idea to create a trusted social platform that people can turn to when they are dealing with issues of mental health. The network is to be for students and co-written by them also, by getting other students involved it creates a more accurate database of information regarding any issues users may encounter. I feel like this idea will work well purely because of how most current, social media networks are a battleground where any goes, public or not, people can often feel subjected to criticisms and judgement from others within the network, friends or not.

Me and John both spoke briefly one to one about his idea and about the potential for me to be involved within it, as this could become one of my live briefs for my extended practice. Not only that but will give me the chance to get experience of a real world brief and to make both friends and contacts for the future.

Fuel for School

Fuel for School was set up by ex headteacher, Nathan Atkinson, who stumbled across a few separate problems during his time there that he thought he could solve through one idea. 

1. Remove hunger as a barrier to learning

2. Highlight the importance of nutrition and the associated benefits linked to learning

3. Highlight the vast amounts of wasted (yet perfectly edible) food across our local and wider communities.

The concept behind this is to feed school kids using food that would have unnecessarily gone to waste otherwise. There are currently 10,000 children signed up who benefit from his programme.

The Soft Road

Melanie and Neil Kirkbridge created The Soft Road in the hope to bring light to the benefits of meditation in everyday life. 

'The Soft Road is a platform for personal and cultural transformation that helps people and groups thrive in creative action. On The Soft Road we set out an Experience of Life that unwinds stress, unlocks creativity, develops intuition, and builds resilience. These inner resources create a foundation of stability and adaptability that deepens over time and brings greater ease to every day.'

They spoke a lot about bringing meditation into the workplace to improve overall well being for each individual which is something that really resonated with me and some of my work from previous years. This links in perfectly also with the RSA student awards brief I intend to do about well being in the workplace.

I spoke to both Melanie and Neil after their talk about our experiences with meditation and I felt like they had a lot to offer, so much so that we discussed them potentially coming to the university to do a small talk/ session about meditation.

Elevator pitch

Today's task was to ultimately learn how to write concisely about our work as this is key for things like our websites/ Instagram/ portfolios etc. We had take a favourite past project of ours and write in one sentence for each what/ how/ why?

I chose my self initiated brief from the end of last year, the Cocoon.

What is the core idea?
How does it work?
Why does it work?

Initial Pitch

To help reduce stress in everyday life. By giving people isolated, quiet time to themselves. Because stress has been proven to be prominent in working environments.

Improved Pitch

Cocoon is a low cost, high quality piece designed for IKEA that helps to reduce stress in academic and professional environments. It creates a private, isolated area where individuals can take a break without leaving the work space. Tackling stress on a daily basis, creates a happier, healthier workplace.

Doing something this has proven helpful for me in understanding the very basic core of what is needed when writing/ talking about a project. Often I find myself writing too much, some of which is not always that relevant or necessary. But by following this structure of what/ how/ why helps me to be as concise as possible which will useful in the future when describing portfolio work to potential clients etc.

You've got (real) mail

The week long task was to create a list of people/studios/ whoever it is that we admire and to choose one or multiple to contact. This did not mean sending over an email to someone, we instead had to physically create something tailored to the person on the receiving end, whatever that might be.

Just to name a few, my list included:

Craig Oldham
Andy Puddicombe
Brian Eno
David Berman
Nancy Bernard

Out of these I was most interested in Andy Puddicombe, he's someone who I admire for a number of reasons. Being the co-founder of Headspace, a meditation app I use on a daily basis, his whole attitude towards life is something I aspire towards being like. Even just a conversation with him would be ideal, which is why I aimed my project towards making contact with him.

He brought meditation to the masses, without the stigmas surrounding it which made it more appealing to a wider audience. In short, whole concept behind the app is to be more mindful in everything you do, which ultimately brings about it's benefits; reduced stress, better sleep, less negative thinking.

The one thing I thought of that could be a way to contact him was to put to life an idea I had as an extension to the app and propose it to him. Currently Headspace is only contained within the app, but he does suggests doing smaller exercises throughout the day which is where my idea came in.

I haven't made this yet simply because I didn't want to just settle for an idea for the sake of ticking a box. As this idea only came about last minute I figured if I was going to do something I wanted to put a solid effort into it. I feel like this could become a bigger project than just this task in itself.

THE IDEA

The idea is to bring the mindfulness exercises that are part of the app into the physical world with a set of small cue cards. In a way like Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies. If you're stuck creatively, these cards are little suggestions on how to spin the problem around, help you out in one way or another.

So I thought that these could be little physical reminders that would assist with day to day life. Phrases that would evoke a physical/mental response.

These are something that could also be embedded within environments so that every time you open your laptop or go to brush your teeth, it'll hopefully make you a bit more mindful in everyday tasks.

My plan from now is to develop this basic design further and actually produce these as a small pack, which will form part of my proposal of the idea to send off to their headquarters in the hope to spark conversation.