On Thursday 25th June I co-hosted at online event with The RSA.
Event details:
To participate in this event you will need to try the prototype experience. This prototype is a drawing exercise which uses pens and paper. You will access the experience as an audio file. As you listen you will be guided in creating your artwork and given questions to reflect on as you work.
Our hope is to build a menu of different creative experiences for participants to choose from. We encourage collaboration from artists, craftspeople, musician, poets, photographers, actors…all those with creative ideas to offer! This concept will be part of the discussion at this event.
Before you begin collect this list of equipment;
3 sheets of A4 paper. A section of pens & pencils- between 3 and 10 mark making tools. (crayons, markers, felt tips etc)
Please access the audio file here:
At the end of the experience you will be encourages to fill in a quick quiz. Here is the link
How it went:
It was nerve-racking putting out the prototype idea and asking for feedback! I knew what I had made was not a perfect version of what I had envisioned but it felt useful to produce 'something' to help to bring to life the idea and to give us a stepping stone to move forward from. Here is an overview of the feedback we received
- It felt like a very personal experience which some found ver valuable but there was also discussion about whether this should/ could be more of a collective experience
- recognition that giving people permission to think about the future is an important step (although this was challenged as some found the experience a little self indulgent and privileged)
- Positive thoughts about the creative experience supporting reflective thinking
- Thoughts around including different creative expression in order to enhance the experience and make it more inclusive (supporting the menu of options idea)
- The language in the prototype needs reviewing- there were comments about it being inaccessible for some and also repetitive
- It should be seen as a start of a journey for participants
- It should be considered part of a wider project of ways to engage people
These are all really valuable and important things to consider and I was grateful to those who participated in the event. Many of the comments supported my ideas for how to enhance what I'd made. Some challenged my ideas. Some challenges made me realise that I needed to better explain the purpose of the project so that there wasn't a gap between expectations and experience. Other challenges showed clear steps for improvement.
Overall, alongside the challenges was encouragement and faith in the potential of the idea.
After reviewing the feedback in detail with the small team of RSA Fellows we felt there is value in what we're working towards.
We have now settled on 3 next steps to help us move forward
1. Clarity of message- we're putting work into expressing the benefits of this project clearly
2. Looking for funding- we spoke about having a menu of creative experiences and we'd love to have funding so that we can pay artists to produce this. Investigations are ongoing!
3. Building an online presence- we're working on ideas for a website
2. Looking for funding- we spoke about having a menu of creative experiences and we'd love to have funding so that we can pay artists to produce this. Investigations are ongoing!
3. Building an online presence- we're working on ideas for a website
And that's what we are working on now. There will be more to come on these steps as we make progress.
If you'd like to be included on a mailing list to keep up to date and play a part in the next steps as we progress (soon enough we will have a list of tasks which we'd love help with!) follow this link:
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