Yes hello that Oh yes. How are you? Good. Thanks, Andy. Oh, I did.
Yeah good fine. I was just looking at the deck or in your kitchen came or spoke the glasses I just saw
friends how are you? All right. All right. How are you? Yeah. Okay. Thank you Alex. Hi email once I didn't know who I was communicating with but
we are we all have access to that email account so
everyone amazing.
Everyone I literally
I think we'll just wait for a few more people to join and then maybe you can kind of introduce yourself and talk a little bit about your project. Yeah, perfect. Maybe Yeah.
Ask us Anything you want to know about.
With Alex just coming just to get in a face on what is it as Jack was never sparked
we excited for Friday.
Very excited. Everyone prepared? Yeah. Oh, no.
You I'm dreading your suit or any
mandate. Ah,
you got your suit already?
Yeah, I had a testimony late last night. It's all looking good. Hopefully. But I am a bit worried about the length of time of the performance. Well, if I feel a bit nervous on the day, it might be like five seconds what time you want? As seven o'clock but yeah, I don't know how long or
whatever term you want to have recorded
for? I think a space are going to be recording the evening. I'm not sure if it's something they'll be doing. They will they may have organised it with live and well maybe, but I'm not sure. Usually, if there is a performance they live stream it. So that's I think that's why we've got the times I know there'll be a bit skewed with like people doing bar shifts everything but hopefully it'll all kind of mixing together but but Mandy mind's going on in the evening, but I just plan on keeping mine on for a long time. And not really doing much. I won't be talking to her honestly, moving around the space. So like, if you want to do that at the same time. It'd be interesting to like, have both of them, like wandering around the space.
Yeah, that would be cool. Because at the moment, I'm on it. Seven o'clock.
Yeah, I think I'm that like a, because it's gonna be like, slightly darker. So, but I can't keep mine on. So I'm just gonna be like walking around the spaces like the arcade, the wardrobe. The park just so like you want to at the same time. You can.
I'm sure we can change the schedule. I
mean, it's just yeah, it's quite fluid. Yeah.
For context LSR there's a an event on Friday called right life. I guess me is probably talk to you through sort of right.
Yeah, she Yeah. She mentioned all the different ones. Yeah. So
the right teachers who were the kind of cohort that have gone through last year, are kind of displaying exhibition of all the work that they've made together in workshops like sort of skill sharing. workshops. And then alongside that there's a sort of separate project, which is zest. So most of people on the call now have been collaborating with haha Gallery, which is a gallery that used to exist on all northern road. And yeah, they've kind of been teaching us about performance art. So we're all kind of dabbling. We're not really most of us probably wouldn't really call ourselves performance artists. But we're dabbling in performance art on Friday. So if you're around, she should come down there. No, it sounds interesting. Yeah. Cool. Well, yeah, let's just make a start. I mean, some people might trickle in.
Later on.
So as I think I mentioned, Alice joined us. She's doing a master's project, about kind of, well, maybe Alice, it's probably best with you.
Yeah, so I'm Alice. I'm currently doing a master's project, or master's in graphic design. I'm doing it in collaboration with Falmouth, Lac. So I actually live in Southampton. I basically always been a community designer. And I've always wanted to like focus on that community, obviously, living in Southampton. Like my whole life, I want to focus on so Hampton for my final project. And my question is basically looking at how can we bring artists and designers from across the city to kind of collaborate to create these like landmarks of creative interest, which would then lead to creating cultural identity for the city. So I kind of basing it on the back end of winning city of culture, obviously, that hasn't happened. So, but I'm still in my head thinking we wanted to culture just imagine that. And all the funding that can be put on what can we kind of do as a city to, obviously collaborate with across artists and designers. So I've been having conversations with loads of different organisations kind of finding out what, what kind of happens at the moment, talking to different artists, designers like what works for them, and what currently doesn't work for them. And I've had conversations at art artists studios, I had an interview this morning with Celeste from a space. So just yeah, just loads of people just getting their opinion on what works for them within the city and what doesn't work for them. And my kind of end result is I want to create something that would allow a platform for artists and designers to be recognised, and to definitely bring it to the forefront. Because I think currently, I feel like everyone's kind of hiding alleyways. And I feel like it needs to be a bit more present. Especially like, I lived in Panama for three years during my BA and then I came back. And I found it really difficult to find anyone that wasn't associated with the university, but was kind of like an independent designer. So I've kind of been on this journey, discovering all the different like organisations, which has been really interesting and really helpful. But yeah, I kind of just my final step is kind of talking to artists and finding like what works for them, obviously, like you're a part of that, which is a great organisation that seems like it's really supported by a space, which is really good. And I've spoken to some independent designers and artists that don't feel the need to be a part of any organisation and said that they also struggle with engagement, and trying to get people to engage with their workshop. So there's like, two different scenarios and kind of two different sides of thing. So yeah, I just kind of wanted to come and talk to you guys. Ask your opinion on like, what works for you in terms of like collaboration? And also like, do collaborate outside of this? And is there anything like within the city that you would want to see changed? Or, like improved in terms of like collaboration and meeting other artists? Or do you feel like all your needs and that kind of thing? So yeah, it feels like it's just open discussion, like, no judgement at all. Like everything's said, so. Yeah,
yes, good point.
You have been just made the point that we work quite closely with. Yeah, the social impact lab from University of Southampton. And another organisation called homegrown sa 14, which both operated in the sort of so 14 both go to sort of northern and seminaries. So we kind of collaborate with them quite a bit to do deliver community sort of workshops, and yeah, various community outputs. I think in terms of collaboration in general as a collective we, some collectives obviously operate, where they kind of create artworks together, and that's the output, almost acting like one. Artists, I think, for us, we all got very kind of individual practices, spanning quite a broad range of different mediums. And so we have kind of in our individual identity, identity as artists, but then we kind of come together to collaborate on bigger projects. So working with the community or like recently, we had our annual what we've called it our annual exhibition, it was actually the first one that we've done, do anything it will happen regularly. But yeah, we kind of all just kind of got together and decided to have a show. So it's kind of collaboration from from that point of view really all kind of mucking in on kind of what needs to happen to create our own opportunities, whether that's kind of with engaging with the community or supporting each other and our individual creative practice with starting to develop like a bit of a programme of skill sharing just in amongst ourselves. So we try on some weeks, we have workshops before meetings. So Mandy's delivered a series of workshops kind of going through ly no cutting, so we're kind of learning things outside of what we would normally use in our own practices from each other. So that's kind of a broad overview. But yeah, I don't know what other people have to say about like collaboration collaborative working,
there was like a moment last year that was quite interesting where the skaters of Southampton got wind of some of the stuff that Ryan was doing and because summer is kind of like a big big time for right to put on these like events that was really good and like I think it was just from one guy looking at one of their posts then my encouraging his mates all come down and for like the three or four next sessions that we hit the next events that we had they came down and it like really made me think that spot on about the fact that all of this stuff kind of kind of happens in alleyways like these guys didn't know anything about ripe in a way that we kind of assume ripened zest to be quiet like visually they're in the city like we're always trying to somehow like get our graphics stickers and stuff about but it just doesn't get some it just doesn't get to the places that you wanted to get somehow and like I think I've no word of mouth seems like really really intense just crashed?
We scared scare you Oh,
no, I don't know what happened. My whole computer just like crashed. Honestly, it seems like no matter what happened, sorry.
Yeah, so in some like chaos mode, like sometimes in like it's quite across roots like fed, like artists community. So these organisations are these music groups or like as we are specifically into digital artists don't respond well to like quite large organisations kind of harvesting ideas and cutting corners and giving us a web platform. It's very like inorganic, we much prefer sort of like what Annette was saying about like, words like mouth, word of mouth and like actually getting real connections rather than having any sort of like seminars or summaries and this one isn't bourgeoisie sort of way. I don't think it finds yourself hungry very well. And I don't think we respond well to that. Yeah. So it's much more of a wholesome, awesome. Yeah, sort of approach. I think people appreciate rather than sort of an organisational whitewash sort of approach. Yeah, completely. Yeah. I think everyone aspires to that. But I think because Southampton's art scene has always been slightly smaller. It's protected quite ferociously by its constituents, not in the sense of like, you know, gatekeeping, but it's very much like, you know, a lot of people don't like the hand side. I wonder why, you know, I mean, like, worked out.
Yeah, I think that's also, I don't know how you guys feel about this as well. But a lot of I felt like, within the city of Porcher bed itself, obviously, everyone has different opinions on that, from my perspective, like walking on the high street in Southampton, seeing like the selective artists that were chosen to do some of the stuff like Nathan Evans, for example, and some of the big murals that were done, I feel like they were very selective within the bed about who they showed off. And they definitely chose younger people, obviously, because it was for the bed. But yeah, I just think that if we were to win the bed, or a hope, if we would win the bid in the future, that they will be a bit more focused on like everyone, and it will come very much from a community creative community, or like cultural communities place instead of being very much MP era, which I think at the moment it was. So yeah, from my perspective, I just think that, like, I had no idea any of these organisations existed. So I'm just learning about these all for the first time, which was great. But again, like not a lot of people until Hansen, they're gonna know that they're only gonna see the things that appear right in front of their faces, which are, obviously the murals. So like, my whole design, and my whole project is based around like bringing, giving everyone in place and the platform and giving everyone a space that wants to be involved and want to be included, because I think, well, I love collaboration, I think it's the best thing that artists can do. And learning, like you said, learning skills from one another. I think that's great. So yeah, just being a supportive community, but it's finding the community and still hustling because, like, I'm still uncovering people. And, you know, I got
those things as well, like, when it's something that if you seek out you'll find it, but I'd know with murals and with stuff that's shown on the high streets of South Hampton, this kind of a vast majority of people won't really even care who's made it,
or I think a lot of people notice that it was there, though, like a lot of people noticed that there was some change. And I think a lot of people stopped like, I mean, when I wherever I walked past people were like looking at them. So yeah, I do think that people do notice, or like the general public, or like the community, I think people do notice, especially if you're walking their path that everyday to go to work, I think.
So when you say about collaboration with people, a variety of people, right, so you're saying that they sort of go with the same names the same people? Yeah.
Yeah, I think so.
murals are done by organised by segments showcase.
directly from the I mean, the bid didn't really have any sort of output beforehand. Because it was supposed to be like, what Southampton like now. And there was a lot of talk of like, city dressing, or like, real quick, let's make it look nice. But I think most of that was like, Yeah, banners and stuff. But I think the banners were quite like people were like, What are these? And like people in the arts were saying, What's this? What is what does that mean? What did you put in it? For Southampton based artists, which is really,
I think the speed back took those banners down. Magnets like, the next morning or whatever, I couldn't see any so 25 Banners anywhere,
but it breaks them down. Like I didn't see one near West key on the weekend. It was still Yeah, it was near the cinema. Rip.
So earlier when you were in your project, as you were talking about, like creating cultural landmarks. Is that kind of the sort of mechanism you're thinking of? Yeah, so
I'm thinking what at the moment I'm, I'm sustainable designers, obviously I think everyone should be. But I've been looking at using these. They could like see tiles I don't know if you've heard Have them but they basically be super long like the sea walls. And they're like for like sea animals and coral and like life to be made within them. But I think I'm gonna try and adapt them in some way. Or like, I don't know, do something that also like lowers the air pollution at the same time. But I basically want to create the structures that go next to the main landmarks in Southampton. So the key landmarks that everyone thinks the most important or whatever, I want to create these structures where and then like, give every single artist a title. So on that title, they can create whatever they want, do whatever they want with it. I don't know exactly the sizing. But yeah, get given a title. And then it will kind of like have your Instagram or like your name or whatever. And then for the people that are passing all these landmarks, because they do walking tours all the time in Southampton, but they didn't do anything in terms of like a creative walking tour. So I just think it'd be really interesting, if like, the structural landmarks were put in different places. I feel like they would also become like a, like, a conversation starter like, oh, that's actually really interesting. Like, wow, that artist has done that. Or if I'm an artist like visiting from another city, I can then like, look them up and see what they've done. And yeah, I want there to kind of be two sides want there to be like disassemble side, as in like, working with only local artists within a five mile radius from the city or Sandton for the materials and everything like that. But also, how can I make this like taking away air pollution? Because sarjan is the most polluted city. So working in that sense, but yeah, that's what my idea is, at the moment from the amount of people I've spoken to. I think one of the things is just just talking, like, just getting to know other people and trying to engage people is obviously something that's very challenging for everyone. So yeah, that's, that's my idea. At the moment, any feedback?
Did you say you were collaborating, collaborating with or
so I, at the beginning of my project, I was like, Oh, well, I've collaborate with artists and designers across the city, just anyone that will have conversation me. I'm like, eight weeks away from finishing now. So I haven't really had the time to, like, do any of the workshops and stuff that I planned, which is such a shame, because I just couldn't get replies. And like, obviously, the city, the city of culture bed is kind of like delayed everything. I know, everyone's really busy around this time, because it's like, end of time for a lot of people. And yeah, it's just everyone's really busy. So I haven't actually managed to get anyone. So I don't really know who I'm going to be collaborating with at the moment. At the moment. I feel like it's just me that yeah, it's just, it's just an idea that I'm hoping will go somewhere. But yeah, at the moment, just me. But I've spoken to absolutely a lot of people. And a lot of a lot of the artists that I have spoken to that they are interested in, like anything that I do, which again, is great. But yeah, I don't know, if I have the time to really sit down and do watch, obviously, you'd be great. If I did, I could do that. But it's just time. I kind of left it a bit late talking to people. But I just love having conversations, which is one of my absolute downfalls because
we normally hold our meetings
normally like what do we have to instal when, etc, like, it's just like, admin. So it's quite nice to, like, spark a conversation about especially after like, losing city of culture, and people got a lot to say, yeah. Do you have sort of like, I don't know, sort of next steps or things that you might want from us like? Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, it'd be great if, if like, this ends up like me actually working on this idea. It'd be great if everyone could like, kind of submit a response to what they would kind of want on their kind of tile or what they would want to see or if anyone has any opinions on, like, how they think I should go about it. Or they have. So the titles I kind of imagined them being I don't know what size, but yeah, just like a tile that's obviously eco friendly. But yeah, you basically can like decorate the tile, however you want to whether that's a reflection of the city, the landscape, just like honestly, it's a canvas, like you can do anything to kind of express yourself or describe yourself as a designer, or an artist. And then we'd like stick them together on a structure that would then be placed and then yeah, people would be able to see the structure kind of like I don't know if anyone's seen this but there was like that elephant trail which was by West key like last summer Yeah.
I think the dolphins are supposed to be coming at some point. Like when they have
fun Yeah, multiple animals. It's gonna say it feels like
coming the has a coming because I helped out with the has
kind of like kind of like that. Kind of like that. that whole basis because each artist gets to design your hair or, but it would just be like kind of like a tireless base for you to just kind of share your art. And then yeah, just be a plant that
will be your final piece or is like,
yeah, that will be my final piece. I think as well, I kind of want to explain how it would work and whether there would be like a walking tour, how long it was, so I kind of wanted it in my head, I want it to be more permanent. So I wouldn't want it to just be obviously saying we want the city culture but I wouldn't be want it to just be for the year, I want it to be like something permanent that people can add to or take away from. So yeah, it's just like constantly changing. Maybe like every six months, there'll be like a rollover of of changing. But then also being another walking tour, I would want to implement that wouldn't just be for landmarks, it would be for like creatives, which would also be, I think, be really beneficial, especially for people that are interested in that because at the moment there just isn't anything. And we did
something similar. Well, we so we it was one of our artists, Alex who did a workshop last year for our project size at the time, she made a workshop with I can't remember the community group, the youth on youth group. Yeah. And she went to them. And they did tile workshops, where they made tiles over a specific theme, I can't remember what it was. But then they she made a trail out of them for the exhibition. So it was old, long old, or the road where our studios are held and Robin came. Were the people that like place them all around. And then Alex made a map. So during the exhibition, all the artists and in the children everything could bring their parents and they would like do the trail where they go around and look around find find their trails, they didn't exactly where they were. And I mean are titles. So there is a very like it's a very fun way of getting people engaged. And very accessible as well plus, it's like they're quite flat. If you find like a good wall or something, it's very easy to like, make a board put them up on something and attach that board to said wall and you can move the board or something. Yeah, so it's like much more of a like it's very transportable.
There is there is other people that have done tiles already in the city. So Mr. Will mosaic will, as some mosaic tiles and stuck them around the city and has done walking tours as well. They've
got space invader as well, he does that. He does the piece, the street artist that does the Space Invaders, but there's this weird app, you can download where you can go and find them and you get points for finding them. And some of them are in specific areas where you have to go and ask to be able to go six. So for example, there's one in the Baltic central champion out Newcastle where it's in their offices. So if you go up to one of the receptionist can say that, Hi, I'm here to pick me to come and see the title, they'll let you in and you can take a photo of the apple like say, you've got the point sort of thing is like a weird, like National Trail. So that's like it's it's something that is, you know, for all age ranges, and it's been like, you know, it's been investigating, it's kind of a fun way of doing it as well. Yeah,
yeah, I think I think that's another point as well as that I wanted it to be just like, not just for graduates of the University because I think that they get a lot of attention. And I think a lot of the graduates also like go towards Winchester in London, but I feel like there's a bit of loss for people that's decide to stay. But yeah. One quick question,
though, sorry. Is I think is often of like everyone always says, oh, there's nothing around, there's no one around. But there is stuff around it's just it's really hard to and there's people around like like people like yourself, like we didn't even know in your analysis and Southampton and there's so many of us but I just think we're really quite isolated. So
there's not like inflammation of everything that's going on. I've been part of so many conversations I think there should be one source where we can get all the information about all the stuff going on mergers never everyone's suggested I was gonna do it. Probably yeah, I wonder as
well as everyone is there's lots of people who are just isolated and thinking oh god, there's nothing about nothing around. So there's so many people just that are well below there. They're all looking for the same thing but they just don't know where to look for it. I think that's a real
chaos was born and they actually employed somebody to to be an admin and do stuff. Like collecting information and Going out to different people.
It's just it's just word of mouth, isn't it at the end of the day, like I love the idea of those of those tiles, but like, you know, doing them in like, artists coming to groups and going to workshops and doing them together, because it's like the conversations you'd get just from having range of like, crazy artists in the same space. It'd be really interesting. I think there's definitely Yeah, that should be it should be an ongoing project or something after so that you don't have a time limit. I think there's a lot of scope for it.
Yeah, and like you said, with, like, obviously, everyone says that there should be like one list. A lot of people I've interviewed also said that Octa is really hottie but I feel like this would be the list like anyone that wants to take part. This is them showing their scale. This is them showing that they live in Southampton. And this is them showing that they work in Southampton. Like this is the visual list? Like, I don't know, like that's, that's kind of how I see it. But yeah, as you say, like, yeah, word of mouth. And multiple,
right, because like, you know, the first one, inevitably, a lot of people won't hear about it. And then there's loads of people coming to the first one, and they spread the word. And then when the next one, the next one, they the word of mouth spreads. It's like you're getting your own. Yeah, visual List of artists in the area, chaos will be coming to you.
You'd like to call it our Hollywood Walk of Fame sort of thing where people got their handprints in it. Like, oh, this is here, although we're here for the thing. And you can recognise them. It's kind of like a quick fall, they fall they say you break the wall sort of thing or mould and you go start to do you find yourself meeting more and more people. And then when you come back to it, you're like, Oh, I know this person, I bet them and then you can see. Now you kind of like, have a flashback with what you're working towards should just be the tiles on the floor. So you walk on, like Hollywood style, your name underneath. And then lead it all the way to our studios.
Okay, let's review endpoint. Yeah. All right, that
you have to do like a dissertation with your piece, David.
Yeah, it's not just station. It's more like a what, what I've researched and what I've kind of found out from all my research, so it's just summarising all my interviews. So it's not that bad. It's not as bad as my BA. But that's so nice. Like everyone that is on my, I'm not saying everyone should do masters. But it's really, really flexible. It's very part time. And everyone has a job, like, with a master's and everyone's kind of working in the field as well. So yeah, it's really interesting. I'm really glad that I did it. as well. I'm just learning so much about my community, and my city. But yeah, it'd be great. If if any of you want to take part in the final meal like tiles, we can definitely organise a workshop, which would be really good. And then you guys can all come down. That would actually be really helpful. Would
you think you'd hold it?
I mean, I can hold it in a pub. That'd be cool. Yeah. Wherever wax is anywhere, that's probably like, a nice day in the sunshine.
You should come to some of our you know, before the ones we have before meetings or whatever. I mean, I'm talking on behalf of not being actually there. But yeah, that'd be really fun.
So a lot a lot of people like not in types anymore. A lot of people like going home to different places
to do masters, I am I come back to Southampton. Okay, sorry. Yeah. Now she's gonna say everyone else's.
Yeah, if you, I don't know how you want to kind of proceed this. But if you Yeah, send us an email with, you know, what you want to happen next? Or if you did want to start? I don't know, HR put down an answer to that question or something like that. Yeah, no, that'd be really helpful. Yes, no, and yeah, because the workshop will I'm sure people will want to come along.
Maybe we could. Because we do like mini workshops before. Like, not often that we do workshops before our meetings, sometimes these helps and printmaking workshops, we just instal like during sort of sessions, it's roughly about an hour. So potentially, maybe you could come to our part before one of our meetings we could do it then it's more like you want to do a test run or something. Yeah, no, that'd be Got it. Yeah, definitely will remove I think most of us tried to turn up as much as possible. We don't always do today. It's I think everyone's been tired. But you know, it's like, that could be like a good sort of like, dip your toe and see how it goes. I think we can be your guinea pigs.
No, no, that'd be great. That'd be amazing. When there's when there's the next session
to not next Tuesday, but the Tuesday we do every two Tuesday, you know, kind of shift a bit because events but yeah, so not next Tuesday the following Tuesday. Okay. We've got we might have something planned for that
one. Yeah, that's okay. So just let me know when it's good. Everyone. Yeah, okay. I'm pretty flexible. I just walk up the pub, besides a chair with arms. When sorry, chair with arms. It's like near transport. Oh, yeah.
Yeah, get good discounts as well on like, pretty much majority of pumps and Samsung. Very part. Yeah, no, this has been really helpful. Thank you so much for all that you get on because I know you have other stuff to discuss. But
no, yeah, but thanks for coming along. Yeah, thanks so much.
Hopefully I could run a workshop soon. We bye bye.
