Arrivals Task

When I first arrived in Manchester I was quiet disappointed as I was tired and just coming off the motorway, so I decided that I would explore and see what Manchester had to offer, as I’ve always had views that it was a ‘cool’ city, one of the reasons I choose to come here was the great music scene it had.  So I wandered through the centre and found myself walking towards small side streets filled with amazing, quirky shops nothing that I have experienced back home.  I found myself in the Northern Quarter and to be honest I did not fully appreciate it right away. It was nice with lovely cafes and coffee shops but with the excitement of being in a new city, I didn’t really look at what was surrounding me.  I have been back to the Northern Quarter a few times since my first visit, but it wasn’t until Dave Haslam’s talk that I decided to go back and explore it more and since then I’ve been back about 3 or 4 times, and each time I’ve across something new that I hadn’t noticed before.  But it seems to me like things are waiting to be discovered such as place names done in mosaic tiles or art on the pavements it’s not something that’s well known of to be there, not that I know of anyway, but they can still be appreciated. 

I found the Dave Haslam talk very interesting, I was intrigued to what he was going to say about Manchester, he mentioned marginal activity and how things can make a cultural significance, and how things start of small and unknown like Joy Division preforming in a small pub in Salford to become big names.  He also talked a lot about fanzines, which shows Manchester is a city with passion and that people truly believe in what they are doing, such as the fanzines, I liked the way people could self-publish their work and not have to edit it to please a mass audience.   I’ve looked more into these fanzines online, such as the Salford zine library http://salfordzinelibrary.blogspot.com/, and Linder Sterling who co-founded ‘Secret Public’ along with Jon Savage, I quiet like the aspect in which these fanzines are produced, its straight to the point and no advertising from companies.

Toilet Talk

I've been looking at how people change their surroundings and how they leave their mark on something.  I was quiet interested in how people use toilets to graffiti.  I went to Joshua Brooks and saw how girls had left their lipstick marks on the wall, something that maybe one person had started and now it seems to carry on.  

Joshua Brooks

I've started myself to replicate what goes on in these type of environments, the idea behind it is how people change what is already there by creating drawings or messages. In tutorials with Mary Stark we talked about printing my own paper which I will start to do in the workshops, and possibly think of strategies of how people can get involved in what I want to achieve.  Some of the things that I came up with that I may experiment with are: 

• Tape paper to the floor and have people walk over it to create marks of people passing through.
• Post it notes to create messages.
• Record conversations. 

The Temple Bar

Arriving into Manchester during the start of September, ready to start my first year of university and become independent. I decided it was time for a look around! I wanted to feel settled and at home in my surroundings. The first place i stumbled upon was China Town, a small yet busy, dramatic place full of colour and lights! I remembered visiting through the day and night, discovering how the place changes from one scene to another as daylight falls. This fascinated me how cities change and purely light makes this achievable, it made me want to go and explore different spaces within Manchester. In my quiet hometown, once it's dark, the place becomes a ghost town, and only natural daylight brings the pavements alive with locals. As i was looking around Manchester, i followed signs for the Northern quarter and i was shocked at how many spaces were within one place. I went into a cafe along the cobbled streets which outside was a poster advertising 'Karoke and fancy cocktails on Fridays'. I wouldn't of expected a bustling cafe full of cackling adults all talking amoung themselves over coffee to change into a night for students to 'hang out' and socialise enjoying cheap drinks and spending the night with a microphone in their hands amusing friends! It sparked off ideas for my project as the new building i think would benefit from 'change' in spaces. Why should the building not be brought to life when darkness hits the glass studio? Bright lights should egnite the building and bring vibrancy to the space. There are places around Manchester which are not recommended to go at night as it's either not lit up or it's dangerous to be alone, I want noone in the new building to feel fear of not being able to go to certain spaces in the building and i think beautiful lights/screens will bring vibrancy to different spaces. I didn't want to think too much into the project as i understand this arrivals task is just a starting point but it has set off ideas for me to hopefully develop into something potentially great. I am going to continue to look around places in Manchester and see if i can find anymore interesting spaces which change from dusk to dawn. Hopefully, this will spur on some ideas of how this could create different spaces within the new building.
I carried a little sketchbook around China Town when i visited and just scribbled some patterns and colour down into my pad to sense some inspiration, there are a few examples below:

ARRIVALS TASK- Amelia Faye Tilt

I’ve been thinking allot about how I want to spend my time during Unit X, and I think that the arrivals task we have been set will really help me direct my work in some kind of direction. I always struggle at the start of project and I’m hoping that this task will help kick start my work.

The project Old School/New School is one with so many possibilities, I starting looking into the original school of art, and buildings around Manchester. I found the architecture really interesting but I couldn’t help feeling like the concept had been done before. I don’t want to base my work around just the old school, I think for me to produce interesting work I need a fresh focal point. Something that I can really get inspired by. I sat outside the School of Art and realised that the colour of building was what I was drawn to, it was different to all the darker red brick buildings that surround it. It sound silly but the colour reminded me of some of the architecture in Greece, the sandstone visible underneath the chipped away paint. So I have decided to base my work around this, different aspects of Greek life, culture, textiles, architecture.

Until August I had never been to Greece before, travelling there in peak season was something people had moaned at me about for weeks prior to my trip;” You’re going to burn in that sun, in the middle of august”, one of the perks of being blonde and fair I guess. After a four and a half hour flight I arrived in the Greek town of Rhodes. It was 4:30am but the sun was already rising over the sandy mountains. A two hour coach journey isn’t something I would usually enjoy but, driving up the winding hills to the small village of Pefkos was so beautiful. All I could see for miles were quant clusters of houses, antique sea blue shutters covering windows while families slept and the most beautiful pink flowers winding up the side of doorways. Everything was so bright, yet subtle; I really have never seen anything so beautiful. My time in Greece was one of the best few weeks of my life, every inch of building, road or sea had a story to tell and I really loved that. In general, the Greeks are particularly proud of their culture and speak of their country with an intense passion, something I found so refreshing. I feel that their Greek culture is a definition of their national and ethnic belonging. Traditions, religion, music, language, food and wines are the major composites of the Greece culture and constitute the base for those who wish to visit the country.