VisCom

The 1960s saw massive shifts in cultural attitudes. In 1961 polite society was shocked by cabinet minister John Profumo's affair.

The Magazine is compiling a people's history of modern Britain - featuring your written memories and photos. We continue with the 1960s.

For primary research consider personal accounts, so people you may know that would have been around at the time of the event you’ve chosen to explore.

I had a brief idea of potentially visualising a story in the context of a newspaper and placing it on a front page, to communicate my idea of what I think belongs there. However in a tutorial it was suggested that perhaps the context of newspaper was not appropriate as my illustrations weren’t quite gritty enough to depict the tone of this particular story. The route to go is less digitisation and keep it as organic as I can. 

During my conversations with members of the family I asked them what events they remember most vividly about the 60s and so I started illustrating those as a medium to experiment with. These are a few that I did which mainly consisted of celebrity culture in the 60s, the Vietnam War, The Watergate Scandal (actually 1972), assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King and London gangland. 

I was more than impressed that someone wanted to tell the story of five hardworking independent families, instead of publishing the same old stereotype of life as a hippie. It made me want to do something similar and tell someone else’s story who never got the chance to tell it themselves and find a way of visualising that story to bring it to life.

“We demonstrated against development... the building of houses by filling up the the salt marshes in Connecticut where we lived. Salt marsh is the most fertile land on earth, it’s where a lot of fish, small mammals and insects start life, it’s very rich in nutrients. 90% of it has been destroyed along the Connecticut coast, and this was just a little bit that was left, locally. There’s a picture of me somewhere holding up a banner which the children had drawn, and on it was ‘save our marsh’ and I’m holding it just like...”- Granddad on my Mum’s side.

These are a few photos taken from my family’s time on East River Farm. I really love these because they correctly depict what it was really like to live on a commune. It wasn’t all about growing long hair, smoking certain things and going to concerts. It wasn't that hippies didn't like work, as the stereotype had it. Living on a commune consisted of a lot of back breaking work and everyone had their own jobs to do.

This is an article my Granddad kept since 1972. The article is a feature on a commune called East River Farm that him, my Grandma, my mum, aunty and two uncles lived on with four other families in 1970. The article explores a typical day on the commune aswell as explaining how they lived very differently and conservatively compared to most communes. Looking at this article confirmed how efficient communal living was and can be.