#creatingrecovery

Really pleased with progress this week, excited to get stuck in to my #creatingrecovery project. Here is a summary of what I've been up to. We are still not in college face to face so all work was done from home.

-Monday- Started with a group meeting and 1:1 to drill down into my project focus and plans for implementing and researching it. My focus for this week was survey research and design.

I updated the Tumblr blog with the outputs from our drawing week, and with progress on making submissions for a collaborative exhibition on the theme of 'restriction' for Clayhill Arts curated by artist Amanda Lynch. All artworks for this have to fit into a compartment of a letterpress drawer and 4 sections are randomly allocated to the 200 artists taking part. I collaborated with Amanda on a number of post-art projects during lockdown and am really excited to be part of this project.

I also started designing CD cover for a music project EP that we have been recording at home on the theme of COVID-more on this to follow.....

-Tuesday - Our Art History lecture was looking at unit descriptors and criteria for grading- analysing previous projects and how they were graded. This was a good opportunity to have collaborative critical discussions with fellow students in breakout rooms on the zoom call.

I updated my sketchbook and started researching artists on my list in the project plan and Investigated survey tools to use .

1. Mentimeter- can give numbers to log in and answer questions- creates wordclouds and more!

2. Google forms- easy to use and accessible.

3. Survey Monkey- more specialised survey software.

I also completed a survey for a Wellcome photography prize I entered last month on the theme of Mental Health.

We had a zoom tutorial with Duncan looking at unit descriptors , followed by drawing session which I shared on instagram then moved onto designing an album cover in Canva for the band #JohnDRevelator using covid imagery to their project brief .

In the evening I attended a Pinterest design class and learnt to create my own pins- then created and uploaded pins from my canva account to a new Pinterest board linking to my #worksafeandwell wellbeing consultancy website that I blog weekly and create canva and other graphics for.

-Wednesday: I attended a CEDA networking event with guest speaker Cathy Mager- I took notes in my sketchbook and sketched the artist whilst she spoke. This was so inspirational, not only learning about her wide-ranging creative practice, but also how she works with her deafness and plans creative projects with accessibility and inclusivity at their core, fully costed into project not as an add-on or special measure. She also gave some valuable advice about Health and Safety when planning public art installations

I also created a linocut stamp of yin-yang inspired by the album cover design I have been working on.

Thursday- was spent researching Cathy Mager and writing a tumblr post about her lecture. Writing up process notes and tutorial discussing project progression and sharing ideas with tutors via zoom.

For relaxation (and research) I attended a Rainbowfish Poetry workhop- which is a #TakeArt funded wellbeing project to support mental health through wordplay. We spent 2 hours enjoying creative play, good company and writing group and individual prose and poetry. After this workshop I wrote a 'Creating Recovery' poem for my project.

Friday- I scheduled an interview with artist Melanie Thompson to ask her about her experiences performing in her recent 'Empathetic shoes' performance/installation video series at the #heartofthetribegallery. I collaborated on this project as a contributor of some shoes and text for her to perform with during the installation. The video is available to view here

I ended the week investigating the 'Chaos TV' group- a Cornish activist group using creativity to support communities and help reduce barriers to work.