Manchester Coat of Arms
Bees are a symbol of activity
Ships are a symbol of trade and enterprise

Routes and mapping
We have mapped out 6 routes

Canal Route: Holden Gallery > Castlefield Gallery
South Manchester 1: Whitworth > Wahlbar
South Manchester 2: Costume Gallery > IA House Chorlton
Center of Manchester 1: Manchester Art Gallery > Rogue Studios
Center of Manchester 2: Piccadilly Place > Kraak Gallery
North of Manchester: 2022NQ > Islington Mill

One of the main starting points of our festival was mapping. Looking at alternative ways to encourage people around the city, giving a new identity to a place you may already know quite well. We looked at the idea of disorientation, the derieve and using instructions, maybe giving out instruction booklets with a random assortment of cards that lead you to some unknown destination, the luck of the draw choosing your route. After much talk and deliberation we decided upon choosing certain routes which our festival would be based around, see routes above. These would be walks which would lead you around the city, decorated walks, interactive walks with a keen idea of engaging the viewer.

One of the members of our group, began to research into the Manchester Coat of Arms, where she found 

Bees are a symbol of activity
Ships are a symbol of trade and enterprise

this got us thinking. It then came to our attention that bees are widely depicted around Manchester, featured on many of the bollards around the city. We are encouraging a green festival, with a high interest in urban gardening. Bees like gardens, we like bees. It seemed like an intriguing idea to pursue.
We have 6 routes, a 6 sided shape is a hexagon, hexagons make up honeycomb and honey comb is made by bees.

 

How to celebrate the city?
How to surprise?
How to transform the things the city throws away?

Thinking about natures place.
Natures treasure.
Weeds take over the city. Why not bottle them? Why not put them in a vase?
Glass jars and jam jars.

A colour change is a surprise

Chelsea Fringe

Something that is happening at the Chelsea Fringe this year that I am intrigued by is an event called Rocks

Where the Goldsmiths center is holding an exhibition looking into the use of rocks in silversmithing. Both using and drawing inspiration from.

This got me thinking into the mundane.

Using the throwaways and the ignored, transforming, surprise?

Lets start with some spray paint.

How to transform?
Another point of interest was Stuart Haygarth, in particular his frame installation for the V&A. But it was the varnishes and gold leafing that I am most intrigued by. Such beautiful colours and stains.

The throwaways of the city,
How to play with the mundane?
How to play with a twist on street art?

An element of surprise?
We run around from day to day, rushing from place to place,
The fast pace life of the city.
But an idea of surprise makes you stop,
something out of place, out of time?
You slow down, stop, to get a closer look?
Curiosity?
How did it get here? Why is it here?

But how to play with this?

An intriguing project.
The pothole gardener

Steve Wheen, is the pothole gardener, transforming small spaces, holes in the city into small garden paradises. I think this is a fabulous idea all though am not entirely sure how i feel about the props. But it is the public's response to these little gaps in the city that I am intrigued by. They are caught off guard by these obviously out of place little installations. There is a great video of reactions up on The Pothole Gardeners blog and also an intriguing talk by Steve, for the lost lectures series in his talk entitled Little Holes of Happiness. 


Another intriguing idea of street art comes from a project entitled A Common Name, run by a lady called Julian Paige based in California. Where she creates "Geodes" out of paper and resin, and hides them in the nooks and crannys of the city. Leaving the city to do with them what they want, to break down in the weather, to slowly fade away or simply be taken. They are little treasures in the middle of the metropolis.

an interesting idea of alternative materials.
lets create something fun
DUS architects manifesto point
"2. MAKE IT BEAUTIFUL People like pretty things"

step back
Bompas & Parr
Edible crazzy golf
Jelly

The unexpected

We were keen to get our hands on some objects that we could work from. Some unexpected objects, objects in multiples. But as these were all prototypes we didn't really want to spend any mass amount of money.
On inquiring into this it really struck me, how difficult it was to get hold of junk? Junk yards won't give anything away for free, things get binned. I understand there is free-cycle and websites like that but in a tangible sense I wanted to touch something, to search through the rubbish, bit of a ghost hunt.

So on this lack of object inquiry we decided to head to Chorlton to hit up the charity shops there, to see if they may have anything broken out back that they couldn't sell? We were surprisingly in luck, everyone seemed very happy to chat to us, but there wasn't that much spare material as anything that can't be sold tends to be binned. We came back armed with a broken mirror, a large broken lamp, a wicker basket and various other miscellaneous bits and bobs.

Various objects

Our Festival
We want to encourage interaction.
Our main point of engagement is this idea of designing your own festival,
﹟SeeYourCity ﹟MakeYourCity ﹟ExperienceYourCity

﹟DesignYourCity

These are all also hashtags that link directly to our twitter, as we want to encourage a strong online presence to coincide with the festival. Allowing people to upload images directly to us, creating an online exhibition in its self. We propose to then also use these images to create an exhibition once the festival has finished to show case the peoples festival.

In terms of branding. We want to look at the idea of the viewfinder. Upon one of our city walks I found an intriguing city made viewfinder.

  
The viewfinder is so key to our project as it represents the idea of designing your own festival, our posters, leaflets and branding will be designed around a viewfinder, therefore even when looking at one, you are almost designing your own, with every view being different, every poster different to. We want to encourgae people to take photos with their viewfinders, and upload them to our twitter.
 We have been exploring the idea of setting up digital camera booths around the city, inviting people to take pictures with their viewfinds, allowing us to curate an exhibition of the results. 

 an early example

of a viewfinder

photo taken by Anna.

Manifesto

MADE IN MANCHESTER
Design will be in and of the city
Design, in its most general terms, will come from within Manchester's creative base
NETWORKS AND CONNECTIVITY
We want to think about connectivity and form new networks, through the use of images, sound and space that are not just intangible and tactile forms
URBAN EXPLORATION AND REDISCOVERY
Exploring the known and the unknown, we aim to rediscover the city
EXPERIENTIAL AND EXPERIMENTAL
We want to think about the experiential value of a design festival; experiencing the old in new ways
We want to think about interactive design, and interacting in the city as individuals to create a community.

﹟SeeYourCity ﹟MakeYourCity ﹟ExperienceYourCity

﹟DesignYourCity

thoughts on todays session?
Psychogeography,
"a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities...just about anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban landscape."
Mapping?

building infrastructures upon roof tops? Collapsible, Mobile? Shipping containers?

Excavator on roof top of 12 story building in Taiyuan

The design studio Playze stacked up shipping containers to create a building for an organic farm in Shanghai, China

Shipping Containers used to create a pop-up Mexican Wahaca restaurant on London's Southbank.
Where diners even receive their own chilli peppers to grow at home.
First opening during the London Design Festival. Mobile?

Tree houses? Building houses? Buildings upon buildings? Towers

Shipping container architecture has been becoming increasingly popular, it is a fairy low budget easy way of constructing a space with many ready available. But what else could you use as an alternative?

Garden sheds? Greenhouses? Caravans? Tents? Something temporary?

Manchester Roof Tops

Using Piccadilly Gardens as a reference point, 

I wanted to illustrate the amount of roof space we could have to play with

These photos are really old

Roof tops

Where to begin?
As more people are flocking to cities they are becoming more and more built up, buildings are getting taller, more houses being built. But every already existing building and new ones being built is taking up an area of land and elevating it to sky high. This area of land still exists, it has just been raised. Why should we waste this? You climb mountains, to get to the top, to look out over our world, or even get trains and cable cars, to do the same thing. Buildings are the mountains of our city, why don't we use this?


So what can we do with this space? As of recent this idea of roof top gardens and urban agriculture have become increasingly popular. Could some kind of interactive project come of this?
http://www.thegreenroofcentre.co.uk/green_roofs

Examples of intrigue

‘Waldspirale’ in Darmstadt, Germany, by the architect Hundertwasser

Green Peaces new ad campaign
As well as the green roof movement there is also a keen push for rooftops to be painted with white reflective paint, this reflects 90% of sunlight opposed to the 20% that reflected by traditional black roofs.

Green walls? Living walls?

I am not sure how i feel about them, they look very groomed

It was discussed in our group meeting this idea of creating an anti-sensory space, creating a human experience rather than a reaction to place. Leading from this looking at the idea of tricking the viewer that they are experiencing something false.
For example getting in a lift where the viewer believes they are going downwards where in fact they are going upwards. But what would be the factors of this that you would need to apply to make this believable? In relation to this it led me on to think about a trickery of the senses. I read the book "Rant" by Chuck Palahniuk some time ago and an idea that was put forth in this book which I find of great interest was this idea of creating a booster. These are experiences that you plug into, almost a progression of film but instead of it just being something you view and hear, the other senses are brought into it to. In the book these are experiences that are recorded by the initial creator, whether fact or fictional which then as the audience you plug into, like you would watch a film, therefore see what they see, hear what they hear, smell what they smell, taste what the taste and feel what they touch.
It's a simple idea in that sense and I think it could be something you could play with in terms of space. Allowing a viewer to enter a space but experiencing the feeling of another. Trickery and confusion. Playing with the idea of what it is that makes a space itself?

As a group, the three key themes that kept arising were:
Made
Waste Time
Mobile
With these ideas in mind we have split into three sub groups,
Space
Made
Promotion

From this I have chosen to work within the Space group. We met up today to discuss further our ideas towards space and how this interacts within a design festival.
Key Spacial Themes

• Artificial space, transitional spaces///familiar spaces,            trickery?
• Abandoned buildings, derelict buildings, nature reclaiming?
• Outside spaces, the river medlock? demolished spaces and alleyways, nooks and crannys of the city,
• Elevated spaces, a roof top city?

But it is what we do, how we work with these spaces to create something exciting? To begin I am intrigued to explore pathways of the city and a rooftop village?

Yesterday I decided to take a walk around the city, take a slight different road to usual and make a conscious decision to look up. My initial plan was to go and find the River Medlock and observe where it intertwines with the city
I need to get better at taking photographs, I wish I had photographic eyes

Space
City space
A battle of buildings
A trend for the abandoned

But what if we look up?
We are always striving for a new and exciting place to make use of
But what about all the wasted space in the sky?

Make buildings like mountains
Light the beacons

British Gas 2010

Island to island

Roof top to roof top

The Biospheric Project

The Biosepheric Project
Manchester International Festival

MIF plan to transform an old mill on the bank on the River Irwell in Salford, called Irwell House into a sustainable site of urban agriculture. Transforming the derelict building as the festival takes place, inviting people to come and watch the transformation.

"this disused industrial site will be filled with innovative sustainable food systems, from agroforestry to aquaponics"
 http://www.mif.co.uk/event/the-biospheric-project

This seems like a very interesting project and something we could propose to engage with. Regeneration of an old site for something new and sustainable. The whole idea of urban agriculture fascinates me. And the use of an indoor both intrigues and baffles. It could be something visually beautiful and perfectly sustainable.

space
a Manchester design festival
looking at space and spaces

discussed themes
MADE  WASTE TIME  MOBILE

what do you find interesting about these themes?

Time and space, a space to slow down,
To pick, To take away
What is regeneration?
A ghost map of the industrial,
Something to leave behind



I like the idea of layers, an empty space of a time gone by, regenerated by something new, not replacing and removing the past, but giving it a new identity, temporarily.
Only for the cycle to repeat,
Leaving behind the stains of past progress
Peeling away wall paper
Billboards

I like the idea of the journey to a space, how you get there, how you find it. This experience will influence your overall impression of the day. The walk is just as important as the destination. I want to play with this idea.

Points of Notice

spaces in the sky
lift it up, raise it up,

trails and breadcrumbs
Eindhoven Design Week shop windows route

I am intrigued by the idea of how you encourage people around the city. One way that was illustrated to us in the lecture upon design festivals was something that takes place in the Eindhoven Design Festival. Where around 90 shops in the main shopping area allow designers and artists to use their windows to showcase their work. Along with this a sign is put up in the window with the design festivals logo and a number, with the idea that there is a trail to follow to see them all, leading you on an adventure around the city. For each window exhibit there is also a chair placed across the road, facing the shop, encouraging the viewer to sit and observe each display, to take time to enjoy it rather than hurry on to the next. Creating an intriguing balance between art, commercialism and design.
Here is a link to the accompanying booklet (in Dutch)

From this I have begun to think about alternative ways to entice people around our city.
A trail of breadcrumbs, either leading you to a certain event or leading you on a wild goose chase of events around Manchester.

Design Festivals

What most struck me about the already existing design festivals is the diversity of the application. The range of exhibitions, themes and events. The different ways of communication, through workshops, interaction and presentation. And as well as this the array of spaces used for such events. I believe it is this diversity and balance that allows the city to feel so exciting. This is something I hope to explore further in this project.

A Manchester Design Festival
Disused warehouse spaces
An industrial city
What is it about Manchester?
How to celebrate the rain?
Where is the greenery?
Gorilla Gardening?         Bees?

Points of Notice

Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens

Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens was one of the leading public entertainment attractions between the mid 17th to the mid 19th century.
To escape the noise and pollution of the city.
Lion tamers, fire eaters, fortune tellers

Urban Gardening

Vertical Gardens

Mama Mia Jam jars
Nature vs. The City
Technology vs. Craft
Balance

Anna Garforth

Head Gardener