A Conversation with Dr Paula Crutchlow
The idea of All the Beautiful Things of Bodmin comes from the passion and pride of belonging that some people have demonstrated in conversations we’ve had with them. Also the challenge of Bodmin not being what some people want in a town – mainly to do with economic challenges and design/planning decisions. How the town identifies itself to others outside it is complex – the history of the prison, the asylum, the county court. But also its status as former county town, and the many important things that happened in Bodmin – including the beautiful revolts 🙂 The current beauty as well as the beautiful heritage, is the passion of people to make community happen – like the revival of Bodmin Riding and the cultural resurgence in the town and the new chamber of commerce, Adrienne’s work and Into Bodmin.
Geographer Doreen Massey talks about how a place communicates itself to the outside, is part of what it draws into itself. How a place communicates itself to others is constituted from its culture – what its citizens want, think and do, and how that interacts with its systems of governance. I can’t find the exact article that says that at the moment, but I have attached another article by Doreen Massey called a Global Sense of Place which might be interesting for you to read. Also here is an online article on place and identity by a couple of other well known cultural geographers: https://peopleplacespace.org/toc/section-3/
What is considered beautiful is a contentious thing – but also very open. We don’t all agree, but anyone can have an opinion on it. The invitation of the project is therefore to present as many ideas and opinions of what Bodmin residents find beautiful in Bodmin as possible. To present these things in as beautiful a way as possible, with the help of Bodmin people. To invite people into that presentation process so it becomes their project as much as ours. It therefore hopefully becomes a suggestion and an affirmation that leads to more affirmation and positive change of some kind.
Of course we will fail to present all the beautiful things, but it is also beautiful in itself for people to work together to achieve something. All the things we do in Blind Ditch work attempts to be an invitation to conversation – a framing or presenting of a set of materials that helps people to discuss the issues it’s approaching more together, and more articulately. It’s not trying to build a consensus about what is beautiful, but asking the question ‘what is beautiful here?’ so that people think about it more in Bodmin. Including all the things we don’t put in the project!
Design Development: Further conversations with Dr Paula Crutchlow
So first up I want to say thanks – as you started the design conversation happening around the project on Tuesday. It was something I hadn’t thought about at all, it needed to happen and I was putting it off! So it was really valuable that you sent those designs so quickly.
I spent a couple of hours with my friend yesterday and we came up with a postcard design that has the right elements I think to encourage interaction from people and starts to tell the story of the project – but is also not right for what we need. It’s accessible – but not in the right way. The feel of it is not right, and it is missing the clean edge and feeling of beautiful things being special that you caught in your first postcard design.
I had a conversation with Fin about it all yesterday, as I think it’s better to slightly delay the writing interaction and get things right – the project reach, the branding, the potential collaboration with you – rather than be hasty and put something out that sets everything up wrong.
The above post card was designed by Dr Crutchlow and her friend, Paula concluded that this also does not hit the brief and have the correct aesthetic that she is looking for. She then asked me to re-look at the post card and I sent her the below for feedback.
There are a number of designs here I believe should work given what has been asked and there are a few that I would like to continue working on. I am awaiting feedback from Paula and Fin with ideas about moving forward.
The final outcomes use colour to separate each one of the ten postcards. Each postcard has its own instruction that will be collected once completed.
Pixels and Serifs. 