Book Ideas

I didn't want to take over and be bossy, but I naturally do take quite a directive approach to tasks like this. Not domineering or pushy, just organising the situation and acting more as a tutor. I attempted to manage the group and to keep notes of all the ideas we came up with.

I think that I'm quite easy going in that unless I have a really strong opinion about something, I am willing to make compromises and follow other people's ideas. This is both a blessing and a curse:

I'm easy to work with and I won't be argumentative in this process. I'll take a seat on the fence, thanks.

I hate making decisions and often rely on the guidance of others (HELP!  WHAT DO YOU THINK?)

Initial Ideas:

James had come in with a full story planned out. He'd obviously spent a lot of time formulating this idea, and I personally really loved it.

I tried to prompt alternative ideas in the team. We had several thoughts drafted up on paper, but none that we really connected to as a team.

We liked the idea of character and started to construct a narrative about David Bowie getting lost in an oriental super market… Fictitious, imaginative and really odd. I liked it, but we had to find something that everyone liked. This was the only solid idea we had so far. I just wanted to get something, ANYTHING finished at this point.

As we are all interested in colour, some really lovely and experimental colour tests were produced.

We easily settled the decision of which two colours to use as everyone agreed on blue and red.

Problems Encountered:

Lots of strong personalities in our group. Everyone wanting to show THEIR SKILLS and THEIR IDEAS, but we had to solve this task together.

I knew that group work would be difficult, but I imagined that coming up with ideas would be the easier part. We're all creative - surely there should be 5 lots of amazing thoughts not just a couple?

People contribute differently. While some students worked quietly, working away at concepts and reflecting in writing, others had much louder voices. It was difficult to balance this and make sure that everyone felt they were being heard.

Having our inductions at different times throughout the day meant that there was always a member of the group missing when a decision was being made. I felt awful when members of the group did not get a chance to submit their opinion before a change was made, but it had to be this way and by summarising upon their return, I think this made the task a little less cruel. When you came back to the group, we told you what you'd missed and asked you what about the next step.

We did the best we could in these circumstances.

After consulting with the tutors, we realised that our 'narrative' should be based on the REAL WORLD and most importantly, informed by our experiences on Monday. We scrapped all of the abstract concepts and looked back on our field trip.

When I returned to the group after my induction, the table was silent. There had been some disagreement over ideas, mostly in that individuals felt protective over their own roughs and refused to compromise by working towards any other book idea.

Matt said he could feel the tension in our group. I was so disappointed by this comment.

We needed to get sorted and stop being so childish. Work professionally.

Lose your pride and make some pictures.

Solutions:

We were joined by our tutor, Matt, to find a way of solving this issue.

Alix had an idea of a real-life theme rather than an abstract concept. Her idea centred on hands: possibly transactions of money between hands or of the many uses of our hands throughout the day.

Matt suggested a process that would encourage us to work together - a game of adding to each other's drawings. Boys drew a blue hand, girls drew red - then swap to add details in the other colour.

Alien at first, but it proved really effective in accepting the theme and producing images quickly.

By the end of this task, we'd produced more work that we had all morning. We'd made more progress in terms of ideas collectively that we had since Monday.

This was beginning to look like a book that we all had some input into, that we all felt at least marginally proud of.

Plan:

We only have tonight and tomorrow morning to prepare ourselves for Wednesday afternoon! We have so much to do and such little time to prepare.

Divide pages into equal (there are five of us and 8 pages, not so fair!) amounts for each member of the group.

Take your idea home and rough it up tonight in two colours.

Draw up onto the coda trace tomorrow after the lecture and be ready to print!