OUGD603 - Mass Art day 1

For my external collaboration, I decided to take part in the collaboration with students from Boston's MassArt university. For this brief we had been tasked with finding a visual narrative for the city of Leeds, and to create something that could celebrate it in some way. Working together as a group of 5, we began the day by showing the MassArt students around Leeds University campus, the Corn Exchange and Leeds Market.

Our aim was to study the traditions and heritage of the city, in the hopes that we could build up a research project that could explore the unique trademarks of Leeds. We began discussing the possibilities for a visual narrative and gathered several ideas about Leeds that make it a unique city. 

• Leeds is a popular student destination with opportunities for graduating young students.
• The architecture we found was a mix between the tradition heritage of the city and contemporary modern design. We found that many new buildings around Leeds city centre were visually identified by their geometric patterns and silver and gold colour schemes.
• We found Leeds to be a fast paced location for commuters and young professionals, with bustling night life and plenty of locations that accommodate to student life. 

Ideas

• A newspaper or publication, designed for tourists that can share typically British material in a sarcastic way. This idea came from the notion that British humour is national to our identity and it can be found where ever we go in the UK. It also derived from the idea that newspapers often publish stories of complaints or incidents that have little relevance to our lives. From this, we thought that creating a publication would be one way to express British humour in a way that can attract visitors to the city and entice them into reading physical material.
• Another option would be to create an identity that can represent the city as a whole. As it is a fast growing and ever changing city, we thought that the identity could show this through poster art or some form of way finding that could be placed around the city.

Photos

Collecting photographs around the city would give us material to work from in terms of Leeds architecture, street businesses and people. We found that there was a mix between the traditional grade 2 listed buildings, which reflect the city's heritage and the modern buildings that use geometric shapes to reflect the growing creativity of Leeds. In terms of our narrative for the project, this would be good research to use as it would show the Mass Art students how the city is developing in the modern world but remains true to its values and traditions.

Visiting several independent student locations, such as Dry Dock would give Mass Art students a feel for student life in the city. This is an important aspect of the project, if we are to focus on the student population and the places familiar to them.

One thing that was known to students in the area was the Otley Run, a well known pub crawl that involves several pubs in the town centre, down to Headingley. This could also be referenced in the project, as it is seen as part of Leeds' student culture.