Yesterday I hosted a fab event alongside Shauna McGregor. It was an interactive exhibi- tion come photo shoot. We borrowed clothes from local designers Hayley Scanlan and Kerrie ALDO, got Holly Scanlan on board to do hair, contacted a few of our model friends and asked Kathryn Rattray to take some photos. We had gold foil backgrounds, stacks of chairs, glitter, tinsel and a plastic flamingo to play with as well. One wall even had a mock washing line with huge white briefs that had ‘feminist’ screen printed in pearlescent pink on the back pegged to it.
We wanted to get people talking about what was going on at the time; we encouraged people to discuss the Ferguson shooting, recent bans on UK pornography and feminism. Using the stacks of old magazine we had left out, we wanted people to draw their thoughts out, stick up phrases, and make collages to illustrate what they had been talking about. We got some really good conversations going, as well as some interesting things happening on the wall.
The reason for the event was primarily research for our dissertations. I wanted find out how to get people engaged in conversation, I was trying to think of different ways to start conversations as well as thinking of new ways to record what people’s thoughts were. That is where the collaging idea came from, it kind of killed both birds with one stone, and also it was super fun. The other part the event played was producing images that we could include in our reports, we are both doing different modules, Shauna’s is about communication and media and mine is a business report. Both of them being about magazines, we felt it was important to make them look the part. My proposed magazine works on a multi platform blueprint, producing content through online channels, such as a website and social media. It would also put on events similar to this one, in order to engage readers in different ways.
I think the event, on the whole, was a success. We got a lot of positive feedback as well as all the interaction on the night. The two different things going on went quite well, but I feel they could have worked better as individual events; it was hard for us to facilitate both things at once. That is definitely something I will take forward into future event planning.
Marigold 