TF/17-18
Projects supported during research and development in 2017-18.
Debbie Lim
‘Enhancing Experience of Painting’ also known as the EEP Kit, is a painting kit designed to enhance the whole experience of painting by focusing on the process and the act of painting rather than what you are putting onto paper. People have this idea that painting is only for those who do know how to paint, that is creating a beautiful piece. This kit would enable people to break this barrier. Through enhancing the experience, the process becomes the most crucial part rather than the final outcome. Each tool in the kit is designed so as to trigger all sorts of emotions by focusing on the tools and the aspect of using them through the act painting and encouraging people to engage with it.
Whilst initially investing the notion of Art Therapy, I could not quite engage within the field, and I wanted to better understand what they do, how they do it, and why they do it. The Tom Fund enabled me to attend two taster sessions; one organised by the MA Department of Art Psychotherapy at Goldsmiths and another one by Art Therapy4all Studio.
These opportunities allowed me to get involve in workshops and engage in conversations with professionals and experienced therapists who helped me better understand what they do. These enabled me see how my work and process relates and contrasts with theirs.
The fund allowed me to progress through my research and experiments, and for that I’d like to say thank you for generosity and the help you provided for this project!
Michelle Wong
The notion of biased news sources is something that is shocking but accepted. It is this dangerous acceptance that this project focuses on. My project explored notions of stereotypes within the media, specifically the Daily Mail. It uses theatre, and ideas of Commedia Dell’Arte and Theatre of the Oppressed, as a method to attempt to create awareness of media literacy and critically reflect news sources in a time where notions of the othering and problematic uses of tropes are more prevalent. In short, this project was a way to use active design methods to engage and create a critical discussion about current affairs.
The Tom Fund allowed me to hire 6 actors to test out the different structures of improvisation. It also allowed me to invite the real life version of the archetypes to allow me to rupture and challenge the characters. The Tom Fund has allowed me to fully test out the system and it has reaped entertaining and provoking outcomes.
Niki Burton
With a large portion of ‘public space’ used for a parked car, often unoccupied, I deemed this space wasted. Targeting how public space can be made more constructive, I used the issue of the 10-year-long waiting lists for an allotment to subvert parking spaces through my portable allotment towed by bike. It becomes a hub that attempts to bridge a gap between spatial and social issues by using gardening’s therapeutic attributes as a tool for community participation. This, as well as running workshops, then creates an infrastructure that uses each plant to signify its planter, becoming an indirectly social growing network whilst being a space to congregate.
My name is Niki Burton, I’m a 25 year old Design student from London interested in how public space can be better used in inner cities. I’ve created small spatial interventions earlier on in the year but The Tom fund enabled me to actualize my project to the next step by funding the cart I needed to use as the foundation for which my allotment would be built on top of. This then allowed for me to cycle my allotment to different public spaces which made for some fantastic public engagement that wouldn’t have been possible or had near the same impact without the funding.
Elaine Xu
Living Heritage is an exploration of the future of learning in museums, it ties together museum objects with the stories behind them by creating an automated immersive experience where users are invited to become a part of that story. The space is set in the context of China's Cultural Revolution period, when historical buildings were knocked down, valuable antiques and artefacts were broken to pieces and books of literature burnt to ashes. A semi-demolished safehouse provided sanctuary to what culture remains in a last desperate cry. Living Heritage is a vessel representing the Intangible Cultural Heritage, it tells a narrative of objects and human connections behind museum windows and conveys the tales that's been long forgotten.
The fund enabled the realisation of my installation. I have spent time prototyping the mechanical elements in order to fully understand and design a working process that uses a combination of traditional and contemporary materials and ideas. With the right materials I was able to proceed with my plans to create a fully working and immersive experience, and it allowed me to develop the final outcome to a higher standard.
Oscar Rohleder
Sonic Environments is a conceptual exhibition of interconnected themes that revolved around re-approaching culture through one's integral senses, with a focus on tangibility and sonic perception.
Culminating out of a series of cassette based experiments throughout the year, the Sonic Environments Exhibition took place on the 26th of April at Safe house 2 in Peckham.
The exhibit both showcased a cultural sound exchange between the London’s Barbican Estate and the Sacred sights of Buganda, Africa, while also playing host to a curatorial display of work from other artist, all which had generated work in relation to the sonic environments thematic.
Sonic Environments is planned to be showcased in other spaces around the globe, each time playing host to a new curatorial arrangement of cultural sound exchanges, supported by an array of contributing artists.
I used the Tom Fund to help me financing the exhibit, enabling me to rent out a fitting space and quality equipment that enabled me to showcase my final project to its utmost potential.
Sahar Gestel
In Cook (Not) Like Your Mother, young women tell their stories and gain insight into becoming a woman nowadays. The interviews are designed in an anthropological/ documentary style.
While cooking a beloved dish from their childhood, participants reflect on their mothers, and themselves, in the domestic context. How they see cooking (and caring) roles reveals the work of constructing their feminine identity in intergenerational relation to their mothers, grandmothers, fathers, gender-roles, as opposed to who they want to be.
With the help of the Tom Fund I was able to conduct more of the interviews which were at the heart of my project. I used the bursary to buy an automated transcription software that shortened the time it took me to process each interview. It was at a crucial time for my project, when I knew I need more data, more material to work with; interviewing and developing the method and experience I was designing. As each interview was about an hour of recording, it took me quite some time to transcribe. The software enabled me to accomplish more and cover more ground.
These interviews were analysed, materialised into recipe books, designed to reveal to the readers the true intricacies of mother-daughter relations. I hope to give readers, both men and women, a glimpse of young women’s everyday struggle to construct a gender-role that fits. Each book represent each participant’s recipe, but tells the story of two women.
George Brown
TAWK is an online platform rooted by a site-specific discussion show, created for, and by young people, who seek a space to express and have their voices heard. Each episode revolves around a different central topic, using different sites in the area as a lens for discussion, with new and returning guests, relevant to each issue.
The TAWK studio-bike is a modified bike trailer that transforms into the filming set and also contains all the equipment needed to make the show happen. This mobile capability enables discussions to take place on site, in an environment that relates to and adds, context to the what is being discussed. urther unpacking the issues being discussed, and introduce people living locally to different ways to understand and respond to the issues that affect them.
TAWK creates the space for discussion and engagement with current topics; offering entertaining, informative viewing, whilst also creating opportunities for content creation, video production, discussion, and storytelling telling and a tool for others to use as a way to involve young people in about issues that relate to their projects.
My name is George Brown, I am a designer, filmmaker and photographer. The Tom Fund enabled me to purchase the equipment and materials to construct the studio-bike, meaning I was able to realise my idea without considerably compromising my design.
Samantha Whitethread
‘Soft Systems’ is an exploration into alternative methods of learning, and the ways in which we access knowledge. It aims to utilise the space created when engaged in functionless craft activities, and investigating how this fits within the larger scale of society, such as educational institutions.
This is a system that uses crochet to mobilise thought, both conscious and subconscious for the purpose of exploring how embodied knowledge can change our learning. This particular type of knowledge is a form of slow, visual learning. These are repeated activities that feel as though they belong to the body as opposed to the brain, for example riding a bike. Crochet is used to demonstrate this, it is a slow repetitive physical process. The approach uses a system as an interrogative device. It is a process, not a product.
In order to bring this to fruition I created interview kits, which allowed participants to record their thought process whilst performing a crochet task. These ‘stream of consciousness’ style activities, were used to design an access point to this way of learning, enabling it to be employed.
I amassed a large archive of these interviews and The Tom Fund allowed me to obtain a transcription software that made the task of analysing possible. Without it, I would have been unable to perform this task due to the time restraints. It enabled me to collect a wider range of data, which became the same source material for my project, as it drove the making of the material objects.
I am very grateful for the money provided by the fund, your generosity furthered both my project and my practice, thank you.
Sechele Mtitimilla
SYAO is a project which reflects and parody’s consumer culture. The title is an anagram for 'Shit You Already Own' and the project acts as a service: part speculation, part practical system. Applicants who take part can expect the objects they have already bought to be repackaged, photographed and uploaded to both social media and an online shop before being posted back to their home address. By doing this, the consumer image can be used as a tool to re-birth the ‘Shit You Already Own’. The project is both a satirical critique of online shopping culture and a functioning business. The result is an implausible, economically illogical, socially driven business.
The Tom Fund enabled me to mimic existing marketing strategies through paid online promotion of Facebook and Instagram. It also helped me to scale up the service by funding postage. This was integral for the project to be an accurate reflection of current consumer trends.
Beth Bridgen
In the 21st Century, bootlegging has become an ingrained cultural system for production of objects. My project started with merely causing interventions to challenge notions of “real”, before becoming the “Tate Fiction”. In society we learn by imitation and appropriation, I wanted to apply this same re-imaging of existing to artwork in order to create a system for making and redefining "new".
A performance design piece that aims to create a space of authenticity, I wanted to critique the art world and the institutionalised trust we have in curators. The Tom Fund allowed me to be able to fully assume my role of curator through providing the funding to hold a pop-up gallery in Peckham. A space that aimed to be as authentic as possible, yet all the work in it was not quite what it seemed, produced by famous forgers, relatives of artist and the public through participatory workshops at the Tate. As my ideas became physically tangible I was able to test the way my systems worked in real interaction with the world. This was a crucial part of the project, as it hinged on real life interaction to challenge and change the current gallery discourse.
Jieun Lee
“Air pollution infuses the fabric”
Nocto is the first garment brand that created using air pollution. An exploration is started from questioning why most people become aware of environmental problems through negative images. My project is aimed at raising awareness of air pollution in less negative and repurposing the pollutants into new tools of design.
Air pollution from cars is captured by cleaning a specific tunnel in London and is used to create two different pigments, which are then applied and expressed through the fashion line. My fashion label embodies not only the process of cleaning up the pollution, but also the potential use of it at the same time.
We can’t actually see and feel the car pollution, but if it is visualised, people can see, feel, and touch it. I hope people acknowledge how car pollution is closer than they’ve thought and see the potential for future materials.
The first pigments are produced from accumulated dust in Rotherhithe tunnel for my first collection 2018.
The Tom Fund enabled me to produce my own pigment from air pollution and make it with existence. Conveying from the process to outcome was highly crucial on my project, since I needed to create my own pigments and apply through real garments for reality. Without the support and opportunity, I couldn’t finalise my outcome.
Louise Gannon
The ‘Millennial Housing’ project, highlights the present Housing Crisis struggle that the Millennial generations (born in the mid-1980’s – 2000’s) are put through in 2018. The affordability of Millennials owning their own home in Greater London has collapsed from 53% in 1998 and has fallen to just 16% in 2018. Within the Borough of Brent, nearly 77% of land has been built onto however, the remainder of 24% is natural or Green urban land.
‘Millennial Housing’ uses the vehicle of activism, for Millennials to occupy sites of unused open space land, as spaces where millennials can occupy as temporary housing. This piece of portable architecture can also create community awareness discussions of our current ongoing issues of the Housing Crisis, from the borough of Brent to the whole of the UK.
The Tom Fund support has allowed me to engage in using various materials, to create the vehicle of activism for Millennial Housing. It has also allowed me to involve working with my dad who is a builder by trade, learning new skills from him. Whilst enabling myself to create an activism vehicle structure which occupies unused sites of land within the Brent borough. Whilst engaging with community to discuss the structure that has been built and creating discussions inside the living space, about the issues of the Housing Crisis and things that could be done to benefit the Millennial generation who want to get onto the property ladder; but also, issues surrounding the younger generation, who are even younger than Millennials and considering their future of housing in society.
Finally, I would like to thank the Tom Fund for their generosity and the help provided in developing my project.