electric angel /design for life

pyschogeography, postcards and place

to accompany the production of the CHART Scarborough map and to follow the success of the workshops with local residents which amongst other things, sought to identify the essence of scarborough, a postcard project was launched. this teamed local residents – a mix of teenagers and older adults – with a poet and photographer to talk about and photograph the places that had resonance for them.

photographer tony bartholomew took the final photos used on the postcards and john w clarke shaped the verbal and written material into prose and scratch-poems for the rear of the cards relating to that place. some poignant, some playful, the wordplay also extends to the minutiae of text often seen on postcards such as the publisher – we designed logos for some. each is addressed as if travelling to the place but using ‘mind map’ directions, not a conventional address. we designed each card in a slightly different style based on postcards we randomly found, the ‘postmark’ and ‘stamp’ linking them into a set and to the map.

the cards are scattered around public buildings and cultural venues in Scarborough, there are 12 to collect if you fancy hunting them down. the 12th will give you the CHART Scarborough map references of the places the photos were taken so you can visit for yourself.

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more CHART

a couple more pics of the CHART Scarborough map (that’s Culture, Heritage and ART Scarborough) to show the size. it folds down to normal DL leaflet/envelope size but with the photographic side we hoped to create something that was interesting/attractive enough to be a poster too. which way up you display it is up to you – it’s designed so there is no top, bottom, left or right (although personally i’d snip off the cover before framing).

CHART Scarborough map

here’s the job that’s been consuming much of our thought and time over the last 6 months. it’s been a big project, not just in terms of time but also the thinking and research that has gone into its production.

it’s a free map intended to encourage visitors and residents explore the town from a cultural perspective. for this to work, we researched cognitive mapping theory – the idea that you can draw maps that aid people to build better mental pictures of places and thus navigate them in a more intelligent way. this works if your map can show in an instantly recognisable way, the key places and spaces that the brain uses to remember and form journeys.

as well as using workshops with residents to identify how people currently move around the town, we’ve deliberately ‘loaded’ our map with cultural landmarks to try and encourage use of those places as an aid to navigation, thus subtly changing patterns of movement in the town by those who use the map. that’s the idea anyhow – as far as we know this hasn’t been tried before. we’ve also added a few theories of our own, particularly about the use of colour in communicating sense of place.

the reverse side further encourages exploration by using a ‘map’ of photographic images (all taken in-house) that we hope will prompt exploration of a town that often suffers from predictable patterns of movement. poems by two local poets – john w clarke and kate evans – add some context and entice further.

this is stage one of the project. stage two will be an intreractive online version. for now, accompanying trails can be downloaded from the website – www.chartscarborough.com – and more are being added every week. if you would like to know more about the theory, workshops and interventions as part of this project you can also read the project’s blog there. the map itself can be picked up at venues across scarborough (or just get in touch if you’d like us to post you one).

chart scarborough launch

some photos from last night’s launch event.

it began with a visit from william smith and other notables from scarborough’s cultural heritage…

…and finished with a brilliant performance by scarborough hip-hip school.

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visuals were largely the work of our placement student, emma, created from the map artwork. we used 4 projectors to create a wall of constantly changing images.

stacks of work

stacks of the CHART Scarborough maps lining our windowsill in preparation for tomorrow’s launch. we’ll show you the whole thing after the launch (gotta give people some reason to come…*)

also we forgot to give our customary work placement shout out to emma, who right now is working on the visuals for the launch. she’s with us for the next fortnight.

*actually, a unique performance by sjt outreach and some moves from scarborough hip-hop school are pretty good reasons. wine too. and food.

an invitation to wander

our big project of the last six months has been CHART Scarborough – an initiative to encourage residents and visitors to the town to explore the locale in a more inquisitive culturally aware way.

stage 1 is a printed map based around cognitive mapping theory – in short, a map that’s designed to work in harmony with your brain, not demand that you learn map-reading skills. this is launched, along with an off-shoot postcards project and a series of downloadable trails next wednesday. it’ll be interesting to see how it’s received as the project has evolved a long way since the original idea of ‘an arts trail’. we’ve done a fair bit of reading and research on this project including a number of workshops and consultations. you can follow the history on the CHART Scarborough blog: www.chartscarborough.com

this is the invitation to the launch which includes a section of the map and encourages the invitee to follow a trail that spells out C H A R T en route to the venue.
(CHART stands for Culture, Heritage and ART, by the way).

we have intervened

the intention of CHART Scarborough interventions was to both raise awareness of the project and to get some input from the wider community. this was done by two competitions: one prompted by signs placed on prominent buildings around the town [that's a window in the art gallery above and stephen joseph theatre below - we also did woodend creative workspace, customer 1st/town hall, renaissance office and the library] and via the local newspaper, the scarborough evening news, who ran a week-long competition and intend to print a version of the map in the newspaper when it’s complete.

we also stencilled messages in the town centre which we hope will prompt a few people to think about place in a new way – part of CHART Scarborough’s intention to encourage locals as well as visitors to navigate around the town to a different set of criteria. we’ve got some [albeit simple] philosophy on how a map can change perception of place and thus the person courtesy of walter benjamin, guy debord et al. we’ll treat you to that little nugget another day…

intervening with CHART Scarborough

CHART Scarborough is one of the big projects were currently working on. the main focus is a map of scarborough based around cognitive mapping theory aka legible cities thinking, that has the intention of encouraging people to navigate the town via cultural destinations. to raise awareness prior to the launch and to encourage some wider participation in the project there’ll be a series of ‘interventions’ around the town over the next few weeks.

some are pretty straight forward like the sign above that went up outside the library yesterday, some will be more situationist guerilla art. i’m not saying any more about those… if you’re in scarborough you’ll hopefully discover one by chance. there’ll also be a week-long competition in the local newspaper.

the library sign is the first time – if you discount the progress reports on www.chartscarborough.com – that an section of the map has been seen in public. this is still a work in progress and there’ll be some changes to this after a couple more community workshops and feedback from the interventions, but it will give you a good idea of what it’s going to look like. the map will be packaged as part of a leaflet in which we intend to break away from the traditional imagery found on publications promoting this part of the world – ‘map as art object’ is one of the phrases from the original brief…

chart in print

this month’s renaissance news includes a centrepsread about CHART Scarborough so far – or you can catch up on the blog. it’s the first time the logo has been seen in print and gives a hint as to how it’s designed to be used as a containing shape as well as traditional logo. it’s going to be cropping up all over the place shortly – if you see us wandering around town measuring up various windows and signboards on monday you’ll gather something is cooking…

mapping culture

we tweeted it a few weeks ago, but are delighted to formally anounce that we have been awarded the contract in a competitive pitch to design the printed and web-based version of CHART Scarborough (formerly known as Scarborough Arts Trail). the first step has been to create a blog that will document the process as we carry out research and undertake trials with people using different methods of navigating scarborough’s cultural hotspots: www.chartscarborough.com

expect us going on off all sorts of cartography tangents on there. but we’ll pop the odd post on here as we reach milestones in the project. we’ve already come up with the name with project leader, dorcas taylor, and really looking forward to working on the rest of this project.