An Inside Look - One Year Later

About a year ago I was asked by Good Things Collective to co-produce and design a zine with Charlotte Done from The Morecambe Riso Press. The zine was meant to give people ‘an inside look’ at what happens at Good Things Collective by highlighting members and the projects they were working on, whilst also serving as a programme of events. People would ideally see the zine, see all the amazing things artists were working on in the area and be prompted to come along to one of GTC’s events to get involved/find out more. With the overall goal of fostering and growing the creative community in Morecambe. Building community and culture, through art and social engagement. It was a really fun and fulfilling project to work on for a number of reasons, and was one of the first instances where I began to realise that I wanted to push my design practice in the direction of being more community focused. 

As you know Good Things Collective are a collective of artists and social entrepreneurs; for anyone with a creative, sustainable or socially focused practice. I am one of around 35 members and together put on events for the local community, run workshops, collaborate on projects and plenty more. I am also fortunate enough to be able to work for the collective one day a week. I help with communications and promotion mostly, making posters for events, creating visual identities for things in our regular programming, creating social media content etc. I had started off doing this freelance and had been doing so for a couple of months when I was approached about the zine project last year. I was new to the collective and was very grateful that they took a chance on me when they asked me to co-produce it. It was my first project of this type that had funding behind it and was in no doubt a turning point in my career which has helped me get to where I am today and informed a lot about what I do in my practice.  

For the zine production I was going to be working with Charlotte Done who runs the Morecambe Riso Press. Working with Charlotte was an absolute delight. We had lots of brainstorming sessions, divided up the work in a way that played to both of our strengths as designers and it was my first introduction to using the riso printer. Gaining access to this new skill and tool alongside this project helped me develop my ideas about using print as a tool for community engagement (you can read more about that here). An idea that pushed my work in the direction it is going towards now. I have since gone on to use the riso for many other projects, have written blog posts for the Morecambe Riso Press to help newcomers learn how to use it; and even run riso workshops at Aunty Social in Blackpool. Work involving the riso now makes up a large percentage of the freelance work I do and this would never have happened if I had not been introduced to Riso for ‘An Inside Look’. Not to mention I now have an amazing working relationship and friendship with Charlotte and we continue to work on projects together which is always exciting. 

Overall An Inside Look was not only a turning point for me but also the genesis of new ideas and ways of working that make up my practice today. 

A very special thank you to Good Things Collective and The Morecambe Riso Press.