Gay Sheep

Well, I haven't mentioned a thing about the group project as of yet. To be completely honest, I wasn't looking forward to it at all at the beginning of the course. That did change however, once I hooked up with the other members of my group and we started bouncing ideas around. I thought I might actually get something worthwhile out of it. That said, I still regarded it as 'number 2' after my main course work so I was admittedly relatively relieved after the dreaded 0% lecture that upset so many people. I totally understand why people were peeved - if I done a significant amount of work, I too would have been slightly ...annoyed. Nevertheless, since our group had already come up with an idea, we decided to pursue it to the stage where we would present a proposal, rather than any physical 'piece'.

Our main idea centred around the Preston Guild:

"Preston Guild is held only once every 20 years and links the city’s heritage and traditions with its ambitions for the future. The guild also recognises Preston’s importance as a place to trade and learn new skills with which to build a successful career.

During guild year, the whole community comes together to celebrate with a series of events and attractions, including traditional church, community and trades processions. There is also a torchlight procession as well as an array of dances, fireworks and sporting events."

We decided to think about how we could contribute and our ideas started to focus on creating some kind of 'float' which could be part of a procession in the next 2012 Guild. As soon as we started looking at visual traits and representations of Preston my ears pricked up. I researched these symbols and found by far the most common and prominent figure of Prestons heritage to be the lamb - illustrative of the Cities lucrative Wool trade. While other members of the group looked at the decoration of the float, traditional Preston dialogue, trade and culture I thought about a mascot or representative of the festival. Originally I sketched out an idea for a "sheep-suit" to be worn, in the same vein as a football mascot on the float. I didn't really like the outcome and so ended up creating a more fantastical picture of the sheep in the image of some 80's he-man-esque super-hero, proudly carrying Preston's flag. My idea was that it could be used as promotional material for both the event itself and perhaps Preston as a city.

In terms of a learning outcome, I did find out a lot of stuff I didn't know about the city. You wouldn't think this is my 5th year here! And it was interesting to meet people from different disciplines and see what inspired them and what things they found interesting and why. Although it has obviously been a flop and as far as I know a lot of the groups aren't planning on showing anything tomorrow, I'm glad I've done something. It's another image in the portfolio I guess! =P

Hmmm, looking back at that picture now .....it's kind of disturbing.