After finalising our documents yesterday, today brought the start of production here at Events Q!

We spent our morning doing test prints in the workshop, making sure the colours and alignment were working to our liking. The riso printer works with two colours at a time and often needs a little alignment adjustment and colour sampling to ensure the best quality. This process also allowed us to try out out paper choice before creating the final pieces. After several tests, tweaks and group discussions we found the best set up and programmed the machines ready to produce our document!

More to follow....

DAY TWO - Today saw us getting out in to the city to talk to businesses situated within our three sites. We've managed to collect many responses to our survey and a wealth of information to be used in our mapping process. Tomorrow will see us begin to compile the knowledge gathered and experiment with the aesthetics of our map.

Thanks to all the local businesses that have taken a couple of minutes out of their day to talk of us, it's been greatly informative!

Over the two weeks we are aiming to go out in to the city and visit local cafes, shops and restaurants to find local initiatives that offer short term help to those who and sleeping on the streets in Manchester. This will involve questionnaires and speaking to the people who work and own local businesses to gauge a general opinion.

Our final chosen location is the Northern Quarter, specifically looking at the immediate area surrounding Oldham Street. This site was chosen because of the many small-businesses that are humanitarian in their approach to retail.

This morning we welcomed speakers from across the city to come in and talk to us about the many opportunities to work with the homeless throughout Manchester. These engaging conversations are going to help us identify the key issues to begin our research and start a conversation between the students and local charities. This afternoon we are conducting desk research in to these charities and other local businesses before we go visit the three site locations tomorrow!

This lecture featured Ollie Martin's work 'Sounds of the Streets', a soundscape featuring recordings of the streets of Manchester that is being adapted to be used in an art installation to be built and designed by WOAH.

The Installation design can be found here: https://www.instagram.com/woahwithoutahome/
And check out a sample of the soundscape here: https://youtu.be/bl3WbN85Jcs

Events Q

Over the two weeks we are aiming to go out in to the city and visit local cafes, shops and restaurants to find local initiatives that offer short term help to those who and sleeping on the streets in Manchester. This will involve questionnaires and speaking to the people who work and own local businesses to gauge a general opinion.

Our second location is Oxford Road. Similarly to Piccadilly Gardens, this site was chosen because of the high density of both rough sleepers and chain retail food establishment. This area was also chosen s a result of it recently undergoing redeveloped as a number of luxury living apartments are on site with an increase of rough sleepers using the scaffolding as shelter.

Over the two weeks we are aiming to go out in to the city and visit local cafes, shops and restaurants to find local initiatives that offer short term help to those who and sleeping on the streets in Manchester. This will involve questionnaires and speaking to the people who work and own local businesses to gauge a general opinion.

We are aiming to centralise on three key locations in Manchester. The first is Picadilly Gardens. This site was chosen because of the high density of both rough sleepers and chain retail food establishments making it a key area for local initiatives to be in place.

Did you know that there are nine cafes (including starbucks!) that offer their customers to pay for suspended coffees that rough sleepers can access? It is these sorts of initiatives we are hoping to discover and highlight with the city of Manchester so that everyone knows how to help and access them!

We have started to compile knowledge and resources that will help us to create a mapping of the many great initiatives available for the existing homeless community in Manchester. Next, we will be looking in to local charities and shops that also provide both short and long term solutions, enabling us to create an informational poster and pamphlet to be handed out to all those that are effected by homelessness and for those who are willing to give a little back!


#WOAHWednesday

Take a look at our session plan! Over the two weeks we plan to research, analyse and present a knowledge database that is yet to have been published before! We'll even have a look at interesting new production techniques such as rise printing! #AreYouAware