WE ARE NOT IMMIGRANTS

By: Rapolas Vilunas (team leader), Hubert Mietkiewicz, Rory Caseberry, Jake Pogson, Jack Martin

 

 

Week 1

With the start of our first week of work on this exciting new project brief we went straight to work some foundation work and planning. A lot of discussion was needed to further develop the concept and truly establish what we're going to do and how we're going to do it. We decided to take a multi-media approach whereby our goal is to give voice to the Syrian refugees, providing an in-depth, personal and visually captivating look into their struggle. This is to be achieved through a website, a publication and an exhibition.

  • The website's purpose is to inform of the facts about the Syrian crisis, advertise the exhibition, provide a platform for pre-orders (later, orders) of the publication.
  • The purpose of the exhibition is to again, inform of the crisis, advertise the website and visualize the stories of the refugees.
  • The publication's purpose is to visualize the stories of the refugees and raise money for charities supporting the cause.
  • As seen, the three are meant to work in synergy.

We also began further research into the crisis itself and began shaping the brand image of this multi-media project. The name that we've decided on is "We Are Not Immigrants" - bold, impactful, blunt and informative. We strive to carry the same theme across all of our work during this project. Below are: brand colours, font examples, exhibition planning, website layout screenshots and an early stylistic example of the pieces to be exhibited. Please bear in mind that this is very early development and that everything is subject to change.

 

Brand coloursFont examplesWebsite layout

 

Week 2

This week has been a week full of paperwork and verbal discussion/development for me and my team. We spent a large deal of our time discussing various elements of the brand image for our project We Are Not Immigrants as well as the 'mechanism', if you will, of the four aspects of the project and how they work together.

Furthermore, we had a meeting with Miriam Sorrentino to discuss the brand image as well as our overall approach to delivering that which we aim to do, which is giving voice to the refugees.

I was also able to meet with David Waterworth with his return from being abroad. This resulted in a successful booking of an exhibition space for the 4th of January to the 24th. However, I was informed that in order to host any exhibition within university grounds an Ethics Consideration form must be filled out and be considered by a committee. This is a relatively lengthy process which may take up to a month and a half to go through. Nevertheless, it is still within our time frame for the exhibition and we are confident that all will be well.

With no time to waste, I've gotten to work with acquiring the form and getting information on how to make the process as smooth and quick as possible via contacting Chris Brown, Isil Onol and Anton Sentic.

 

Week 3

A big thing for us this week has been the submission of the ethics consideration form to the university's ethics committee. If all goes well, this will guarantee the university's support of our project as well as the holding of the exhibition 4th-24th of January. I've made sure that the form's up to scratch by collaborating with our head tutor and CPDA's own representative of the ethics committee. All that remains is to hope for the best, so fingers crossed!

Other than that we've continued to further research the crisis, plan the website structure and fine tune the branding of the project. However, this is proving to be a challenge as we've yet to communicate with the refugees themselves. 

Our communication with charities continues. We've made arrangements to meet some of the refugees living within London through a small charity later this month, but we continue our search as there may always be better options out there.

Everything is slowly beginning to come together and it's quite exciting.

More pictures from our visual elements development pictures can be seen below. As always, all visual communication is in early development and idea display phase.

 

Week 4

This week hasn't been the most eventful for our team. We've been eagerly awaiting the reply from the university's ethics committee on our form, which right now is the most crucial part for the success of the project and pretty much the only risk/obstacle remaining in our path.

Other than that, the main points of progress have been for the website and the logo of the project. 

The website is the component of the project which relies the least on the interaction with refugees and it's findings. This is due to the amount of work required to flesh out it's structure. Only in the later stages of the website's development, when it's time to work on the design, will it become heavily relevant.

As I mentioned, some progress was made on the logo and it is thus far the best one we've come up with, according to our tutor Miriam. However, as our team mate Jack pointed out, it could be improved to communicate the charity's name clearer by not using an acronym and instead having the full name on display. Therefore he is working to do so.

 

Week 5

Another busy week passes by for us. By now we've received replies from every charity we emailed. We also received news from every charity that we'd been redirected to. Unfortunately, none of them were able to help us, except for a single one. Solidarity 4 Refugees.

Seeing as it's the only charity that have agreed to help us, we have decided to remain with them and continue our partnership.

We're also still eagerly awaiting the decision from the university's ethics consideration committee who have yet to get back to us.

Lastly, we tackled a very big challenge which was a critique session for our course concerning this particular project. For the purpose of the session we had to create designs of everything that we intend to do, which included print advertising, exhibition, publication and website.

We received a rather good response, which means that the current designs will largely remain the same with small changes made. We'll just have to replace the content with our own.

 

Week 6

We're very happy to announce that this week we finally received our reply from the university's ethics committee and our project has been successfully evaluated and approved. That is, if we adhere to the three following conditions:

 

1. You must not interview any refugee who has been in the country for less than 2 years (as they could be considered vulnerable, having had a recent traumatic experience).

2. They must be able to speak English, and understand your questions, without an interpreter or translator.

3. You must follow full confidentiality and anonymity procedures. This means that names must be anonymised in any written outputs / data collection.

 

Needless to say, we were okay with following the above conditions, all for the best interest of the refugees. Now that we've accepted the terms, our project is able to progress further and we're also able to exhibit our work in Stockwell Street from the 4th of January to the 24th.

In regards to our refugee contact, we are still waiting for the return of the Solidary 4 Refugees owner Connor England from Calais. Hopefully he returns soon as, although the project is more or less in the finishing stages from our side, we are still waiting to produce the content which breathes life into it.

 

 

Week 7

We're very proud (and relieved) to announce that we've received a reply from our partner charity Solidarity 4 Refugees. Their leader Connor England has been very busy with the recent happenings as well as his own worries that come with running a charity for a cause so relevant. However, he has notified us that he'll do his best to meet with us this coming week and discuss our project as well as its requirements (e.g. interviewing the refugees). 

Furthermore, he has expressed his own wish to partake in the opening ceremony of our exhibition which is scheduled to happen from the 4th of January to the 24th. Attributing about two days’ worth of preparation, the opening date should happen around the 6th, however it remains to be determined exactly. Connor intends to bring with him members of his charity as well as volunteers and they will most likely be setting up their own table there.

 

 

Week 8

We've finally done it. We've managed to complete the final challenge that we've been facing throughout the entire project - meeting the elusive refugees.

On Saturday, we attended the march "Stop Bombing Syria" where we'd arranged to meet with Connor, the leader of S4R. Surely enough, he stayed true to his word met us there with four people who'd escaped their war-torn home.

After some talking and explaining of our project in further depth we'd agreed on another meeting to take place the coming week where those interested as well as others who we've not met will come, speak to us and hopefully agree to have their pictures taken.

Although this is the final blog post, our project continues beyond the final deadline of the fellowship programme. Please look out for our exhibition held in the Stockwell street ground floor from the 6th of January to the 23rd.

Thank you for reading!