Creating A Social ‘Buzz’

Orientation Brief – This new brief consisted of two parts, one rather more simple than the other.
Task 1 – We walked across the Tay Road Bridge sketching and drawing on our way also considering how our views and conceptions changed as we crossed the bridge. We could walk, cycle, run take a car or bus across, we were actually encouraged to take different methods of transport so we experienced different journeys.
I opted to cycle, it was actually pretty hypnotic with rail upon rail whizzing by.
We were encouraged to record our journey visually through photographs, drawings & sketches, I decided to sketch Dundee from the opposite side of the Tay.

I also took note of the landmarks I could identify from Fife; Life Science Building, churches in the Town Square, quayside, Dens Park, Tannadice, Cox’s Stack, old factories, the Law & tenements. What stuck me was the huge range of different identifiable landmarks, especially the diversity in modern and old.

Task 2 – For part 2 we were asked in our reading groups to create a social buzz in Dundee by creating a large cardboard model of either and existing landmark in Dundee or an idea for one. Whatever we were going to make it needed to be almost monolithic & attract peoples attention. We settled on making Caird Hall, our model ended up being over 3m wide and over half a meter tall.
I originally thought creating the model would be the difficult part but as a group I think we surpassed most expectations. The difficult part turned out to be coming up with a purpose for our interaction with the public. This worried me as the group opted to just take the model straight to town and come up with the question later, I didn’t want us to be just standing around awkwardly and not really having a defined purpose for our model and project.
Eventually some questions such as “What do you like about Dundee” & “What would you change about Dundee?” were decided upon to engage the pubic. Responses about what people liked included “The new development”, “The people are so friendly”, “Dundee is a very up & coming city with lots to offer”. Contrastingly things people would like to change about Dundee included “One football team”, “Better acoustics for Caird Hall” & “Improve the Wellgate”.
I don’t feel we really achieved anything specifically, our ideas on how to create a social buzz weren’t really original or exciting. Perhaps if we had a more clear idea on what we wanted to get out of the publics engagement with our cardboard landmark we would have had a better idea about what we were trying to get people to think about and what we were trying to say about Dundee.