Publication Starting Points

I am starting to think of school-based examples for these categories. This should help me generate ideas for imagery and text. The safeguarding category is linked to preventing extremism but this is a difficult thing to explain to children in this age range. I have expanded this to make it about feeling safe in school and knowing there are people there to help you.

Democracy

school council vote

Rule of Law

teacher’s authority

senior executive team

general school rules

Individual Liberty

choosing what to eat at lunchtime

what to do at lunchtime 

after school clubs

Mutual Respect

holding doors open

please and thank you

helping others 

Tolerance of different beliefs and faiths 

learning about different cultures

being friends with others from different cultures

Safeguarding

Anti bullying service

Someone to talk to about problems at school or at home

to feel safe in school

I then started to write potential phrases to appear in the booklet. I am trying to simplify my language a lot to make it daily readable and not too wordy. These will most likely change through further stages of development. 

• I can vote for who I want to be on the school council.
• The school council listens to students and tries to make the school better for them. 
• The school rules are there to make sure everyone is safe and treated fairly.
• I can choose how I spend my lunchtimes and I can stay for clubs after school if I want to. 
• I can choose what I eat for lunch. 
• I have respect for other students and they respect me. 
• I treat other children how I would like to be treated. 
• We learn about many cultures and beliefs.
• I am friends with children from all different backgrounds. 
• I know there is someone to talk to if I have a problem. 
• If I am worried about something inside or outside of school, I know I can talk to someone. 
• I feel safe in school and I know that there are people to help me if I have a problem or if I feel worried. 

The way I have written these sentences makes it sound like a child is talking about their experience of school, this might be a good approach to take. It could involve creating a character or multiple characters to talk the reader through the values. On the other hand, it could sound a bit like the terms of an agreement. This is something I want to avoid as I don't want it to come across as too informal or intimidating. 

Publication Idea Change

I have been doing some thinking over Easter about the publication for context of practice and have realised that the current idea I had for my book wasn't very solid. I have been trying to think of other topics still linked to my project and was drawn to education, especially in younger children. I think targeting my publication towards this audience will get across the idea that I am looking towards the future and how peoples opinions and valuations of nationality might change.

I thought of a few ideas relating to this theme but as I started to figure out what I would actually produce, the ideas just seemed to fall apart. It was during a conversation with my mum (who works in a secondary school) that the topic of British values came up. Apparently schools now have a policy to promote and teach British values through assemblies, events and integration into the curriculum. This really interested me and I wanted to learn more about what these British values were, what was it that supposedly defined us as a nation?

The prominent points are democracy, rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect and the tolerance of a different beliefs and faiths.

An additional point on some policies is safeguarding which links to the government's 'Prevent Strategy' which fights against extremism. 

I think this shows that British values are changing with the times and we are becoming more connected and accepting of the rest of the world and people from other countries. In this list there is no sense of nationalism or exclusivity which in my opinion is a positive step towards the future.

I have changed the idea for my publication to a booklet for young children attending primary schools. I want to target this young age group to teach them directly about the values of the country they live in, hopefully this will minimise the influence of opinions of older generations who might be less tolerant of the changes that are occurring in Britain in modern day.

From my initial research, a lot of primary schools include a British Values Policy on their website, they all differ slightly but follow the main few concepts. I am thinking of creating an illustrated information booklet about these values to be given to children after an assembly on the subject or as a lesson handout or maybe as something included in an information pack for when a child starts their school life. Primary school children are aged 4-11 years old, within this age range there is a lot of learning and development that takes place which gives a wide ranger of abilities to cater for. I think the best way to tackle this is to use minimal text, just simple sentences that can be read by the older children. The book will consist mainly of images which will be enjoyable for the older children to look at but will be crucial to help the less able readers to understand the main points.

I need to do some more research into the topic of British values policies and the individual points I need to include. I am excited to work on a project aimed at children because this is something I haven't done in a long time and I am looking forward to see whether my way of working suits this purpose. I need to make sure it doesn't become too in depth and similar to something you'd find in an employment contract such as an equal opportunities clause or a code of conduct. 

The booklet needs to be engaging, educational, informative, friendly, easy to read, appropriate and inclusive.

Peer Feedback - Megacrit

Feedback

The feedback I received consisted of positive comments and suggestions for improvements which I really appreciated. I understand it is hard to get the full story of someones entire project from just a few minutes looking at their work so I can see why some of the comments seem quite broad. 

 The positive comments were focussed around the possibilities available to me with this topic, my consideration of audience and how the simplicity of my drawings is still allowing me to convey a message. The suggestions however mainly revolved around media choices which is something I haven't really considered at all yet.

My Response

I think my project is starting to narrow down into a clearer idea for my publication but I know I am not there yet. I need to do more research for this book and my essay to see what else I can find to influence the development of my project. Narrowing my ideas down will help me to be more focussed with my research.

Peer Review

What am I doing? Why? How?

• Exploring the concept of nationality and whether it has a place in modern day and the future. 
• Looking at identity and how people choose to define themselves, whether nationality/race is an internal or external factor. 

What developments have there been?

• Exploring the wider topic of things that society never questions. I want to keep this based around the race/nationality theme. 
• Aim to provoke thoughts of the people reading the book and get them to form their own opinions on the topic. 
• Or, deconstruct the concept of nationality through words and imagery to make people see how it is an invented idea. 

What research methods have been used?

• Books, the internet, essays, photography.
• I think I need to do more primary research in the form of photography or interviews and surveys. Maybe look at case studies.

How do these link to the production methods?

• Not decided on a clear production method.

What am I going to do next?

• Clarify a concept for my book, keep producing visuals to explore the topic. 
• GET ON WITH MY ESSAY

Any Cop3 interests?

• I don't like this topic anymore and I can't see myself wanting to continue with it next year. At the moment I am really interested in my OUIL505 research, maybe looking into psychology, wellbeing or the creative brain. 

Action Plan

[Week 1 - 14th March] - Get a solid idea for my publication, get feedback on it on Friday's session. 

[Week 2 - 21st March] - Sketchbook drawings to help development of publication. 

[Week 3 - 28th March] - More reading and finding quotes and information to add to my essay. 

[Week 4 - 4th April] - Continue with essay alterations. Solid plan for publication. 

[Week 5 - 11th April] - Producing final imagery. 

[Week 6 - 18th April] - Catch up with any loose ends. Make sure blog is up to date. Evaluation.

I found I received very little feedback today. Only one person other than myself was contributing to group discussion which was disappointing, especially as we were already familiar with each other’s projects and I made an effort to try and get a good understanding of everyones projects and tried to give constructive feedback. The task of planning what I was going to say to explain my essay and publication ideas was actually more useful than the peer review. It clarified some things in my mind such as methods of research I should be using and a potential rewording of essay question. 

Essay Feedback Tutorial

Essay Feedback

• Useful quotes and source material. 
• Argument needs more focus. 
• Sweeping statements that aren't backed up. 
• Unsatisfactory conclusion. 
• Essay isn't structured properly. 
• Good contextual comparisons. 
• Writing and fluidity is good.
• More triangulation needed. 
• A number of relevant arguments have been missed out - Is identity part of our DNA? Discrimination. Conflict and war. 
• Find examples to talk about.
• Issue needs to be tackled better. 

Proposal 

I intend to produce and 8-12 page publication based on the strange concepts in our world that society never seems to question. The book will highlight issues relating to race, religion and culture to make people think more about the world around them and ask themselves whether they choose to accept what they are taught or look deeper into world issues themselves. The book will stimulate thoughts and conversations getting people talking and forming their own opinions on topics, stemming from unbiased material. Identity was the prominent theme within my essay and I think this book, by making people form opinions, will help people think about their own identity and where they fit in within society. The book will combine written word and visuals to directly ask a question as well as highlighting things to consider during the process of answering it. The book needs to be impartial so it doesn't sway people's thoughts but I also want to get across the idea that as humans, we tend to shy away from tackling big issues head on and question the way the world works. 

Questions to ask in the tutorial...

In what way do you mean that the structure of my essay needs improvement, is it the order or my paragraphs or the links between them?

Could you recap triangulation and how I could use this in my essay?

Does my essay question need to change to help with the argument of my essay?

Do I need to analyse more images and include them in my essay?

Tutorial Feedback

Triangulation recap - use a variety of critical theories and use multiple quotes and/or opinions to support the same point. Three different sources saying the same thing makes the argument stronger than just using one quote from one source. 

Essay question suggestions - 'To what extent' is a good start for the question. E.g. to what extent is the concept of nationality becoming outgrown by society and culture, to what extent does globalisation affect our sense of nationality/national identity, etc...

Other topics to consider - is race image or internal/genetics, national front, icons and image change meaning, revenue, EU trading, trademarks. Try and find a strong example to focus the essay on, it might help with being more specific with information and making points. 

Images - try to use images as examples to support or oppose existing points, an analysis of an image without a specific purpose will seem out of place within the essay. 

Publication - primary research, generate source material and imagery. 

Response to Feedback

During the tutorial I felt like I was receiving some good feedback although when I re-read my notes and tried to think of what to do next, I couldn't help feeling a bit lost and confused about what I was meant to be doing. I know my essay needs a lot of work, I am just trying to find the motivation to keep working on it as I am not finding my topic interesting anymore. I feel like I am falling behind with this module and it has definitely taken a back seat over recent weeks. I think I need to set a few days aside to concentrate solely on my essay and ideas for my publication, I find it really hard to work on this for one day of the week and then move on to something totally different the next day. 

Hotdog Books Feedback and Proposal

The feedback I got from  my hotdog books overall was positive. The people in my peer review gave some really useful feedback and helped me to make decisions about which books had potential. There were three favourites. 

The first one was the set by step guide to building identity. I had left quite a lot of the mock-up blank with just subheading but it raised the question of whether I should fill these saved with words explaining each category or whether I should leave some space for someone to actually fill it in. I think its a nice idea to have a book that people can fill in and interact with, especially with a theme like identity, it would make the experience more personal to the individual in my opinion. 

The second book they liked was the one with the photos of people and the fact files which you wouldn’t expect to match their exterior due to the way we instinctively stereotype people. Although I got good feedback on this idea, I don’t think this would make a very good publication. Although the concept is there, it would become very repetitive and probably uninteresting after people realised what the message was. 

The final book that got a really good response was the one full of things that society never questions. I raised my concerns about it causing offence to people but the general response from my group was that if I word it as a question, I am not putting across an opinion, merely asking the reader what they think. It would take a lot more research to come up with enough material to fill a book but I think it could be manageable. I could then focus of imagery to work alongside the question on the page. I have a concern that this book would be very broad in the topics it relates to and I think I might find myself finding out a little bit about a range of topics instead of researching heavily into one topic and fully understanding it. 

This was our mind map from the session task. 

'What?', 'why?' and 'how?' are the key to forming the proposal. 

Things to consider:Are the themes I am looking at too close/far from my essay question?

What type of book will I be producing and what is the purpose of it?

Who will my audience be and how will I target them?

With my project linking to a few topics that need to be handled sensitively, how will I ensure that my work does not offend people, will it need checking by a third party?

Will the book be predominantly image based or will the text make the most impact, supported by visuals? Which would work best to get my point across?

Draft Proposal

I intend to produce and 8-12 page publication based on the strange concepts in our world that society never seems to question. The book will highlight issues relating to race, religion and culture to make people think more about the world around them and ask themselves whether they choose to accept what they are taught or look deeper into world issues themselves. The book will stimulate thoughts and conversations getting people talking and forming their own opinions on topics, stemming from unbiased material. Identity was the prominent theme within my essay and I think this book, by making people form opinions, will help people think about their own identity and where they fit in within society. The book will combine written word and visuals to directly ask a question as well as highlighting things to consider during the process of answering it. The book needs to be impartial so it doesn't sway people's thoughts but I also want to get across the idea that as humans, we tend to shy away from tackling big issues head on and question the way the world works. 

Mindmap and Hotdog Books

I was unwell for the session last week so I have been catching up on the work for that. I spoke to Pete and he told me the task from the session and that I needed to make five hotdog books by the next session. I chopped up parts of my essay and used them as part of this mind map to help me identify themes and possible directions for a publication.

From this, I thought of five concepts for my hotdog books....

1. Cultural appropriation. A fashion book/magazine that openly sells clothing labelled as cultural appropriation. 
2. Building your identity (post-modern theory). A step by step guide. 
3. Breaking down nationality stereotypes. Using photography and fact files to build up characters of people that don’t match initial perceptions. 
4. Things society never questions. Highlighting the bigger questions that nobody really asks, including where did the concept of race come from.  
5. ‘All experience is local, all identity is experience.’ A reportage project following the life of someone through imagery and how their experiences has shaped them as an individual. 

After making these books I have gone off the idea of the fashion magazine. I think it is cliché and the issue has been tackled many times before in similar ways. I want to push myles with the project and I think going down this route would lead to a very ’safe’ outcome. Saying that, I think the book based on the things society never questions might touch a few nerves with some people, I will need to see what feedback I get on these ideas as I am struggling to know whether it is appropriate or not. I think the reportage book idea based on Taiye Selasi’s quote ‘All experience is local, all identity is experience’ might be too vague. I have used photos from my own life to make this mock up so I think it might be too personal if it was to be distributed as a publication.