Creative Practice reflection by Matthew Higby

Being in London at the entrance of my project, I looked at themes of social inequality, racial inequality and gender inequality. I found that these issues were due to characteristics of geographic, political and socioeconomics and for years, the government has paid little attention to under classes due to the recession and varying political parties coming in and out of power. I was fascinated with the Rothschilds family and wanted to include their global role in the way they control almost everything. I started to drift away from this topic due to the near mass I would want to cover and the ample time in order to do it, I found that instead I wanted to do something completely different. I planned on reclaiming a specific word as a point of pride and looked at styles of photography that were used by members of the Boston School. This would let me challenge the existing status quo through the themes of saying how words are continuing down a healthier path being similar to the Better Lives themes of Diversity, Social Responsibility and Sustainability. Eventually the COVID-19 pandemic caught up and I was fortunate enough to travel to my childhood home and stay with my parents. I started to think about my original themes around social responsibility and the under classes and began to look at socially responsible architecture as a new development in my research journey. As I had conversations with my parents and friends about this topic, I reflected on a disaster that I had gone through a few years back. I remember from the experience that we needed immediate shelter. This topic brought me to think of deployable shelters and how I could bring attention to them by making them my project. Many frequently hit natural disaster areas are home to more lower-class members of society who need these deployable shelters as soon as or before disaster strikes. The Better Lives themes have caused me to pay more attention to issues dealing with geographic, political, socio-economic and think in a socially responsible manner. I plan on working in the future with a focus on fields that overall serve the community. 

As we have seen throughout the Coronavirus pandemic, careers that remain strong are agriculture, medical and beyond. Having the knowledge that the common factor between these fields is that they serve others. Wanting to financially stay afloat during periods of economic turmoil I may go through in my lifetime, I am aware that my career will require me to serve others and I will always consider the greater impact my job should have.