Tallulah Tarnowska

Our project was an interesting journey, taking into consideration the extent of COVID-19 and the impact it had on our way of connecting with each other as a group. It was challenging to say the least, trying to make sure everyone was on board with the tasks assigned to each member of the group. Just before our first presentation our group was still not fully conceptualised and we weren’t really sure on anything, but lo and behold we managed to present, despite our presentation not meeting standards across the chart, we took the advice of our tutors and managed to turn the whole thing around for our final presentation one week later.  We were sure of our brand (Duro Olowu), and after first thinking that Unicef would be an appropriate charity to team with, alongside millie-bobby brown, we later realised that this really didn’t make any sense and we were going too big with the whole project, so we decided to change our charity to the BFC foundation, and look to using an artist local to London with not such a large platform as a means of being socially responsible helping to raise awareness for smaller local artists. We chose to work with BFC to keep the main focus on art – BFC as our partner charity would go on to fund young artists with potential to do what they need to be the best they can be as a means of continuing greatness within the art world.  Initially we explored the idea of creating a competition for all ages of children to participate in, but later decided that we would focus on ages 4-12 as there may not be as much interest for teenagers, and that it may be too complicated to hold more workshops and more competitions – our tutors actually thought that there should’ve been more of a connection between the age group we were holding the competition for (4-12 y/o) and who the competition would be helping (young artists avg. 17 y/o) however they did approve that BFC was much more suited to our brand. We chose the platform IGTV and IG live to broadcast the workshops on, which was agreed by our tutors as a good platform for the current crisis. The presentation’s layout all in all however was slammed for not being aesthetic and not telling a story with images. We decided that the prize for the competition would be a mural created by Lakwena with the winning designs featured onto it as a means of immortalising the hardships but also the harmony faced during the lockdown – which the tutors deemed very appropriate. Overall I believe our presentation had many flaws that with time and better communication could’ve been helped, but I also believe we made the best out of what we had and understood social responsibility appropriately for our project.

The Better Lives lecture I attended that really stood out for me personally was John Lau on Cultural Sustainability. “culture is innately part of us and our development, where we are from is just one part of our culture” – this statement really drew me back and gave me a new perspective on the word culture, I had always thought of culture as someones birth right by wherein they were born geographically. Culture is a huge part of life and until now I didn’t even realise that culture can be learnt throughout life as we grow and develop as people alongside one another. Lau went on to speak of a specific example, the infamous Marie Antoinette, known visually for her fashion choices, what I did not know was the back story of her original culture, simple clothed Austrian heritage – when she became queen of France, the French wanted a queen who looked like one! Time goes by and the French Revolution comes to fruition, Marie Antoinette is beheaded and her symbol of over the top dressing was cut from French culture, their new idea of beauty actually looked into the past for inspiration from the Greeks and their Empire Line dresses and their long meaningful history which was very political. This I would come to learn, was a great example of Zeitgeist – ideals and beliefs that motivated actions of the society at that time – this sort of idea of things falling into place through fate or ‘right time right place’. Another great, and quite different example Lau gave was, of Jean-Michel Basquiat, who in his childhood had an accident causing his mother to give him the book grays anatomy – along with this collision of capitalism, cartoons/graffiti and drugs on the rise in the 1980’s, Basquiat’s style was born – a Zeitgeist in his own right, causing massive influence in the art world and general society. Basquiat was a threshold or example, for young or new artists believing in their dreams of being heard by the public. The idea of influence these days is at an all time high with the use of social platforms, and so in terms of cultural sustainability and its accessibility you’d think that cultural sustainability is easily influenced onto the world – but the sadder truth is to make sustainability readily available for all cultures, it is going to take a massive effort on all of our behalves. Thank you to John Lau for opening our eyes onto the reality of cultural sustainability and how we as individuals can use our art to make a stand, and allow gates to open for the rest of cultures to be heard and sustainable.