Lynn Nwosu

As I was endlessly scrolling through the shared SMC page my eye was caught by this blog post by Aoife on her project about the brand ‘Nubian Skin’. Being a person of colour myself it immediately heightened my interest levels. I think that that is mainly due to her concise introduction. It’s composed of a topic, structure and opinion. Which now makes me think about re-vamping mine. 

I would’ve liked to know more about her role in the group, as she states that they’d assigned each member an aspect of the brand to research. And maybe what were the dos and don’ts of communicating with them (not that it’s necessary).  

I really enjoyed that she talked about all those practitioners, it shows she was inspired by them and took something away from those classes. I’ll use George Melies as my next example, with the deadlines coming up he is due to stay in one of my open tabs until June at least. But now that I know his name, when the time I need to look into illusionists or filmmakers comes, well, I’ll have something to look into. I think it’s especially beneficial to my research because it’s most likely that I wouldn’t found him with my research alone and push my work in a whole new direction. 

This makes me think about a topic that sparks my interest, which is how we can impact others in the with even our smallest actions, unconsciously. That we, in a way or another take up space in someone else’s world. This is a subject I could talk about for so long it would make me dizzy. Thanks to this peer review, it may even be the start of a new project.

Link to her blog post: 

At the bidding stage of this unit, I entered Messaging Fashion as a first choice because it was a topic I had very little to no knowledge about. I’d always had admired people who have the skills on the business side of the industry. In my mind, workers in public relationships are the backbone of the industry and are crucial to have in your contacts. So having an understanding of what they do felt essential.

As part of our project, we had to create a PR campaign for the streetwear brand from Amsterdam, Patta, in partnership with the Patta Foundation. It was a given, with the foundation they initiate projects in aim to inspire youth to entrepreneurship, to be the role models of the next generation.

I must admit that I was rather dubious, at first, whilst brainstorming with the other two group members, I felt the brand was too clean, overall superficial. Despite their values being love and hobby, the idea of sneaker raffles didn’t sit right in my mind. I decided to have a chat with them in person at their London store in Soho. It met two staff members who immediately altered my judgment, they almost made it feel like it was a family business. They had kept the mindset they had from the very first instances of the brand, it was about preserving what the founders Edson Sabajo and Guillaume Schmidt started back in 2004.

In these unsettling times, we decided that our cause was going to be a fundraiser enabling us to give back to the NHS. In response to the theme of loneliness in the face of COVID – 19, we made an event based on both YouTube and Instagram – the idea was to organise a mini-festival. Something that could bring people together on a large scale yet in the safety of our homes.

Choosing a diverse and inclusive lineup was very important to us, from alternative rock to folk, so as to attract all types of audience members. I think it’s important to note that we took the risk to display to an audience that was most likely to have never have heard of our brand. We kept in mind the power that music could have in these times of distress.
We also held one to one Instagram live conversations between the musicians and a few lucky followers so they could share their passions and take advice to their future/ongoing careers.

During our presentation, we received a comment saying that she and her family were big fans of one the bands we listed, that if it were to collaborate with Patta they’ed be interested into getting to know the brand better. It was an immense relief to us, as the final project we presented was far from what we first intended to do due to time zone and the language barrier.

I remember, at the beginning of last year, applying for my place in the Fashion Photography course, this Better Lives unit was one of the main things I was looking forward to. I was finally going to have some insight on what the big names of the industry were talking about, their jargon. The terms diversity, social responsibility and sustainability were, at last, going to be part of my everyday vocabulary.

Progressing through anything in life my motto had been “knowledge is power”. Now, how do I tune my knowledge to its full potential?
In order to puzzle out what kind of impact you want to have as a fashion practitioner or artist in general, I believe it is primordial to be aware of what has impacted you – what has shaped you.
Listening to all these lectures has rapidly put that idea to the test.

For a while, I’d been going through my lecture notes in hope to find a guiding thread throughout my interests. Frankly, that was quite hard, as my mindset was filtering my research. I was looking to completely shift the way I worked, remodel who I was as an artist. Then it occurred to me, that that wasn’t the reason these lectures were given to us. Simply, these are essential supplements that our craft needs. Preparing us the be the change that this world needs.

It still amazes when I realise that the people that I sit within in class and I are next up in the industry, preparing to take on the roles of the individuals we admire or completely dismiss. I see Better Lives as a provider of tools to repair and support the industry, an ancient frail structure, but mostly materials to build a new and durable one.

My take on this first blog will be on Lorraine Gamman’s lecture ‘Empathy’. When I hear the word ’empathy’ what comes to my mind is the act of understanding and/ or appreciating someone else’s thoughts and ideas, albeit disparities in perspective. It generates a sort of feeling, that also comes with consideration, and good intention. To me, empathy feels very humane. The untold approbation of another’s mind. 

Just a few minutes in, Lorraine disassembles the components of empathy according to the academics in psychology, which are: affective and cognitive/perspective-taking. As an example, she uses an argument they often use and that we all know of, stating, ‘psychopaths are incapable of emotional empathy’ and contradicts it by saying: “That’s rubbish actually, you know, most psychopaths understand absolutely how to use perspective, they just don’t care how you feel.”  

It made me think about Thomas DeSimone, an American mobster, part of the Lucchese crime family, also known as Tommy DeVito in Martin Scorsese’s 90’s mafia movie Goodfellas. Tommy kills plainly out of spite, and even in front of a victim imploring for mercy, provided with absolutely no reason to kill, he pauses and laughs, he does not care. 

Lorraine also adduces to Roman Krznaric’s work. Australian writer, social philosopher and expert on empathy, also board member of the *Empathy Museum. In his 2013 TEDxAthens talk on how to start an empathy revolution (of human relationships), he mentions that we are more likely to naturally empathize with people that look like us. As a result, the idea behind this revolution is to step into the shoes of the poor and the powerless, but also our enemies. To do so, we need to ‘spark our curiosity’, cultivate our curiosity about strangers. I gathered up a quote of his which I believe to be a great delineation of that. ” I believe that the thoughts in other people’s heads is the great darkness that surrounds us, and we need to have cultivating conversations with strangers to penetrate that darkness.”  

Although Roman and Lorraine have different goals with their empathy studies, I find there’re similarities in their pathways. One goal being to fill out our empathy deficit aiming to generate social and political change, and the other making user-centred designs in interest to sell people things. Both require stepping out of the zone you’d made yourself comfortable with.  It’s about deeply immersing yourself into a new experience, then, being able to step out of it ready to make a change.     

*Empathy Museum is a series of participatory art projects dedicated to helping us look at the world through other people’s eyes. With a focus on storytelling and dialogue, our travelling museum explores how empathy can not only transform our personal relationships but also help tackle global challenges such as prejudice, conflict and inequality. 

TEDx Talks, 2014. How To Start An Empathy Revolution.  Available at: <https://youtu.be/RT5X6NIJR88> [Accessed 10 May 2020].