Event Summary
Immersive Natural Event 21st and 22nd October 11am-3:30pm at Central Saint Martins Canteen Space
This event looks to bring nature into city spaces and provide the health benefits of interacting with nature to people within the space. Such benefits include increased creativity, productivity, and positivity. The event aims to engage people with nature, encouraging nature to be included in their lives further and promoting the community practice I am developing as a space for professionals and designers to collaborate on bringing nature into their work.
The event will utilise projections and speakers to showcase a video of natural scenery, which is focused upon the water. The video footage and audio are all shot and owned by me. Water is the focus of this event due to my meetings with expert stakeholders, such as Sue Thomas (expert in technobiophilia) who spoke to me about her reading and experience of utilising water to engage people with nature as an often under utilised but highly dynamic force.
All equipment will be loaned from the CSM loan store and so will be PAC tested.
All cables will be taped down to the floor to avoid any tripping hazards.
People wishing to get further involved in the event will be asked to write their answers to two simple questions on large sheets of paper, which I will supply. One of the questions will be before and one after their engagement in the event. I will also provide a QR code for people to scan which links to my online community page, should they wish to join.
I will be present at the event for its entire duration.
Aims of Event
- To showcase innovative, engaging and dynamic ways nature can be brought into city spaces
- To provide participants with the opportunity to intercat with nature and feel its benefits – such as increased creativity, producivity and positivity; reduced anxiety and stress
- To establish interest from deisgn experts/ professionals in the CSM community to utilise nature in their work
- To meet upcoming deisgners and indivudlas interested in making sustainably minded decisions to join my online Nature In Community
All of these aims are focused upon drawing interest in nature amongst creatives, specifically at CSM for this event, to demonstrate the power and value of biophilic design consequently growing interest and uptake in joining the Nature In community.
Planning/ Logistics
- Origionally this event was to be hosted at Chelsea College of Arts, to have secured that opportunity I have had meetings with Chelsea canteen and estates teams. However, having the event at Chelsea presented a few logistical issues, as the equiptmet to be utilsied in the event is all to be hired from the CSM loan store. Therefore, I was going to have to transport the equiptment from CSM to Chelsea across the two days.
- Subsequenlty, the estates manager at Chelsea offered to contact CSM estates to see if the event could be hosted in the CSM restaurant instead.
- After many eails and last minute changes a meeting was arranged with CSM estates, events and canteen to finalise details to host the event at CSM. Thankfully everything was provisionally approved for the event following my risk assessment.
- Following this meeting I reserached how to formulate a risk assessmnet form for an event and constructed my document to then send to the estates, events and canteen teams.
- The risk assessment was approved on monday and so everything is now logistically in place for the event on thursday and friday.
Creating Video
- All footage utilised in the video was shot by me during trips to regents park and also in my recent trip back home ot sheffield, where I live near the Peak District which offered a very valuable opporutnity to gather truley natural shots of water
- I edited the video utilsing premier pro which was a new software for me and took a while to establish how to create the video I wanted, but I am very happy with the final outcome.
- The video will loop back on itself to cover teh duration of the event
I also tested projecting the video in my flat to see the impact it would have in the event and test out any issues. Please see the google drive link below to the videos of testing the projector:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/13c8jJSqMpDPjT56LJo6_G87xkqE7A1b1?usp=sharing
Measures
- Assessing the impacts of the event upon participants knowledge of the power and benefits of nature – how they experience these benefits from the event
- Establishing if the event has insipred participants to utilise nature in their work
To measure these aspects participants will be asked to write their thoughts on a piece of paper upon entry in answer to certain questions:
- How does this event make you feel about nature?
- Does this event inspire you to include nature in your work and how?
- Would you reccommend natural events to people and will you keep in touch?
These questions will also be linked into a google forms page that people can access via QR code to provide added details and also to leave their email for future contact
- Growing the Nature In Communtiy
- QR codes linking to LinkedIn Nature In Community, as well as another QR code to the Nature In Facebook Group for people who don’t have LinkedIn
What I Have Learned In Developing This Event:
- Creating a Risk Assessment form
- Editing a video to a standard fit for a professional event and utilisng effects on Premier Pro
- Co-ordinating many different teams from events to estates and the canteen, to logistically get the event running
- Developing relevant measures for the event are brief enough to ensure responses but that also provide enough infirmation for later effective evaluation
- How to access not just already established professionals through internet searches on platforms such as LinkedIn; developng this event has helped me learn how to consider all types of professionals to jion the community that can influence change. For instance, the upcoming cutting edge creatives that study at CSM as well as the teachers.
Reflections:
It has been a long process in developing this event, largely due to the location change, and it has gone through many rounds of changes in developing the idea. However, I think with my new project direction centered around community building to tie all the threads of my work together, this event has the potential to be very powerful in changing perspectives and providing ideas/ knowledge of how nature can be brought into city spaces. Hosting the event in CSM is also very exciting to be able to access many upcoming designers which can join the discussions in my community group and begin to consider adding nature into their work.
Ideas Summary for Event:
