The Joy of Sets

The Joy of Sets project was involved in experimenting with educational methods of prototyping and narrative creation with an emphasis on working rapidly at large scales. A variety of educational and cultural institutions hosted workshop and exhibition events which reflected broad design fiction contexts over a period of 5 years. The project developed into how to activate and communicate archives of cultural design material. The project was founded on notions of play and freedom in design as a form of improvised problem solving. Taking established methods and craft from my own previous work designing and building large scale film and theatre sets – a set of rules and constraints considered ways for design students and wider public’s to come face to face with ‘thinking through making’ away from computer platforms or sketch books. Workshop events blended basic industry methods of researching and designing sets and stages, with the notions of a design challenge – creating high intensity forms of making and doing. Cardboard and paper was the primary material with which to build 1:1 scale film sets. Participants created sets in response to given themes and then engaged in image making / film making in the subsequent constructions- films and photographs were three screened within the setting of the workshops alongside the finished constructions. The project was shared and showcased to a wide variety of students, young people as well as public visitors. Collaborations were formed with with the Stanley Kubrick Archive and LCC in 2017 provided the largest version of the project which was realised in conjunction with London Design Festival. Other venues have included The Elephant and Castle Project Space, UCA, RCA,University of Vienna, University of the Underground, and the Great exhibition road festival in conjunction with the science museum