Collabrative Project - Tell a story

Word Processed report – Collabrative Project - Michael O’leary

I was asked to produce a piece of art that raises awareness of the current European refugee crisis and to work with other specialists and creative practioners. The final price will be displayed in the reception of South Downs College and in Portsmouth Libary from Febuary to March in 2016. The artwork will raise awareness of the current European refugee crisis. The context of our project was to try and create awareness of the situation by trying to make the viewer feel sorry for the refugees through our artwork which is quite emotional to create some sympathy.

The concept behind our idea was that the girl’s life was melting in her hands, as it was melting so was her house and personal possessions etc.

The group outcome is a picture of a women holding her hands out with little houses in her hands with a turban on. We digitally produced our outcome, from our screen print which had 3 different colours (black, dark grey and light grey), We took our thumbnail ideas and Jess drew it in dip pen and ink, then we photocopied this and all individually edited it slightly to have our own input before deciding on the best idea. We then scanned it on to the computer, digitally editing, through Photoshop to create our final outcome, We then added a quote and a map of Syria in the background.

As individuals we all looked at different artists including Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Wisam Al Jazairy, Phil Hopkins and Adam Isaac Jackson, we also looked at the Chapman brothers. We was most influenced by Shepard Fairey with his 3 colour tone style which you can see in our work.

There were quite a lot of issues when working in a group. No one shared the same opinion so this makes everything much harder then it seems. There are a lot more responsibilities when your in a group so if you don’t take on any responsibilities you can let the group down, some members of the group showed no commitment which makes some other members feel unmotivated, some members are made to do all the work while others sit back and watch which is very annoying, there was some personality clashes within the group this meant we couldn’t het on with our work, some deadlines wasn’t met which is an issue. We had to have lot of discussions to get to a starting point which takes longer then working on your own, its difficult trying to keep everyone happy within the group so you have to try and keep everyone happy for the moral within the group. Another issue was making decisions as a group as no one would agree with each other making things a lot harder for us. Communication wasn’t very good as well which was an issue, most of the time there wasn’t our whole group together, which resulted in bias decisions, there was no time plan which resulted in sacrificing work quality and little work was completed, we didn’t have a leader which was our main problem I didn’t want to take this offer up as I didn’t want to feel to bossy. Everyone had different expectations so no one would put the same effort in, overall we weren’t very professional as a group.

The solution to this was to be flexible and adapt to the changing circumstances and be a team player, next time I will make sure there is a team leader making everything much easier for ourselves.

Areas for improvement such as we could of been more professional so this would make the group collaborative project much easier and more time efficient, this way we wouldn’t of wasted lot of time.

The only good thing to say about collaborative working is you do come across some very good ideas also if you find someone within your group that has the same work ethic as you this creates a positive outcome.

There was no management such as a team leader within the group this made things a lot harder overall as there was no decision making, not a lot of communication, each individual's didn't use their skills to full potential, there was no set roles within our group which made it more difficult for ourselves to continue as a group and the production process was very difficult.

Resourcing materials was quite easy luckily as we all had the same resources in college, which were free luckily.

Now I have worked in a group I can see how stressful it is, I can now see why the remaking of the Guernica is such as successful project and how many people worked on it shows you hard of it would have been due to so many people collaborating on the same project. Overall I would say the project was good but could have been much better. Also I now think a lot more about the Chapman Brothers due to seeing what they have to go through.

Personally I don't like collaborating as it is much more hassle then working on your own as you have to meet a lot more demands making it a lot more stressful then it would have been on your own, the production process is very long and takes ten times longer to get to your final product then it would on your own.