Mindful Spaces:
Young V&A/Spotlight Collaborative workshop March 2022
A co-design workshop for young people that centred around the theme of mindfulness, exploring this through ethnographic and expressive design methods. Culminating in a community installation displayed at Spotlight youth centre in Langdon Park, Tower Hamlets in London.
Mindful Spaces is a workshop I designed for a wonderful youth project and organisation named Spotlight based in Langdon Park, Tower Hamlets. The Young V&A have developed a partnership over the last year called the Young Collective with Spotlight which has included a series of workshops aimed at 11-14 years olds encompassing fashion, sound design and now as a place for me to develop my research into mindfulness through making.
The workshop was spread over 4 days in the Easter holidays, coinciding with Ramadan for a lot of the young people. The aim was to create an installation in the community that expressed the YP’s (young people’s) mindful moments from a series of mindful journeys/walks, expression exercises and experimentations. Ultimately, I wanted to create an open space for making, discussion of mental health and mindfulness, and a place for this to live after I had left.
Research and Development: Personal mindfulness explorations through PVC and stitch, mindfulness walks, V&A collection research and found objects.
I have been exploring what it means to house mindful memories in objects, and the significance that displaying memories can have in encouraging us to talk about mindfulness and mental health. I developed the idea of using PVC and sewing objects of significance into one another, to weave memories and moments, as something that can live as their own entity. Alongside this, I have been keen to discuss and explore what mindful making or making without solution can do for our mental health in design education; so was keen to explore a less prescriptive workshop timeline, encouraging free and intuitive making.
The workshop consisted of a series of tasks; mindful faces, mindful shapes and mindful journeys. Day 1 & 2 were focused on these in the “Research and Experimentation” phase, encouraging mind wandering, expression and less focus on synthesis of ideas. Day 3 “Prototype and Make” encouraged the YP to take all of the things they had make and design their own mindful objects for the final installation. Day 4 “Test and Install” showed the YP how their ideas, conversations and mindful moments can be turned into something significant and displayed in a final design installation.
Mindful Spaces workshop sheet for the week. A poster style sheet was chosen over a booklet or personal pack due to the drop in nature of the sessions.
The Mindful Shapes exercise really resonated with a lot of the YP, as it encourages you to express your reactions to words around mental health and creativity, through 2d and 3d means. I designed the exercise to be free, one that encompassed basic design methods, but the outcome needn’t have any function. It is your expression or reaction in a designed form. Six words; Impulse, Imagine, Breathing, Sanctuary, Calm and Reflection were used in the booklet, each with a reference to a V&A item from the collections.
Mindful Journeys is another exercise that was carried out on day 2. Recently I have been intrigued to investigate what it means to mind wander, both in creative exercises but in the literal form of wandering on walks too. Why are we all so focused on the destination, and less mindful of the journey? For me the journey encourages my mindful moments, places of calm, moments of silence, noticing things that catch my eye.
I designed a set of prompts for the walks that asked the YP to look up, take a second to breathe, take a rubbing of a surface that made them feel calm. These were then used throughout the journey. I also gave the YP cameras, to document specific places and thoughts they had along the journey. This exercise was by far the most well received in feedback from the YP, they loved having the camera and just having agency over the whole process!
Images from ‘Mindful journeys’ mix of images from me and YP.
All of the experimentations and expressions from these 3 days were taken back to the studio at Spotlight and developed into individual mindful objects for our final installation. I showed examples of my pvc and acetate objects, that had been sewn into and included personal observations of moments of mindfulness. The YP used these as design inpsiration, and created their own collages. These were hung up on a rig, alongside written notes of what mindfulness meant to the YP. So many skills were developed here; sewing, 3d modelling and making, drawing and painting.
On Day 4 we rounded off the week with some final edits to our installation, and then displayed the installation in the foyer at Spotlight. We added more cards so that YP could add to the installation after we left, encouraging the beautiful conversations that we had had that week to grow after the V&A had left. This day really encouraged the YP to express what mindfulness meant to them, common themes of calm, stress and anxiety occurred in most discussions and questions of how to express these feelings were brought up.
Final Mindful Spaces design installation in Spotlight foyer
Overall the workshop was a beautiful deep dive into what it meant to be more mindful in both our creative endeavours but also everyday life. Throughout the week I had so many conversations with the YP about their thoughts on mindfulness, inspiring my thoughts on my residency for the future. One major standout was the focus on sounds; so many YP indicated the stress levels that sounds in their local areas can have on their mental state and disrupt the moments of calm needed to feel mindful in their everyday activities. One comment that stuck with me; “It’s like not thinking but still doing” summing up the beauty of what creative mindfulness is and has the potential to grow into.
