Wednesday 17th October - Child Action North West

There was a chance for us to work on an additional charity project, and I wanted to go the briefing. It was at the place that used to be Blackburn Orphanage. This project is a community challenge project, which is now called Child Action North West.
There is a book being released called "The Buried Treasure of James Dixon", and they need a cover designing for it. The book is about how the orphanage started - James Dixon and his wife started it, over 120 years ago and Child Action is based around the work that they did. They want to continue to help families just how they did, except not at the orphanage because that was being used as an office for Child Action North West. However, the problem is that their funding had been redeuced - the government's focus has increased to the NHS and social services.
So, Dixon came to Blackburn from Scotland, and was shocked at the poverty. This was 1889. On the 24th January, he found a boy asleep on the floor on a bale of straw. His mother was drunk, and had sold her son's clogs for money for drink. It was from this moment that he decided he wanted to do something to help these people and reduce the poverty.
He started taking orphans in. What he used to do was take photos of the orphans before he took them in, so people could see what the state of the children was before he took them in, and then he would take a picture of them transformed - clean and presentable so he could show people how he helped the children. The children who were at the orphanage weren't all orphans like the boy Dixon found lying on the straw. They all had different problems.
This project to raise money for the organsation was launched 2011 - Heritage Open Day. Volunteers joined, and ex-residents came back. They came up with a few ideas for fundraising that Dixon used to do e.g. Pound Day. This is where a pound was donated to the children in either money or a pound in weight of something that they could use.
After we had a little break, we were given a small tour of the building and we got to see the meeting room where Dixon and his wife would make important decisions. We also got to see some plaques. If I remember correctly, if someone donated generously to the orphanage, there would be a plaque made with their name on it and the child they sponsored. This would then be attached to their bed.

Register of lodgers at the orphanage

This Santa used to placed in town to raise money at Christmas time

Dixon's Wife

James Dixon

Fundraising poster

Orphanage Building

This is a great opportunity for some real work experience, but I feel the topic and content is very boring and I won't be able to explore and add to the skills I already have.

Contextual and Critical Studies - Lecture 2

This day could not get any worse. First thing we had someone talk at us, and then in the afternoon, it was Steve's turn to do the same. I was surprised I stayed awake!
The lecture started with a recap of the previous one - about how technology is important etc. This one was about how since the 1800's, the British empire had started to become more successful e.g. in 1851, an architect by the name of Joseph Patton designed a building by the name of The Crystal Palace. It was made out of cast iron and was pre-fabricated. It was made using new materials such as glass and people were worried that it may fall down, but luckily it didn't. However, at a later stage, it did burn down.

How do artists respond to the transformed world?

When steam engines first came to be, they travelled at 70 miles an hour, which at that time was considered to be super fast because before these trains, the fastest that anyone could travel was on horseback or a carriage. It was supposed to be an amazing experience.

Between the mid 18th to 19th centuries, the industrial revolution took place in Lancashire. People were working in cotton factories. Britain was the workshop of the world. Accelerating developments in science, technology and communication were taking place. The first transatlantic cable was made in 1858. The first transatlantic wireless transmission was made in 1901. The first permenant photograph was taken. This was the point where photography over took painting (or some people would say).
One of the biggest achievements of all time was the Wright Brother's first successful flight in 1903. This was filmed by a moving camera. In those times, this was a big thing. It was the first flight of a heavier than air machine.

This led to many other artistic ventures such as the design and building of the Villa Savoye in 1929/31. This architecture and design were inspired by the design of the aeroplane. The villa was made to resemble machinery.

One of the biggest movements in art is considered to be Cubism. One of the main contributors to this movement is Picasso. This was a new language of painting. The earliest stage of cubism is called Primitive cubism. This looks at the relationship of a person and their surroundings.

The next stage was called Analytical. This was more complex, and the relationship between the person and their surroundings was not as clear. The following stage called Hermetic was almost unreadable. The characteristics of cubism are shallow space, ambiguity of figure and denial of illusion.
Piet Mondrian was another cubist artist but didn't start that way. He started by painting naturalistically and gradually began to become vague. He did a painting of a still life with a ginger jar, and you can only vaguely tell what it is.  By 1912, his paintings were becoming shapeless and less readable. His tension was being released. If Piet's sequence of work is observed, he progessively abandoned the naturalistic appearance of things.

Mondrian was a follower of theosophy - a believer or spiritualism. This is a belief that after death, people still hang about, but why did people believe this? Well, at the time that Mondrain was painting, there was a war going on, and people were losing their loved ones. They didn't want to believe that after they had died, that was the end, and wanted to stay close to them, and perhaps, this is an influence in his work.