Week One of our Documentary

THE BEGINNING

The first thing we did was make a group chat on facebook, so we could put our initial ideas over study week, which gave us a good starting point for when we had the chance to meet up and then develop ideas, rather than start from scratch.

As well as this, Kylan made a google doc that we could all add to and we had different colours for each of us.

We had lots of brief and base ideas, all of which were great stating points. Here are some of them:
- something in the woods/farnham park
- creating an art piece out of it eg. getting people to draw on a canvas or large piece of paper. maybe then display it somewhere around farnham or uni
- gather people to create origami cranes (or something along those lines)
- the idea of basing something on/along the lines of happiness also was in the pool, asking people what makes them happy.

FRIDAY THE THIRD OF NOVEMBER

All of our group went on the London trip (read my blog post about it here), so this was a chance to really bond more and get to know each other, as well as this, there were a lot of things we saw which we all were equally inspired by
was our first chance to discuss ideas in person and all of our group went on the London Gallery Trip so we all had ideas inspired from that. We really liked the interactive aspect of art as we enjoyed and remembered them more, one in particular was at The Strand called 'Test Pattern'

We all got a chance to talk and discuss ideas and inspirations on the train back to Farnham and we all decided we wanted to incorporate the interactive-ness into our documentary.

TUESDAY THE SEVENTH OF NOVEMBER

On this day, we got a chance to have a group meeting with Anne, where we discussed our brief ideas with her and explained we liked the idea of how Ai Weiwei created the sunflower seeds and how Marina Abramovic created a space where she had people come in and interact with it. She had different 'stations' one being where people would count grains of rice and another where she would tuck them into bed. Anne suggested that we find a space where the public can come and in freely, suggesting we see if we can use one of the empty store spaces in the town. We discussed further ideas like creating paper cranes, like we did in a class prior, and creating something out of them or hanging them somewhere - something that would bring the community together and make something of it.

After this meeting, Lukas and I went to Waitrose and picked up a copy of the Farnham Herald, to see if there was anything interesting in there and also in case we needed to find something else to document if this plan didn't work or had to be disposed. Thankfully, we didn't have to do so, however this inspired us to think about trying to advertise our event in there.

WEDNESDAY THE EIGHTH OF NOVEMBER

This is when we had our first official meeting in the library to try pull our ideas together into one.

We spent two hours expanding and developing the brief ideas we originally had. We looked at the charity Mind to see if we could get them involved and looked for places around Farnham online, as well as this we searched for mental health coping exercises/destress exercises. Our idea became closely linked to the idea of mental health and mindfulness, so we all agreed it would be useful to go to the mindfulness event that was being held at the Glasshouse that night.

After the meeting, Kylan and I decided to try and find someone who may know more about being able to find some sort of space and how to go about getting one. The first place we went to was the SU office. We didn't expect much, however we got informed about lots of churches and community centres that have rooms you can use. This was very useful and convenient as we all agreed this would be something more accessible.

The event was very helpful for research and we found out a lot more about mindfulness and had a go at meditation. Read the blog post for this here :)

THURSDAY THE NINTH OF NOVEMBER

We met once again the following day, after our lecture, with the aim to scout places. We first went to the Baptist Church next to the university, the people seemed nice and the space looked really cool with a divider in the middle which could be really useful.

We also looked at some other churches and the Farnham Maltings, however we decided to go for the Baptist Church for multiple reasons

- it was £20 deposit, whereas the others were more expensive (eg £20 an hour) and we couldn't get in contact with the person we were directed to at the Maltings.

- it's right next to the university so would be easy to carry what we need for filming there.
- the space is nice and is something we could make something good with.

After the hunt, we took an hour lunch break before meeting again to decide on the space and further refine our ideas. In this meeting, we decided to try and advertise in the Herald, so Lukas emailed them as well as emailing the charity Mind. We also split up our ideas into categories for the day. I messaged about borrowing the bean bags from the SU, however unfortunately we weren't able to due to it being off campus.

Overall, we made a lot of progress in our first week of doing this and can't wait to see what else we do and what direction it goes in!