July 2011

July has been a busy month, one where my responsibilities on the marketing team for the exhibition have solidified. I have been contacting as many people and groups as I could to find a way of getting my workshops well and truly underway in a more structured group environment.  I have also been thinking about how I will communicate clearly and effectively what I have done, why and what new knowledge I have found out in the field in which I have been working in.

I have started liaising with the guides to carry out my workshops with them.  I have also carried out workshops with some young people in Dubai, and therefore have another few iterations of the workshop exercises, and even the title has changed to Identi-tee.  I was also asked to present my ideas to a homeless charity as they are looking for creative ways to help young people engage with their health. 

I do feel this is a really key time for my project and momentum is gathering, for the exhibition and my workshops, as well as all the information I am gathering from the workshops, which at the moment I am logging here, and the feedback means changes need to be made before the next workshops.

I have also been working hard on ideas for a viral for the exhibition and we now have a great plan pulled together.  Obviously the amount of work needed to pull off a great exhibition is dawning on the group slowly.  But hopefully it will dawn quick enough, there is a lot to do, and the problems with the sponsorship team no longer wanting to actually look after sponsorship is extremely worrying.  Although each person has been allocated a contact/company to contact regarding sponsorship or support, this isn't moving very quickly.  I have suggested a number of fundraising ideas to the group, which were not taken up, there was a bit of confusion as to the differences between fundraising and sponsorship, and it was a discussion I did not have the energy to get involve in.  There are definitely some real issues that arise from differences in culture and language barriers.

I hope by the end of August to have completed 2 more workshops and iterated the workshop plans even further.  As well as having completed a lot of the academic reading I am working through, which I hope will help me present my findings in context.