‘The Storm’ collaborative project: an interactive stage set design for the Literacy Pirates

‘The Storm’ collaborative project: an interactive, stage set design for the Literacy Pirates MA Interior Design 2019 Anastasia Karandinou University of East London

‘The Storm’ collaborative project: an interactive stage set design for the Literacy Pirates The UEL MA programme in Interior Design collaborated with the Literacy Pirates (formerly Hackney Pirates) on this community-engaging real-life design project. The UEL MA Interior Design students designed and built a real-scale interactive stage-set; an imaginative immersive environment for the events organised by the Literacy Pirates.

The Literacy Pirates’ initiative is an after-school learning programme, and aims at helping children develop their imagination, reading and writing skills. They welcome children referred by local schools, and offer them an engaging experience that enhances not only their reading and writing skills, but also their imagination, confidence and participation.

This project was about transforming a conventional teaching room into a magical environment for children to take part in a performative and interactive storytelling, reading and writing workshop. The children attend an interactive theatre performance and take part in an imaginary journey, an immersive experience, guided by the storyteller. This excites their imagination and creativity; children then evolve the story further, verbally and in writing.

The environment designed by our UEL MA Interior Design students was used for the Literacy Pirates events on the 18th - 22nd of March 2019, which were held in the UEL CASS building in Stratford.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSnFF04zY5I The design project of the stage set, as well as the video art, is done by the following group of MA Interior Design students: Dina Husam Jameel Al-Qusous, Birce Gural, Felicia Ivanciuc, Parisa Oreizi, Yuvraj Singh Panwar, Ishita Pathak, Sophie Savvidou, Lasata Shrestha, Esra Tekagac, Garima Thakkar, Sahar Youssef, Fatima Zahra Hadj, led by the programme leader, Dr Anastasia Karandinou.

The sound design was done by Lalvin; the music by Lalvin and remixed extracts from Night Owl by Broke for Free.

The project was supported by UEL’s Civic Engagement team. Special thanks to: Jude Williams, Anthony Mensah, Aaron Piper, from The Literacy Pirates (formerly Hackney Pirates), to Gail May, Aisha Labefo-Audu, Joanne Molyneux, Natalie Freeman, from the UEL Civic Engagement team, to Francesca Zanatta from the UEL Department of Early Childhood and Education, to Carl Callaghan, Head of Architecture UEL, and Alan Chandler, leading Research in Architecture UEL. Many thanks also to: Clare Qualmann, Liselle Terret, Gordon Kerr, Lavinia Mihoc, UEL. [Youtube video focusing on the session content: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=sbOBg7ooZuM]

Collaboration In the beginning of the project, the UEL students visited the Literacy Pirates venue and had the opportunity to discuss with the director Jude Williams, her colleagues and the organisation’s volunteers, and find out more about the Literacy Pirates’ history, mission, collaborations with local schools and huge contribution to the lives of hundreds of children. The Literacy Pirates director showed us the various spaces of their building and discussed with us also some of the main themes of the mythical stories they use in their educational events. Our students observed closely the venue to draw inspiration and clues that would help them design a successful stage set.

The UEL students also attended in person a creative and playful learning session with the children, the volunteers, and the Literacy Pirates educators. This allowed the UEL students to gain a deeper understanding of how the young children respond to the different elements of the story telling, what excites their imagination and what makes them participate more actively. It also allowed our students to observe closely what makes the children gradually open up and become more confident in writing, reading, imagining a story and sharing it in their group. This first-hand experience was invaluable for our students and allowed them to be in a position to design an imaginative stage set for the very specific nature of the Literacy Pirates story-telling performances. The collaboration continued over the following months, through conversations with the Literacy Pirates, as well as through reviews of the stage-set in progress by the Literacy Pirates representatives and our UEL Volunteering and Civic Engagement experts.

Design process The design process is hardly ever a linear one, and it often involves multiple entry points. Hence the following methods were not followed in a linear sequence, but were being developed in parallel, informing one another.

Immersion The design group studied how the bodily interaction with the elements of the space makes the experience more immersive. The audience by being actively involved in the performance through their body movement and contact with elements of the stage set feel immersed in the story. The design of the space was inviting the young audience to move long fabrics with designed fittings and holes, which represented waves of the sea adventures the storyteller was narrating. The audience sat on cushions made out of canvas and recycled paper filling, which made a sound as one moved, enhancing the ambient sound of waves and sea creatures.

Towards the end of the event, the young audience was invited to unroll oversized rolls of paper and sit around them and write how the story would continue.

Site research The design group observed closely the interior spaces of the Literacy Pirates building and the visual metaphors that were being regularly used for their stories. Big waves, a mermaid and sea creatures were prominent, as many of the stories involved sea adventures. A deserted island with a volcano was also part of the main story of the Literacy Pirates performance.

Then the new site in the CASS building was surveyed and the design process begun. The design group drew references from their observations and analysis of the stories, and designed a set up which metaphorically reflected the idea of the sea and waves, and which could be also interpreted as a volcano erupting. The video art projections as well as the moving nature of some of the stage set elements make them work as metaphors of a number of different elements of the story.

Art references, abstract models and transformation as a design process The design group followed processes of transformation in order to reach their final design proposal. Each student-designer looked into one 20th century artist and they then created a series of abstract models studying and analysing the main gesture of the artwork they specifically studied.

That main gesture underwent several transformations and became an abstract model which informed the design process for the stage set of the Literacy Pirates performance.

Prototyping The design team made in real scale a number of different versions of various elements of the stage set in order to test them in real life. The design team – the MA Interior design students – worked for several weeks in the UEL wood and steel workshops to prototype unique performance devices and elements of the stage set. Numerous versions were studied, tested and debated. Pre-final versions were also transported to the actual site and tested in the real setting. Following several reiterations, the final stage set was made by our team in the UEL workshops and transported to the performance venue.

Video Art, lights, animation The design team created a series of short stop-frame animations; each reflecting on a key moment of the story of the specific performance. Each stop-frame animation was created by a different MA student, but they all followed some agreed main ideas: the colour scheme, the frame rate, the fact that is was a stop-frame animation made out of hand-made drawings/ collages, specific part of the story had to be brighter and some darker, since the video art function also as a source of lighting for parts of the stage. These animations were fine-tuned as a continuous video, and were being projected onto the stage set.

Collaboration methods for a real-life project The MA Interior Design students initially worked individually or in groups of two to develop an initial design idea each. The ideas were discussed weekly with the whole group and feedback was given. Then each student or group of two presented their final proposal to the whole group in the form of an interim crit. Following that, the key strengths of each proposal were discussed in depth and the group, drawing from a few selected schemes, identified the overall layout of the space. Then, each MA student was allocated one specific component of the stage set to be re-designed and developed further. Through in-depth conversations, the whole group agreed on which elements were the strongest and how each member of the group would contribute further to one strong collective final design idea. Representatives from the Literacy Pirates as well as from the UEL Civic engagement and volunteering team attended our main design crits and tool part in the review of the proposals in progress.

Budget The MA Interior Design students offered their own time in addition to the time they would allocate to their design project, in order to build the stage set and support the Literacy Pirates mission. The cost of the materials was approximately £500 and was covered by the UEL and the Literacy Pirates.

This covered the steel sections, plywood sheets and fabrics. Digital equipment, cameras, computers, speakers, transportation, etc. were offered by the UEL in kind.

Volunteering and Civic Engagement Platinum Award All our MA Interior Design students received the Platinum Civic Engagement and Volunteering award for their work on this community engagement project. This award reflects their dedication and hard work on a project meaningful for a number of local children and the Literacy Pirates charity.

Jude Williams, the chief executive of the Hackney Pirates, said, “An interest in education and the potential of children and adults is what has brought us together. We all care about young people’s success and it is important to help them explore the creative side of writing and feel energised about their own creativity. By working in partnership with UEL we have been able to achieve the creation of an immersive environment in which children can be creative. The partnership has brought children, students, volunteers and staff together to give the children a chance to really love their writing and feel proud about it.”

Gail May, director for civic engagement at UEL, said: “The feedback from children, their teachers and volunteers working on the project has been incredibly positive, with children developing their skills and getting their first experience of UEL. The project was complex because of the number of teams and people who pledged their time and skills to make it happen.

Overall the project demonstrates how UEL students, staff and the voluntary sector can work together to make an impact in our local communities.” [https://www.uel.ac.uk/news/2019/3/hackney-pirates-shipwrecked-at-uel]