Six months of Telephonic Youth Space to Create!
Colourful heads, beautiful prints, drums and memory maps. Perhaps not your first thoughts when someone asks you about telephones. But with the artistic inspiration encouraged at John Hansard Gallery, families have been exploring all of these themes as part of Telephonic Youth’s Southampton-based activities.
Over the last few months, artist Joey Walters has led a series of workshops suitable for ages 4+ as part of the Gallery’s weekly, free Space to Create! programme. And it’s been wonderful to see what creative thinking telephones have sparked in those who have taken part.
Joey took inspiration from the research we are doing at Telephonic Youth in a number of ways. The first workshop asked visitors to think about the journeys they make with their phones across the city.
A second workshop used binary coding to get families thinking about the words they associate with telephones. Once people had thought of their word, they were able to collage it onto the shape of a human head using tissue paper matching a colour-coded alphabet designed by Joey. The shape of the head encouraged families to think about how they communicate when they use a telephone. Using binary code meant that people could keep their chosen word secret – an added bonus, if you didn’t want to reveal all!
One of the colour-coded collages produced at a Space to Create.
Inspired by how different it feels to hold a rotary dial telephone to a mobile phone, in a third workshop visitors created cyanotype prints. In this workshop, children and adults had fun taking apart old telephones and using disassembled telephone parts to create their prints. The results were beautiful, atmospheric prints in striking blue and white colours.
Telephones, of course, also make sounds, and in the fourth workshop, Joey was inspired by the sound of the phone ringing in a public phone box, and asked visitors to design their own ringtones. With the kind loan of tongue drums from Soco Music, everyday objects, and iPads, visitors got to compose, record and and take away their very own ringtones.
The final workshop linked to our Hands on Humanities Day where we had collected memories of young people’s telephone use. Joey asked visitors to think about what pictures they create when they map their memories of using phones. The prompt inspired people to draw and collage their phone stories in wonderfully creative ways. Joey’s customised ‘polaroid frames’, meant visitors captured their memory as a moment in time.
We want to say a really big thank you to everyone who created such amazing art at these workshops, to Joey for designing such brilliant activities, and to John Hansard Gallery for hosting us.
