20:20 You, Me and Those That Came Before

London Design Festival; ‘Emergence’ at LCC: Sept/Oct 2019 #2

LCC students undertaking the Diploma in Professional Studies 18/19, led by Sarah Temple, recently collaborated with Salusbury World, a London charity which supports refugee children and their families. For the London Design Festival, they co-produced an installation in response to an oral history archive, taken from children and parents’ experiences, to mark the charity’s 20th anniversary.

Final year GMD students, Saumya Mittal and Mohammed Samad, reflect on their own contributions to the project and the display at LCC:

I was keen to visualise the oral history archive given to us by Salusbury through the lens of data. When I started doing my research and listening to the interviews I realised that there was tonnes of data in terms of geography and the number of people migrating to the UK, but there was no data which could tell me what these people have been through emotionally and how well they’ve settled in the UK.

My main objective with the artworks for this exhibit was to communicate these emotions through information design. I wanted the struggles refugees have to endure to resonate with the audience and for the data to add to the stories, not take away from them.

As I began listening to the interviews, I saw a pattern emerge. These journeys were far more emotional than they were geographical. All of them were stories which began with fear and sadness and gradually transformed into pride and happiness. Hence, the entire exhibit revolves around emotions. We have communicated these through posters, animations, infographics and a website.

The result is a set of data visualisations unique to every individual’s story. It brings out the stories of the subjects and does not lose the meaning of their experience in an endeavour to represent them collectively.

Saumya Mittal

My role in the 20:20 exhibition was to create the identity. The exhibition began with workshops held at Tate and V&A and then moved onto LCC/London Design Festival. For all locations I designed flyers and digital invites; whilst for the LCC exhibition this carried on to designing the interface for an application and credits for the student led films. It was great working on this project as I felt it gave a face to many stories of migration to the UK; something which is normally left to established media platforms to tarnish.

Mohammed Samad

 

https://salusburyworld.org.uk/