Shelter Project

This year's first project we assigned is a Research Theme and Collaborative Project. The theme is 'shelter'.

'It can be treated as openly as you wish whilst reflecting your artistic practice.
It can be a critical statement, an evaluation, a celebration, a contradiction or manifesto...
It can be explored through any medium it may be an object, image, performance, or event, analogue, digital real or virtual.
It will help you to define your practice and professionalize your methods.
You will test your creative ability in stretching a brief, finding an inroad for your curiosity.
You will learn to develop a contextual question and objective.
You will be inspired by undertaking comparative research.
You will make unusual findings transparent to others and work in a team towards a shared goal.'

Project management:

-Project Introduction and definition
-Discussion and work in small groups
-Development of initial individual project ideas and research  question
-Individual research
-Plenary discussions

In our small group, we discussed all possible ideas about what shelter could be. We came up with; buildings and architecture, wildlife and nature, an attachment to technology, emotional and psychological support, and homeless people and charities.

My immediate idea to work with is the nature and wildlife route. Natural shelters may include: caves, snail shells, hermit crabs, tortoise/turtle shells, trees, nests, burrows, rabbit warrens, mole tunnels, beehives, birdhouses, any animal shelter, woodlands and forests, acorns and conkers, flower buds, rocks and stone, dry stone walls, grass and water.
Possibilities of this could be; the landscape, exploring minute proportions of scale, natural textures, animal characteristics, found items in the landscape, man-made shelters found in a natural environment.

As a starting point, I went out on a walk and took several photographs with shelter/landscape/nature in mind.