by our exhibitions and the collection.
Design For Life: M13 Youth Project
Eight young women from M13 Youth Project worked with graphic designers Liz Noble and Harriet Hall from interference-art on a project that was led by the girls’ ideas and choices and became called IZ’IT INNIT MANCHESTER.
During this Design For Life project the young women involved explored the craft, design and poster collections at Manchester Art Gallery and chose to use the collection of Empire Marketing Board posters as inspiration for their own work. They created posters with bold and confident statements about Manchester and their experiences of living in the City as a young person.
Melanie Horton, a PhD student researching the Empire Marketing Board poster collection, facilitated a discussion about the aesthetics, historic context, post-colonial and personal readings of the posters.
Mike Garry, a local poet, led a creative writing session on poetry as ‘the art of naming things' and encouraged the girls to be bold and playful in their choice of language. They looked at the perception of their local area, Longsight, and at how Manchester is represented by the media.
The group learned about the essentials of graphic design including the use of fonts, grids and colours and used digital photography and computers to design their posters. They hand-printed their posters learning all the steps of screen-printing with Mandy Tolley at Hot Bed Press.
The girls also worked towards Arts Award Bronze level during the project.
Project partners: M13 Youth Project, Victoria and Albert Museum, Bolton Museum and Art Gallery, Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, Museums Sheffield, Shipley Art Gallery: Gateshead, Action for Children, the children's charity.
Funding: Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCFS) - Strategic Commissioning Programme
To find out more about this national project visit the V&A Design For Life website
Images © Lilli Brodner
