On March 4, we reviewed our interview with the tutor. The insights we gathered pushed us to take a hard look at our project’s direction. Our topic was bold: parents are not the primary caregivers and a cycle of employing caregiving. During tutorial sessions, we tried a storytelling exercise that really tested our creativity. We had to pick up the story from where the last person left it, weaving in our own piece without much time to think. I’ll admit, it was fun but also quite hard for me. It made me realise how important it is to connect all our ideas together smoothly.
For our “incubator” session, where we really started to develop our ideas – we wanted to create a story about childcare centuries from now. We came up with the idea of the alter world in the next 3,000 years when people moved to the new world and started a new life there. We’d set the scene and then see which ideas resonated most with people. We shared quotes from our interviews to add depth, inviting others to share their thoughts. It was a way to ensure our future world wasn’t just imaginative but also something that could feel real and engaging to others.
I read the article ‘Against Population, Towards Afterlife’ by Michelle Murphy, which influenced us a lot. It made us think about how communities could raise children together and how everyone, including our environment, is connected in a big, life-giving circle. Murphy’s thoughts on how society values certain lives over others and how this shapes the way we think about population and care gave us a lot to chew on.
Wednesday’s workshop was all about turning these ideas into something visual. We made a collage that laid out our vision of the future of childcare. This wasn’t just for us; it was also for the incubator session to help everyone else visualise what we were thinking.
When we presented our ideas, the feedback was eye-opening. People understood that in our future world, children were cared for by the whole community. But there were worries, too, like whether this meant all children would grow up the same without their own unique identities. This was a big moment for us, making us think even harder about our theme and how we were telling our story.
Over the weekend, we visited the Tate Britain for the exhibition ‘Women in Revolt!’ recommended by our tutor. The exhibition had works that spoke directly to our childcare theme. One in particular, ‘Who’s Holding the Baby’ by Hackney Flashers, stood out as a sad reminder of the importance of community support in raising children.