Charlie’s 4-Day Week

As I mentioned in the last post, in Workshop 3, all of us narrated our stories/hopes along the path we had chosen. Charlie had made a drawing of his 4-day week idea, that he talked us through. I loved his pencil drawing, and today it arrived in the post, along with his story! (this photograph is not really doing it justice, but I had to share it.)

Excerpts from Charlie’s ideas:

“The bicyle is fitted with a device that alerts riders to the location of previous bicycle accidents…More available space is turned over to food production. Tomato plants in wheeled pots follow the path of the sun on roof tops. The smart skip alerts people in the local area of its contents. A carpenter who lives a few streets awy receives a message and comes round to collect the wood. Families are bigger and span more generations. It is impossible to hold a family together and work 5 days a week. Most people move to four day weeks if they can…”

More about how we will synthesise all these stories/ideas to follow.

I have been Sketching

In any sort of collaborative effort, I think its important for each participant to go away and have the time and space to think, and reflect about the project as a whole, and the several individual themes that have come up. Sometimes people feel more committed, and at other times they want to step back. I am learning a lot from this project, not only in creating work together, but the nature of changing relationships between people. One of my biggest interest in this project has been to step out of what I normally do, and work with people whom I never get a chance to work with. And that has definitely been a success so far.

After our last workshop, which resulted in 8 trajectories, all of us went our separate ways to think of ideas and stories. Here are some of my sketches, and I am looking forward to seeing what the others have.

1. A very messy drawing in my sketchbook.

2. Tracing out the parts that were exciting

3. Polishing the ideas through a large sketch (1 metre long)