Catherine and Alastair are both working on a research project on urban nostalgia, which is indicating that there are specific ‘hotspots’ in the city that are common to many people’s memories and nostalgia for Tyneside. The interventions collaboration very much wanted to use these ‘hotspots’ as a key focus for work produced.

Dane’s design expertise centres upon found objects, and he had gained a thorough understanding of the intention of the academic research before we met. Dane had already come up with some clear design ideas which offered specific ways that the research could be materialised into objects. Given the preliminary stage of the research project, this also worked to extended and imaginatively remap the academics’ perception of the research into alternative forms of popular creative participation.
In a sense, this combination of focus, flexibility and expertise quickly overcame any initial anxieties or preconceptions that we had of each other before our initial meeting; and made it much easier for us to get focussed on a specific design brief almost immediately.

During our first three-day collaborative meeting, we were also at the advantage of being able to take Dane on a walking tour of the area that the research was focussed upon, and to engage in intensive debates about the culture of the research. Catherine described and explained a number of ‘mind maps’ drawn by participants from their memories of Tyneside from the present and past. Dane also had the opportunity to accompany Catherine – and to take part – in interviewing 2 participants and observing their mind-mapping sessions.

This intensive introductory period allowed us ample opportunity for relaxed reflection and engagement with the importance of memory in the city, and of the landscapes that are hooked in people’s minds and that that draw them or repel them. These ideas formed the centre of our subsequent conversations – how to design a found object from the concept of memory that is so abstract, so immaterial and yet has such a continuous and powerful presence in the way we use and navigate the city. There was something fun and challenging about that translation, or synthesis, from the abstract to the concrete. We have talked about this in a personal way as well, what our memories are and how this shapes what we do. So the project isn’t just about us looking at others, but is shot through with our own stories.