Week 7: The Final Event!!

Designers: Ranga Bhave, Fangxue Chen, , Effy Liu, Parth Loliyania, Zhe Lou, Ava Shepherd, Kristen Sullivan, Jacob Tomes, Ella Wilson

We have finally reached the last week of the project!! This week our primary goal was finalising the details for our event on Wednesday. Once again we decided to divide the tasks amongst the group to ensure we could finish everything in time.

Based on what people have been working on we decided to divide the tasks as follows:

• Completion of the Pub station (Parth & Jacob & Ranga)

• Beer bottle workshop development (Fangxue & Zhe)

• Pub game development (Kristen & Ella)

• Final event flow (Effy)

• Graphic materials and liaison with partners (Me)

I spent the majority of this week finishing the graphic material for our event. I started off with creating flyers for our event that we could post around campus and the Walworth community. Once again when designing these, i wanted to keep the mosaic idea consistent and fit with our overall theme of community.

Flyers for our event

Additionally, I helped Kristen and Ella finish off the designs for the bingo card they worked on. Once they had completed the content and first draft of the bingo card I then helped to make it fit with our overall branding.

Bingo card before and after adding branding

The rest of the week was go go go, I was helping Effy with contacting the photographers and organising all the final small details for the event. However it was one of those weeks where the more we ticked off the more jobs were added to the list. This meant we were all really busy right up until the final moments of the event.

Finishing touches to elements of the event

Wednesday: Day of the event!

Finally it was the big day and we were all ready to go! Our team met at college to collect all of our items and take them over to the Walworth Living Room. We got there a few hours early to ensure we had plenty of time to set everything up.

At this point we were all getting a bit nervous, while we were really excited about what we made, we were also apprehensive about how the community would feel about it.

Setting up the event

The Final Event!

To ensure people would have the best experience we allocated different tasks amongst the group incase there was moments that people began to be lost and confused. My task was to help document the event via photos and videos.

People started to arrive around 19:15. Once people began to arrive it got very busy very quickly! A large number of the community of Walworth turned up which was really rewarding to see.

Photos of people at the event

Video walkthrough of the event

Outcome

Overall our event was very successful and ran incredible smoothly. We received really positive feedback from our partners and the local community about how much they enjoyed the night. We had approx 30 -40 people attend the event, and a large number of those were members of the Walworth community who wanted to learn more about our project.

One reason I believe this event was successful was because we had lots of different stations to cater to different people. Our event was dynamic and allowed people to socialise, participate in events, and activities and learn more about our project

Additionally, this event is not the end of this project. Due to the success of the event and positive feedback from Matt, Frances and Richard, we will be passing on the cart to them for future community engagement. We are currently in the process of arranging another outdoor event with them to show them how to use this cart as a research tool to gather information and how to have people interact with the different components of this station.

Quotes from Matt and Richard about the outcome of our event

"We are really grateful to how passionate you are in not just finishing the project, but also making sure it contributes to broader community. The legacy of doing a proper handover speaks about how responsible you all are.

We had people at the event who had never been to a pub, or would not have gone to a pub. Thank you for gifting us this wonderful pub cart, it speaks a lot about how generous you have been with your time and effort. We had a clear idea of what we wanted to do but we didn’t quite have the resources, the energy, the ideas and the design capabilities to get this running. This has given us a boost at the right time. Your willingness to go out and take risks and talk to people has been phenomenal and quite impressive. -Richard Gaplin (Walworth Living Room)

"The pub cart is an important artefact for us as it gives us a starting point, sort of a big step forward. My initial thought was what the hell is this thing. But when I looked closely, the small activities were quite interesting especially with the pub sign, where each individual can make a contribution. Its astonishing how much you have packaged into that tight space. I love the “what on earth is this object” factor rather than a sign pointing “This is a community pub”. This entire exercise has been such a great fit for us." -Matt Meynell (Walworth Community Pub Project)

Reflection

Overall I learn a great deal from this project and had a really great time running our final event. This project was more than just meeting a brief. It was about building community and interacting with those around you.

Over the past few weeks I have strengthen my research, communication and time management skills. Working as a large team also taught us vital lessons about communication and using everyones strengths to the teams benefits.

I am really excited to see where we take this project in the future and the impact that it will bring to the Walworth Community pubs.