Editorial

My final editorial illustration in response to an article about autistic children in education. Children who have turned their back on the eduction system which fails to enable them to move seamlessly and painlessly between schools. Children who lack the support to choose their own pathway, unlike many of their peers. 

Collage

The final project in 'fact' is editorial. The article is about children/teenagers with special needs, in particular autism and the problems and restrictions they face when moving through the education system. One of the tasks in the first workshop involved creating collages in response to key words in the article. 

Three collages based on the words: barriers, aspiration and frustration.

Monoprinting

I have done a few monoprint experiments in connection with the reportage project. I intended to use the process for the final image, but I found that it was not suitable for small detailed drawings. However I still wanted to produce some monoprints of the match girls. 

Bryant and May Match Factory

This is my final illustration for the reportage project. The brief required me to produce a black and white image with text in one colour. (The text is written in full below). The building was printed using a cardboard plate, which allowed me to add all the brick texture to the surface of the cardboard. I have included a group of the Match Girls in front gates. I really wanted to include them in the image, after reading about the horrendous way they were treated I felt it was important to make them central to the message. This is also why I have used a quote from Annie Besant who lead them in a successful strike in 1888.

Bow quarter, once the site of the Bryant and May Match factory, was one of East London's first urban renewal projects. it is comprised of nineteen town houses and seven hundred and fourteen apartments with rent at approximately three hundred pounds per week. The development boasts its own supermarket, leisure centre, bar and restaurant. The Bow Quarter.

'Born in slums, driven to work while still children, undersized because underfed, oppressed because helpless, flung aside as soon as worked out, who cares if they die or go on the streets provided only that the Bryant and May shareholders get their 23 per cent.' Annie Besant, 'The Link: A journal for the servants of man', Saturday 23 June 1888.

Reportage, Tower Hamlets

The next fact project is about Tower Hamlets, East London. We have to produce a piece of work for the 'Fairness Commission', recording things about the borough, for example the buildings, the people but also considering the inequalities, perhaps the disparity in the distribution of wealth. I have focused on the buildings and went to visit the Bryant and May Match factory in Bow, which is now apartments. I found it interesting that the reasonably expensive housing used to be a factory where the women who worked there were paid very little, treated badly and were also at risk of serious disease. Although this inequality is related very much to the past, it demonstrates how Tower Hamlets and the people living there has changed. 

Hot off the press...

My Risograph print has been printed! And I'm pleased with the outcome, the colours are paler then I thought, could have made things a bit brighter, but I'll know for next time!