ALICE WASS
Exploring Media
Beauty in Coventry
My first group task was to create a media artefact that linked to ‘**** in Coventry’. The first part of the task was to find a group of five people which was daunting as I did not know anybody in the entire room. Pushing past my nerves I managed to find four other girls to work with and after getting to know each other I felt a lot more confident. However this group formation developed a problem as we quickly lost one member who decided to switch groups, but fortunately another girl asked to join us and we welcomed her in.
I assumed the planning stage would be the most difficult part because as I did not know the girls I was working with I thought it might be difficult to choose an idea if people had lots of conflicting ideas. I was concerned that it might be awkward if no one offered suggestions or were reluctant to make decisions due to nervousness. However my assumption was wrong as it turned out that working with people I did not know created a lot of ideas that I would not have thought of. As a group we were friendly and welcoming of all suggestions which we discussed and decided which were actually suitable for the task.
I also assumed it would be difficult to come up with something original as none of our group were from Coventry and we had only been here for a couple of days. We spent a long time trying to come up with an interesting idea that we all agreed would make a good media artefact. Initially we spent a long time trying to incorporate food in Coventry into the artefact to reflect the huge mixture of cultures. Yet in further discussion we realised that finding a way to present this and link it to media was getting too complicated as people tried to make the idea more specific and restricted. After we had decided that this was not going to be a good path to follow, I suggested looking at the task the other way around by picking a platform to present on and a target audience and then choosing a suitable topic. As we were all new students in Coventry we thought it would be best to do something aimed at new students. We then discussed which forms of media we were comfortable using and which method would be most appropriate to new students, resulting in our decision to use Instagram. We discussed what we had thought of Coventry as an applicant to the university. This revealed that Coventry was known for being one of the ugliest cities, which had been slightly off putting, especially to the three girls in the group who were international students and could not come and visit. Yet having been in Coventry a few days we now disagreed that Coventry was ugly and wanted to prove to new students that there are beautiful areas. This inspired us to create the Instagram account for ‘Beauty in Coventry’.
Looking back on the planning stage I think it would have been helpful to create a mind map or list of our ideas so we could visualise how the topic ideas would link to Coventry and media. This would have been less confusing than only our verbal communication as during the discussions it was easy to get lost and we sometimes talked in circles about an idea instead of making progress. Also planning things on paper would have allowed us to clearly see what we had to do next and what else we needed to do to complete the task to our best ability.
Having decided on a strong idea, I was feeling positive about the rest of the task. We created the Instagram as a group and found an article in The Telegraph which voted Coventry as the seventh ugliest town in the UK which we screenshotted for our first Instagram post. In the comments we explained what our aim was and put in a reference for the article to allow our audience to read it if they wanted. One of the international girls in the group mentioned how she found student forums very influential when deciding which university to attended in England. She then found other negative comments posted by students about how ugly Coventry was which we added to the Instagram with an explanation. Previous student opinions about a university are highly influential when students are making university decisions, especially now we are living in a digital age. It is easy to be put off going somewhere or buying something if others have given negative feedback, however, these can be biased so it is important to actually go and make your own mind up.
It was at this point in the task that we lost another member of our group, as she did not have to continue with induction. We did not let this affect us and the four of us continued to work hard on the task and communicate with each other to make sure we were all working with the same aim in mind. We then choose an afternoon to go out as a group and explore Coventry and find its hidden beauty. Whilst walking around Coventry we were looking at things in a different way, as it is often so easy to just look at what is in front of you or down at your phones and not take in what is around you.
One of the photographs I took was inside the cathedral looking up at the structure of the ceiling. I thought it demonstrated a beauty many students may not actually see perhaps due to their focus on the ruins of the old cathedral preventing them entering the modern half, or because once inside they are focused on the large beautiful depictions of Jesus. By making the photo of a more unusual part of the cathedral I hoped to demonstrate a different type of beauty. We also explored more abstract forms of beauty in Coventry; including street art, imprints on the ground, and the sky. We found some beautiful green spaces such as Lady Herbert’s gardens but also we explored the beauty in the construction of Coventry, recording manmade building and structures.
To make the Instagram more appealing to students we wanted to included videos as well as photographs, therefore we demonstrated the beauty in nature using a short film of feeding the friendly Coventry squirrels. Also to make sure our artefact would be relevant to students we used short and witty captions, for example, the image of the Transport Museum at night “Beauty can come in many forms. Sometimes in the form of light in the dark” or the image of a bee on a flower “Stop being a working bee and look around you!”. We also used a range of hashtags to connect us to our target audience.
After finishing the artefact we wanted to prepare for the presentation, so we met up to discuss how to make sure everyone got to speak and be involved. However we were unable to present to the class due to unforeseen circumstances, therefore we presented our project in front of our tutor. We spoke about how the idea evolved and then went through the photos picking out a few specific ones to talk about in detail and explained how we found beauty in it.
This task has improved my teamwork skills as I had not had practice working within a group of people I did not know at all. The success of this task has made me more confident and also shown me how a range of people brings more creativity to a task. It has also taught me the importance of looking at things in a different way to change my perspective to find a solution to a problem. Lastly it also reminded me of the power of online opinions, and how we are so easily influenced by other people, whom we do not know, when making our decisions.
If I was to do this task again I think it would be important to use Instagram to its full potential, for example creating a boomerang or posting a story as this would keep the format of our blog current. It would also be good to encourage other students at Coventry University to post their own photos to the ‘#beautyincoventry’ to show that everyone can find beauty in this city. Another improvement could be to photograph people, as in Coventry there are so many different cultures and ethnic backgrounds to show the beauty of, along with some of their story about how they ended up in Coventry in the caption.
For this task we made sure that our target audience of new students were at the centre of all our decisions, this I see as vital to continue to do in all future work to make sure that the final piece is suitable for my chosen target audience.