South Thames College

The Courtyard Project

South Thames College has a huge range of students of different ages, cultures and concerns. Some of whom use the courtyard space regularly (usually to for a quick smoke), whilst others donít even know it exists. Over the past few years the college buildings have been in constant flux, as teaching facilities in the college change from the traditionally popular engineering courses to technology or leisure industry courses. Most of the staff and students have become disenchanted with the physical space they inhabited and have lost interest in the promised improvement each new development may bring. They tend to keep their heads down, ignore the physical environment around them and get on with the teaching/learning job in hand.

My role as artist in residence was to forge links between the the architects, Glenn Howell and Associates, the other commission artist, Andrew Kearney and Susan Collins, and the college community. To fulfil this brief I proposed to create a virtual courtyard space on computer timed to run alongside the real architectural changes that were about to take place. It would obviously be impossible to design a real building by popular consensus, but a virtual building constructed in three dimensional space on computer could represent a huge breath of opinion and creative thought. The computer version would be based on ideas feedback from the staff and students. And, hopefully, capture and translate to a wider audience the excitement and energy experienced by a team of artists and architects during the initial brain storming stage of the project..

My initial task was to find a way of communicating with the maximum amount of people in the most efficient manner. South Thames College was not, at this time, an environment of email or even traditional timetables. But the staff and students were very familiar with filling in questionnaires as part of their way of feeding back into the system. So using the existing lines of communication I devised a questionnaire to initiate suggestions for a fantasy courtyard space.

The questionnaire was designed to be eye catching, easy to understand and allow room for personal interpretation. In conjunction with its distribution large scale colour posters would be displayed around the college to advertise the project.

It was proposed that after all the questionnaires had been collected from the students and staff a three dimentional computer model would be constructed from the data and uploaded onto the college web site for visitors to access and add comment to. The proposed web site would also link to other architectural reference points on the web, possibly forming an educational tool for students.

In the new courtyard the wall between the technology laboratories and the courtyard would be redesigned as a screening window so that work generated on computer could be projected from the interior into the courtyard area. The launch of the web site was programmed to coincide with the opening of the new courtyard space so that visitors could witness both the real and virtual landscapes together.

Unfortunately when further funding was sought for the proposed architectural changes it was rejected by the lottery fund and the residency had to stop. The questionnaires and posters were designed but not distributed, and the workshops and website put on hold.

We all felt extremly dissappointed that the creative process beween artist and architect could not be translated back to the students and staff at South Thames College. But it was generally felt that to generate interest around a project that would never happen would be a mistake.

The project ended in Sept 1999 in consultation with PACA and South Thames College.

Julie Myers Artist in residence, South Thames College, 1999