The previous two blogs documented the design and production of my final MA outcome.
LDN – BTN is a collection of 144 train ticket sized artefacts exploring the past, present and future of the London to Brighton railway line and its surrounding areas, as viewed from both train and on-foot.
Across twelve individual walks spanning the length of the route, twelve different themes are investigated and documented. The tickets are presented physically and digitally, allowing viewers to explore their own routes through the project.
During the pandemic, we experienced a radical shift in our perceptions and experiences of public space and public transit, and how they are shared and used. As we enter a new post-pandemic era, what have we learnt about our expectations of public space, and our ability to travel collectively? LDN – BTN takes the specific focus of the London to Brighton railway route as a space to explore these questions from a wide range of perspectives.
LDN – BTN is informed by the work of placemakers, urban planners, anthropologists, visual diarists, flaneurs (and flaneuses) throughout history. It works with elements from across these practices, and documents them via the mediums of graphic design and illustration. The flaneur’s unplanned wandering and spontaneous inspirations intersect with the anthropologist’s detailed fieldwork, ethnographic case-studies and oral histories. The urban planner’s intricate understanding of human movement through public space intersects with the visual diarist’s rapid, in-the-moment, illustrated observations. Through experimenting with these methodologies, LDN – BTN presents a rich portrait of movement through time as well as place, on foot and by train, along this vital UK railway corridor.
The project’s online home is at ldn2btn.uk, you can also see more detailed documentation of the project at the UAL postgraduate showcase (mostly just what you’ve already seen on this blog, though!)
If you’re interested, you can also see the work of my fellow MA Graphic Media Design participants here.
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