Decentralise
- Client: Somerset House, with Pinterest, supported by Art Fund
- Delivered at: Comuzi, where I was Managing Director
The client
Somerset House is an arts centre in central London. Comuzi was a resident studio at Somerset House Studios. Pinterest was the project partner and Art Fund supported the work.
The brief
Work with the first group of Somerset House’s Young Producers to create a digital tool that explores Black British culture through the history of Somerset House. The brief left the final format open.
How we did it
The Young Producers were six London-based creatives aged 18 to 30. We began with conversations about preserving Black heritage in the UK, and whose stories get kept or thrown away.
Workshops covered digital storytelling and how to show Black joy, spirituality and creativity in an interactive tool, with topics including Afrofuturism, queer Black communities and moving away from Eurocentric views. Each producer researched a topic of their own, and the group took a walking tour of Somerset House to learn its history.
Two ideation sessions at Somerset House, the group’s first in-person meetings, settled the format: something people learn from by playing. We designed it for all ages and all levels of confidence online.
What we made
- A research and co-design programme with the six Young Producers
- Decentralise, an interactive platform where people make their own artwork using more than 16 objects from Somerset House’s past exhibitions
- A short “information bite” for each object, about its history and how culture gets archived
- An online archive where people’s finished artworks are saved
- An online launch event with the Young Producers on 16 March 2021
My role
I led delivery across research, co-design and build. I coordinated the work from the first sessions with the Young Producers through to the launch of the live platform.
Outcomes
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