"Should you be a stationery junkie then you’ll be so busy salivating over the combination of corrugated cardboard and tea-stained card used for The Conscripts’ press pack that you’ll barely notice the fractious punk tunes that burst from the CD with unhinged energy."

http://www.roomthirteen.com/cd_reviews/9692/Conscripts__Conscripts_EP.html

Final 'Conscripts' Negotiated Study Project

Inspiring Young People

Last year I started training young people in Creative Technology in Leamington Spa (www.hybridarts.co.uk). It's been very challenging. I've been trying to feel my way around it and think up methods and try to squeeze in the time to put together lesson plans. I need to think about subject, topic, method, structure, encouragement, bonding, outcome.
Click image to see the beginnings of the booklet.

This year my students are in year 11 and will be leaving school, and us, soon - they need something to show for their time with us. I think it's important for morale to have professional teaching materials and booklets, so I put something together which tries to focus on pointing out, acknowledging and recording achievement and learning, and uses positive language to reinforce this. My students have a tendency to give up easily because they 'can't' do it.


The next challenge is implementing it. Not so easy.

The Conscripts

I have formulated an idea for my penultimate negotiated studies project.
I needed to find a way of taking the war themes in The Conscript's music (http://theconscripts.cjb.net) and using them ironically, relevantly, and meaningfully. One of the largest problems was making a statement that is modern and relevant right now, whilst still using the rich wealth of first world war imagery in their music.

I wanted to focus on the numbing effect of horror and death, its reality and unreality. I looked at themes of anaesthetic, combining war and death with everyday objects.
I looked at the word 'galvanize' and 'inspire', words the band themselves use to describe what their music is intended to do.

I finally came up with this: war games - those video games boys play where they pretend to be soldiers and kill things. It is related to triviliazation and numbing, it is everyday, it is ultra modern, it combines the themes perfectly.

And then the CD packaging itself - I've been interested in quite a nice card construction design for a while as an alternative to a jewel case, which holds a CD in place quite ingeniously. It can be modified to form a tray which slides inside a sleeve, not unlike the way a disc slides out of your playstation or xbox or whatever. So the packaging can be a games console. What follows is that the information booklet is a games manual, the manual of a war game.

The next problem is this: no matter how over the top and graphic and bloody and despairing I get with the copy and design, it's still not discernable from a real game. So I need to get ironic somehow.
I have a solution to this, and it's somewhat rude.