In collaboration with visiting designer, Rick Griffith, select CVPA Graphic Design students were invited to create and deploy a project focused on engaging with and creating a conversation amongst the UMass Dartmouth & New Bedford communities. The project consisted of poster, vinyl, mural, and video installations, and opened at Star Store in New Bedford in October 2021.
The Idea
The project stemmed from the idea of connecting and having a conversation with the community. To achieve our goal, we created a pop-up exhibition spanning across various mediums from print to digital utilizing the pronoun "We." Starting with various "We" statements that would later be printed onto 12x18" posters, we further developed our "we statements" into a plural manifesto that would be printed on letter-half colored card stock.
During the night of the pop-up exhibition, guests were asked a simple question: "How do you feel?" In exchange for their answer, we offered a free poster, pencil, and the chance to make their own "we statement" and have it printed on a blank poster.
Printed in collaboration with Dan Wood of DWRI Letterpress
Created to be an overarching statement of how each one of us felt at the time of its' creation and to kindly reach out to everyone in the community, the Plural Manifesto reads:
We are sharing this place with you–regardless of where and when you are from.
Know that we are each in our own experience having not chosen to be born in this time and place–and yet feeling so responsible for our collective survival.
We are all moving at the speed of life, we could use your help.
Ending with a request of the viewer to share how they're feeling with us—to move at the the speed of life together.
The Crew! (from Left to Right): Ian Laws, Magdalene Fiske, Aubree Lawson, Maddy Bettencourt, Rachel Dufresne, Rick Griffith, Eva Yousseff, Katrina Benner, Evan Grant, Ashley Miranda, Sam Scully, Not Pictured: Shaylin McDavitt, Chidinma Irabor & Michelle Bowers
Opening Night
Presented on AHA! Night, October 2021, our project reached many people of the UMass Dartmouth and New Bedford communities; Everyone sharing with us how they felt.
The project consisted of a silent video montage of all the members in the crew discussing how they feel, many 12x18" posters of our various "we statements," the plural manifesto, pencils reading "Imagine what we would know," and a mural reading "We would know if we talked with each other." All accompanied by live on-the-street letterpress printing and an artist talk by Rick himself.
