Keeley Travel- Week 3

To relieve a tourist of “going round the Wrekin” (taking a long and rambling route to a destination) and give them the important stuff they don’t want to miss. To push the boundaries of what is seen to be the definition of a travel guide. To explore the city in a different way and represent that in a unique and thoughtful document. The task to create a tourist guide to Birmingham is something I believe could lead itself to a very interesting exploration into an arguably overlooked city.

Monday 5th Feb 2018: Watched and discussed Jonathan Meades :: Birmingham, Heart Bypass and groups identified.

Jonathan Meades :: Birmingham, Heart Bypass is an interesting short documentary about the city, it uses clever and dark comedy to portray a real and almost ‘down to earth’ characteristic of Birmingham that is really rather fitting. A nice fondness Meades has for the city is also made evident. The group carried out a discussion about the documentary which was helpful in analysing and understanding its content further.

Having been put into our working groups, a discussion then followed reference to where we wanted to go with this task and the particular topics, places, objects we thought could make for a true to Brum experience. Our group came up with a few different options of which we want to research them all before deciding on a set idea.

• Exploration into the tunnels below Birmingham (what if Birmingham had an underground)
• Creating a document written in a Birmingham accent- this could link to a ‘sister’ document- dictionary/glossary/translator
• Using fabricated information to create a guide of lies
• Playing on the stereotyped nature that people from Birmingham never leave ( a guide to get out)
• Creating a Birmingham without cars purely focused on how it would be if it were designed around pedestrians
• A million ways to die in the west  Brum
• Londoners guide to Birmingham (basically what London had first that Birmingham was late to the trend with)

My aim for this week is to spend time critically analysing each of these ideas whilst discussing and sharing that information with my group to help further our thoughts and move our project onwards.

Kaitlin Watson