During this project we have worked almost exclusively with academics involved as part of the research group, only briefly discussing our options with the marketing team for the school. Given that these members of staff are our tutors and we have been taught by them throughout our time here there was the possibility that the project may have resulted in an unequal power relationship, where a tutor-student environment was formed. As a group we don’t feel that this has been the case, we have tried to approach the project professionally, treating the research group as our client and presented our ideas to them as we would in practice. As well as this we tried to suggest where changes could be made to both the brief and outputs, as part of the natural evolution of a project over its development which would not be possible had a tutor-student environment been in place. There have been influences on the project from those outside BCU, namely the publishers who set the format of the journal and the book and the keynote speakers who were interviewed, although we as the students have had no contact with them directly.
If future versions of this Co.LAB module are to be run it may be worth encouraging the students to interact with these external influencers so that they are able to get more experience with other professions, both with the setting up and delivery of content to be created out of the event.
Challenges arose where the research group weren’t able to describe what they wanted for the ‘style’ of the website and graphic illustrations. This led to opportunity for the EDIT/or team to suggest what could be achieved but may not have been what the group were hoping for in the first instance.
In summary we have enjoyed working alongside the staff throughout this process and were able to build a rapport that enabled us to, hopefully, carry out the tasks successfully for inclusion in the publications arising from the Architecture Festival and the City Conference.
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