Fosse Foxes Part 2- Designing for Community Groups

Around Summer last year we began to embark on organising one of the biggest projects of our careers. The Fosse Foxes Trail is being established by The Crown Estate as part of its £168 million transformation of Fosse Park to showcase the talents of local artists and designers, as well as to reflect the rich diversity of the community.

Given the global pandemic, the delivery of this project had to pivot 180 to a fully digital way of contact. From the original plan of hands-on workshops, we were now set the challenge of communicating 14 different community groups ideas onto 14 fiberglass foxes, without anyone being in the same room. The pickle gods were watching over us as we needed all the good juju we could get. 

Creating the resources to capture ideas

Tasked with getting the groups ideas digitally, we were faced with a LOT of emails to send. We created several different resources for the groups to choose from (from zoom calls to worksheets) and waited for the ideas to roll in…

A screenshot from the video we made and sent to all the groups

A design sent in from New Lubbesthorpe Primary School

Balancing their ideas, our visual style and the practicalities of painting on a fox.

In the end, the ideas needed to be realistically achievable (sorry, but a no to the fox riding a 3d bike). Communicating this, whilst still keeping them excited for all the creative possibilities was a challenge but we had to put our practical hats on for a bit (Yes we do own practical hats, who would have known?!)

A key goal of the project was to make sure each group was included as much as they desired and to showcase them in a way that they would be proud of. Opening up our inbox, we received a varying array of fox idea related content. Paragraphs on a word document, a series of notes we had taken from a zoom call or a hand illustrated fox design (Or a small arts class worth of worksheet designs)

Digging For Gold- Getting those golden nuggets of ideas through a zoom call.

A big challenge for this project was getting those creative ideas from groups who don't usually work on creative projects (excluding the schools as children's brains are crazy and wholly creative). We are sure the groups wouldn’t mind us saying it took some groups a bit of time warming up to get those creative juices flowing. We gave an example of how WE would tackle a 

Pickle Fox and gave prompts for visuals relating to their groups to get the ball rolling. Some group members hadn’t drawn or thought visually in years which was something new but fulfilling for them. It was all about the encouragement from us in order to lure those ideas out. 

A Case Study- Memory Cafe

We were introduced to the ladies who run Memory Cafe in Leicester who were keen to have a zoom call to talk through their ideas. We created a presentation that included prompts such as ‘What's special about Memory Cafe?’ and began to bounce ideas off each other in the call. Once we got going, the women were throwing ideas around left right and centre and we were typing furiously to get it all down. Some ideas/messages produced included:

• The Cafe is about connecting and creating a space where talking and sharing memories is incredibly important. Also having a cup of tea and a good biscuit...

• There were many shared memories of Leicester. Meeting at the clock tower, catching a bus into town, playing Boccia, going to football games and to the market.

• Their logo is the Forget-me-not flower so they wanted this to be present. The flower is blue so they wanted this to be the main colour used within the design.

We wanted to capture the sharing of memories through speech as we think that is what makes the cafe such a warm and welcoming space. We will be releasing the design along with the other 13 designs soon, not long to wait now!

The final design for Memory Cafe

The ladies were involved with the project from start to finish and when asked said about the designing process they said:

‘We love the final design - it looks fantastic, you captured our ideas brilliantly. We really liked the slide show/chat you did to gather our ideas, that was perfect as you collated the ideas as we went along.  It also allowed you to ask us more specific questions if we were not giving the information you needed.’

Overall it was a really rewarding part of the process. If you’re interested, take a peak into part 1 and part 3 of the process to get the fully story or watch our vlog below to get a behind the scenes look into the project…