During week 13, the majority of my focus was still on the Dukes Lane pop up in relation to hosting events, assisting at events and organising/ planning/ packing down. On Wednesday 20th, I hosted my ‘Yogi Wonderland’ pop up workshop event. The day involved 4 yoga classes throughout the day, taught by It’s Yoga Brighton teachers hosted upstairs. In the downstairs part of the shop, there was an option to take part in some knitting and drawing or to purchase a vegan soy wax candle from ‘candles by JT’, who is based in Brighton and makes her own candles at home to sell at local creative fairs etc. Unfortunately, the day didn’t quite go as hoped. Due to a lack of tickets sold, I had to cancel the yoga classes. The footfall in the area seemed very low that day compared to the weekends. I believe there are a few factors which may have contributed to the lack of success of the event. I feel that the promotional/ advertisement aspects on the event weren’t as efficient/ effective as they could have been. For example, the facebook events were not created earlier enough and I feel more leaflets should have been distributed in selective places which suited our workshop themes. Another factor is that many of us shared our events via social media platforms. This is great, however, it meant it was predominantly reaching out to our peers and not a wider audience. Despite this, I have tried not to let it affect me too much. I am considering it as a learning curve. I definitely feel more confident in relation to events planning. I thoroughly enjoyed the planning and organising process and therefore will not let this outcome affect me from doing another event in the future.

Alongside hosting my own event, I also helped at the ‘Swap Shop’ on Sunday 24th March. This was a slightly more successful event. I feel this may have been due to several factors including the fact that it was a sunny Sunday in Brighton and therefore the footfall was greater plus the fact that the event had a room full of clothes, which attracts the public in store. On reflection, I feel a major part of the pop up weeks lack of footfall and funds was due to the fact that many of the events didn’t have products/ items to sell. Many of the workshops involved people coming to the shop with the intention to take part in the event. As there wasn’t many workshops with items to sell, I feel people were less likely to enter the shop as they were unsure what was going on when walking passed. If the pop up was something that Fashion Comms would continue to do in the future, I would recommend for the workshops to be more of a ‘shop’ or for the students to sell products alongside their workshop, which went with the events theme. For example, If I was to do Yogi Wonderland  again, I would reach out to additional independent businesses to see whether they’d be interested in selling products, including candles, incense, soaps, smoothies/ juices, 10 minute massage walk ins etc. Unfortunately I was told at the last minute that I was not allowed to sell homemade healthy bakes and teas. this was a shame as I feel this would have been a great extra factor to my event and perhaps enticed more of the public in. This was due to the fact that the cafe next door objected to us selling food and drink. I can understand their concerns with it affecting their daily business. However, to overcome this, the cafe suggested collaborating with them. This meant that they would provide the food and drink so that they are still getting business whilst promoting their brand and helping us out by donating some of the takings to us. However, unfortunately, this was never confirmed so I ended up not having this either, which I did feel fairly disappointed about.

During this week, I also did some experimentation for my FMP. This involved playing around with lighting/ compositions and locations to help gather some inspiration and ideas so I felt prepared for my studio day on Friday where I planned on doing some of my shoots for my publications content. I also spent some the week sourcing props/ clothing for my shoots. I went to several charity shops around Brighton to gather my materials. I chose to use charity shops as I felt it went well with my theme around slow living and therefore sourcing my materials from second hand shops seemed more sustainable, reflecting the ‘slow’ living and the themes associated with this. Alongside this, I also went to the beach to collect debris both natural and manmade from the shore. I wanted to collect natural debris for my sea feature in my publication. In other words, I want to represent the natural chaos of the sea through the natural debris that was found such as sea sponges, seaweed, drift wood, fishermans rope etc. I took these items with me on Friday and shot a series of still life with these objects.

On Friday, I had Daylight Studios in Brighton booked out for the whole day to take photographs for both experimentation and content for my publication. I had been planning my shoots for a couple of weeks before this, creating mood boards and sourcing materials, which meant I could get a lot of my shooting done that day. In other words, I shot 2 fashion shoots and 3 still life concepts. I am fairly pleased with the outcomes, which means I will be using some of the images as final content for my FMP outcome. Other imagery, I will reflect upon and view as experimentation until I am happy with the final images.