Creative: Final Major Project announcement

We're now entering our final module at Foundation and for our final major project the word we have been given to work with is "Becoming".

be·com·ing  [bih-kuhm-ing]

adjective1.that suits or gives a pleasing effect or attractive appearance, as to a person or thing: a becoming dress; a becoming hairdo.
suitable; appropriate; proper: a becoming sentiment. 3.any process of change. Aristotelianism. any change involving realization of potentialities, as a movement from the lower level of potentiality to the higher level of actuality.

My original thoughts were not positive ones, it's such a challenging word to build a whole project on! However I've now decided to base my final major project on my hometown. Up until 1969 Swansea was classed as a town, and I want to base my project on Swansea becoming a city. My grandfather has lent me several of his books full of old photographs of Swansea, pre and post-war. He has also lent me a lot of his own research material from when he looked into our old family tree and our origins. I want to focus on the process of change, contrasting how the town and suburbs have altered and developed over the years. I plan to investigate the changes of Swansea's transport, architecture, people, businesses and art.

In my research into the part of Swansea I live in, Llansamlet, I discovered that just at the end of my own street is the land where a village once stood. Llwyn Brwdrau was a small settlement in the area that had a pub, a chapel, a school and several houses. During the post-war period this whole village was demolished to make way for the M4 motorway and new housing which now makes up the street that I currently live on. If you venture down to the remaining land next to the motorway which is mostly derelict and overgrown, you can see lampposts and old gravestones left behind.

After discovering this and several other stories of post-war demolition and rebuilding I'm considering going down the route of producing "then and now" images. I plan to incorporate photography and illustration into my work and maybe produce a series of pieces as my final outcome for our end of year exhibition. I want to travel around Swansea with my camera and sketchbook and document as many changed areas as I can and then create some sort of composition or montage showing the contrast of the "becoming" of Swansea city.

I feel so motivated and interested by this project, I absolutely love learning about Swansea and its history. I will write posts in the near future featuring my sketchbooks, my final outcomes and when the time comes I will make a post featuring our end of year exhibition.