The Power of Asking 'Why?'

I’ve always been curious, always asking questions. In fact, ever since I was a child my favourite thing to do is to ask why (I am sure to my Mum’s annoyance!). Why can’t I have an ice cream? Why are you doing that? Why do you describe it like that? Why are the rules like that? It has always been my way of understanding and examining what is happening around me.

I joined Bristol + Bath Creative R+D and Container Magazine in June 2021 as their social media and marketing intern and since then I have been working with them on a journey of discovery. Testing and exploring how both design and communication can offer more than just aesthetic benefits.

It’s not often that you get opportunities to question and explore a whole organisation. Never mind personally exploring your practice and how it could expand to ask bigger and wider questions. However, Bristol + Bath was the perfect place to do so, as they are determined to ask questions just as much as I am. How do we explore our processes and structure? How do we hold conversations? How do we inform? How do we ensure access? How do we organise effectively?

Starting from confusion

Initially, my questions started from a place of confusion. I often was trying to understand the organisation, overwhelmed by the sheer size of the programme with lots of partners and team members. I simply wanted to find an easy and simple way to interpret, and the way that made sense to me was using design and visual tools, putting emphasis on a symbolic approach rather than typographic.

First Map to Illustrate Bristol + Bath Creative R+D

It immediately became apparent how much easier it was to understand my place in B+B R+D. While it certainly isn’t perfect, it felt refreshing to see the translation of all my initial questions, into something that wasn’t a jumbled mess in my brain.

At this point a small spark was lit, a new question in fact, could this offer something to other people as well as just to myself? Could I present B+B R+D in a variety of ways?

A sponge

I became a sponge! Collating information, listening, chatting away, and asking questions to gather my own form of research. Even running workshops to gather different perspectives.

I have come to realise that to gather the story of any organisation, it needs to be considered not through its online and documented history, but the verbal history of the people who work there. Listening to those around me gave far more insight and reflection than any written information did. I feel the skill of listening is often glossed over in education, missing the opportunity to approach things in brand new ways based on new opinions.

Something I started to consider whilst in conversation with others is; That all maps contain a sense of bias towards the areas we work in/engage with more often. For these to be a helpful resource I need to present a perspective that incorporates everything and everyone.

While I had all this information, communicating this in a way that seemed easy to understand and cohesive was the next challenge, thinking about more than just my own visual preferences. I set out to explore the map in its loosest form. How can we communicate the time things take, the processes involved, and the people involved?

I have come to realise that to gather the story of any organisation, it needs to be considered not through its online and documented history, but the verbal history of the people who work there.

Map Explorations, Created Through Conversations & Lived Experience of the Cluster, July 2021 to January 2022.

It was a great exercise but ended up with a few too many maps…26 to be precise! These maps offered an immediate impact, highlighting quite quickly any gaps in our website and communication, enabling us to understand what we were talking about and what we weren’t. However, information overload is definitely not the answer and I felt the need to reduce the amount of information being presented.

The Final Six

I settled on 6 different maps exploring various parts of the programme from our staff team, to our partners, to our network. We were also able to create new ways of looking at the programme visually drawing connections between different areas, including mapping our way of working. It felt exciting to look at the programme in a new way, defining the way we have been working; specifically enabling projects and individuals to flourish through our processes.

Bristol + Bath Creative R+D Ways of Working, March 2022

Regardless of any personal learning, it was fantastic to create a resource that could offer help to others through visual methods. It has enabled Bristol + Bath to reflect on the project as a whole and think about how the stories of the fantastic individuals in the programme can be told.

Throughout everything I have done whilst working with B+B R+D, whether it’s working with Container magazine on their newest social media campaign, exploring accessible design language or questioning the way that we communicate. I have understood that design is so much more than the aesthetic tool that it is stereotypically perceived to be. It acts as a tool to explore, a tool to hold conversations and a tool to organise.

My practice has shifted to embrace these tools putting questions at the heart of everything I do. Adopting a more open and explorative practice is the biggest and most important lesson I’ve learnt, and I couldn’t be more grateful to B+B R+D for it.

I don’t intend on stopping asking why anytime soon. Why would I?!

Additional maps from Jack were included in The Story So Far Document, published April 2022.