Project Partner Biography:
Lifeshare is one of the oldest homeless charities in Manchester, they not only seek to home the homeless but also to help people in their care adjust to new skills needed in everyday life. They list their primary objectives as

- ‘To identify street homelessness and offer assistance in obtaining emergency accommodation, signposting other relevant agencies and information for support’
- ‘To alleviate aspects of poverty and hardship through redistribution of resources’
- ‘To assist people to access Primary Health Care and to promote health and harm reduction’
Through their child organisation, the Manchester Digital Collective, they collaborate with a number of other charitable organisations to help teach digital skills for the 21st Century. We in particular will be working with them on their goal of redistributing resources both literal and educational in the digital sphere.

More information can be found at:
https://www.lifeshare.org.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/lifeshareuk/
https://twitter.com/lifeshareuk
https://www.instagram.com/lifeshareuk/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/lifeshare/

Meet the Team
Daniel Jarvis
Atelier: Infra-Space
BArch: University of Liverpool
Worked at: Mark Reeves Architects
Skill: Photoshop painting, Illustrator iconography
Hobbies: Videogames and wishing I had a cat

I'm particularly interested in the stories architecture tell us, how our understanding of the world is informed by sub-conscious interactions between form and social mythology. How we can say more with the materials we have. I'm a big fan of architects like David Adjaye and love Rossi's theory of buildings of memory making up our perception of the city. Besides architecture I occasionally pretend to read Russian literature

Meet the Team
Abdullah Jawdatt
Atelier: CPU[Ai]
BArch: Manchester School of Architecture
Skill: Sketchup, Photoshop, InDesign, Lumion for visualisation
Hobbies: Digital Art, Website designing, gamer

One of my major interests in architecture is the endless variation of possibilities that it presents. When I first entered the course, I had linear thoughts about it; Designing houses and including the process here and there and that is it! However, as the years gone by, I only came to believe that I couldn’t be further from the truth. There is so much that architecture presents to us and even more so that it teaches. Currently I do CPU[Ai], however, in my third year I did PRAXXIS. Having been in both ateliers, I came to realise how wide of a spectrum both ateliers reside in as both are so different in process but so similar in fundamentals and that I found to be one of the most interesting things that architecture can present to us.

Meet the Team
Zhanyuan Gao
Atelier: Advanced Practice
BArch: South China University of Technology
Worked at: Guangdong Jianke Architectural Design Institute(short time)
Skills: Rhino, Sketchup, Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign, Lumion
Hobbies: Swimming

I'm keen on exploring how architectural design can make a change on human life, and make a closer engagement with the changing times. Human lifestyles are changing, and I really like to engage design with these changes to make better life. Besides, I'm interested in applying sustainable materials, design of energy saving in the design and reuse of shabby houses.

Meet the Team
Gi Lok Ho
Atelier: Advanced Practice
BArch: Manchester School of Architecture
Skill: Autocad, Photoshop, InDesign
Hobbies: movies and digital painting

Hi there! I am interested in public space in architecture, in particular in the relationship between people and space. To me, good public spaces foster a sense of civic enthusiasm that is important to creating the social cohesion needed for a vibrant society.

Meet the Team
Jeffrey Lim
Atelier: Advanced Practice
BArch: Manchester School of Architecture
Skills: AutoCAD, Sketchup, Rhino, Adobe suite, Rendering
Hobbies: Photography, Personal Exploration

Currently residing in Hong Kong and a passionate designer. Im mainly interested in experiential architecture and in-depth designs that improve the way we live. Apart from architecture, I seek to explore other spectrums of the design world.

Activities and Skills in the project:
Our project will outline an in-depth process for app design. Students will learn how a storyboard works and learn the types of graphics that can be used within them. We will then go into how this finished design will be made into a working app through coding practices by developers.

People joining our group can expect talks from leading members of Lifeshare and affiliated organisations through the Manchester Digital Collective. The Manchester Digital Collective encompasses a range of professionals, from artists to musicians who all contribute to Lifeshare’s goals in one way or another.

Throughout the project students will be making heavy use of programs that develop graphics such as photoshop and illustrator. Whilst it is not required that students come to this project as experts in these software programmes, it would be beneficial if students had at least a basic understanding of the interface; some of the tools that can be used within them and what they can be used to produce.

Social Value Description:
Through the Manchester Digital Collective, Lifeshare gather a number of smartphones which can be given to the homeless. As a group we have been tasked with reinvigorating Lifeshare’s new e-learning platform that they have created to be used as a mobile app. This app is designed to initially teach the basics of how to use a smartphone which may be a new experience to many of the homeless population. Once people have learnt the essentials they can progress to a number of courses which teach skills from cooking to online banking, everything needed to adjust to a modern life.

In gamifying this app we seek to make what is already an admirable and accreditable platform more engaging so that people will want to use it more often. In this sense the work that we do is essential to the democratic dissemination of information. We give people a more appealing choice that they want to learn from. Lifeshare does not seek to instruct but to provide the method for the peoples’ own education.