Meet our lovely and supportive collaborator - Invisible (Manchester)!

Invisible Manchester is a part of the wider Invisible Cities, is a social enterprise that trains people who have experienced homelessness to become walking tour guides of Manchester.

They offer local and friendly walking tours of Manchester that showcase some of the city's historical landmarks and explore the social projects that make the city what it is.

Their experienced tour guides, all of whom have been affected by homelessness, simply live and breathe the city, and offer their own personal insight into the past, present, and future.

Our group is currently working with great volunteers from the Invisible Manchester team; Alice Spark, Lauren Rosegreen (Sales and Business Development Manager), Amelia Maltby (Community Engagement and Support Manager).

Found out more about the Invisible Manchester team at:

website link: https://invisible-cities.org/cities/manchester
instagram: @invisiblemanchester
twitter: @InvisibleMcr
facebook: @invisiblemanchester

GRAPHIC WORKSHOP!

We are glad to announce that Dan James from birthdaystudio will be joining us for a cool graphic workshop and presentation regarding the graphic knowledge needed to influence the creation of our final colouring booklet.

This sharing session will be held on Tuesday 11/05, which is our second day from the whole event and will also cover general knowledge about methods, processes, and the appropriate software needed to produce a good digital drawing for our booklet. A Q&A session will then follow the workshop to clarify any queries from the students.

Our group is super excited and looking forward to the cool presentation!

Found out more about birthdaystudio at:
www.birthdaystudio.com

Finally, we got to meet everyone as a group!
We start our first day with a friendly introduction, and we managed to organize and play an online drawing game just to get everyone into the right mood and boost our communication and obviously to help us have fun together on virtual mode!

Followed by the ice-breaking session was a presentation by MA students introducing the objective of the whole event, our collaborators and a detailed session for our two weeks plan. We then proceeded with the precedent presentation to deliver guidance and provide inspiration for initial ideas of the drawing for our booklet.

All students took a proactive approach by finding and selecting numerous sketches with different styles using online resources and pinned their work up in the Miro together to explain what and why they like about their precedent.

After a run-through of all the images, a collective group discussion and analysis of which images stood out the most and how to apply those images into our own project were made to help us make a group's decision for the next step.

Great effort from all students today!

CONFIRMED!

We are super excited to announce that we will have two virtual tours with the Invisible Manchester tour guides (Danny & Laura!). This virtual tour will help us to have a further understanding of how the tours are usually being conducted and possibly to gain experience from it. By engaging with all the parties involved in Invisible Manchester, all students will have a more personal understanding of each tour guide's experiences, personal and sentimental approach in exploring different places. And from this, students will be able to design the booklet creatively through sensitivity.

Danny, an “adopted Mancunian,” will show people the city’s streets as he has lived them. His tour is a thoughtful and poetic exploration that will transport you to the flip side of Manchester, beyond the mere surface of its tourist attractions.

As a transgender woman, Laura explores the history of inspirational Mancunian women who have influenced her journey of transition. She truly celebrates the rich past of our radical feminine history by linking the history of women or of a particularly notable woman at each selected place.

Found out more about their tours at:
(Danny)
https://invisible-cities.org/our-tours/off-the-cobbles-with-danny

(Laura)
https://invisible-cities.org/our-tours/powerful-women-of-manchester-with-laura

We start the day with our very first meeting as a team with the Invisible Manchester team. We've heard lots of short presentations from our collaborators on their really interesting and insightful stories on who they are, what they do and how they’ve adapted over the past year. We were then been assigned to go on the virtual tours, followed by series of discussions and exchanging photographs, locations & text/poems with the tour guides.

"I used to sleep on Market Street, now I am getting a suit fitted on Market Street."

OFF THE COBBLES with Danny - Group 1

The whole team was divided equally for a chance to experience the virtual tours led by Danny and Laura from Invisible Manchester.

Group 1 went for a tour with Danny, focusing on the flip side of the city, which encapsulates memories from his personal experience of homelessness. The whole tour narrates his poetic exploration of the city as each part of the tour is integrated with poems, making it a lot more interesting! It was really a remarkable experience to be on this tour! Here are some feedbacks from the group:

"I really enjoyed our tour with Danny!"

"His poems were also integrated really well throughout the tour and made the tour have a better flow."

"Even if I became a millionaire tomorrow, I would never stop doing my Saturday tours."

POWERFUL WOMEN OF MANCHESTER with Laura - Group 2

The whole team was divided equally for a chance to experience the virtual tours led by Danny and Laura from Invisible Manchester.

Group 2 went for a tour with Laura, exploring the history of inspirational Mancunian women who have influenced her journey of transition as a transgender woman. Laura's enlightening tour introduces visitors to thoughts, struggles, and tales about empowered women, as she delves into stories about Emmeline Pankhurst and the Suffragette movement, Manchester's past, and homelessness. Here are some feedbacks from the group:

"Laura's tour was so inspirational and moving, always honest"

"Such a unique and eye-opening experience!"

For the afternoon session, we had the opportunity to meet with Dan James, a graphic designer from Birthdaystudio and have a great design workshop regarding producing good graphic on paper and examples on how to use appropriate images and text/font for our colouring booklet.

After confirming the layout for our booklet, both groups have spent the day drafting some possible designs for the poster using few sketch examples from yesterday's meeting. Looking forward to seeing the progress!

We continued our event on the fourth day with series of discussions and sharing sessions showing the progress on the group work they have done so far. This Informal workshare was to encourage teamwork and communication between groups and to keep track of the progress. Great effort from all the groups today! We are very impressed!

These are some amazing sketch developments from the students.
Well done, Group 1!! (Damla, Jennifer, Amir & Ronnie)

These are some amazing sketch developments from the students.
Well done, Group 2!! (Audrey, Vivian, Sara, Hannah)

Our last day for Week 1 starts with a super fun quiz session with the Invisible Manchester team! As part of our brief to reduce loneliness and involving the tour guides, the collaborative quiz will allow the students and the Invisible Manchester team to connect and promote an amicable and fun alternative to communicate informatively. We love it and had so much fun! p.s. We might plan to do it again!

We end our day with further discussion and sharing sessions about the progress of our booklet. We have seen a lot of really great sketches from the students. Really excited and can't wait to show our progress to our collaborators next week!

We are so excited to start our Week 2 programs!

But before that, these are statistics and notes from our collaborators about homelessness in Manchester. Their work is essential in demonstrating that everyone has great potential, as shown by their tour guides, who were once homeless.

Anyway, hope everyone had a great weekend!

Lauren Rosegreen, Sales and Business Development Manager from the Invisible Manchester team, joined us this morning to share with us about her role in the Invisible Manchester and a few presentations on the importance of marketing and how to reach nearby local businesses who will be willing to sell our colouring booklet. Students also had a short introduction about posting our regular work progress and project-related updates to Invisible Manchester's official Instagram profile throughout our Week 2 event.

Check out our group's progress on their Instagram!:
@invisiblemanchester

Following the marketing talk in the morning was an informal work sharing session where all students have presented their sketch developments to the Invisible Manchester team in order to advance the projects forward and get input on their progress. This accurately describes our aim to encourage two-way communication, allowing us to explore how the booklet progresses and collect feedback to ensure the outputs meet the collaborator and our group vision.

Following the positive feedback we received from our collaborators yesterday, it was great to see everyone's new upgraded drawings that will be completed very soon! Can't wait to see all the drawings to be compiled into our final booklet presentation.
Well done, Group 1!! (Damla, Jennifer, Amir & Ronnie)

Following the positive feedback we received from our collaborators yesterday, it was great to see everyone's new upgraded drawings that will be completed very soon! Can't wait to see all the drawings to be compiled into our final booklet presentation.
Well done, Group 2!! (Audrey, Vivian, Sara, Hannah)

We continue our day with all the students preparing, cleaning up drawings and designing the front and back cover for our booklet. We cant wait to see the progress before our final preparation tomorrow!

Today was a great session! Both groups discussed their progress so far. The students worked incredibly well and created great sets of drawing for our final booklet. We were pleasantly surprised by the outcome! Next, both groups will focus on final layouts and add some finishing touches for tomorrow's presentation to our partners!

Today's final presentation with our collaborator went really well! It has been a pleasure to have them joining us again in reviewing our hard work for the past two weeks. We are glad to receive some positive feedback from our partner. A great ending for our project as they love our final product very much!

So please keep your eyes open on the Invisible Manchester Instagram page to see our final booklet!
@invisiblemanchester