Hey everyone, I am Karim Almatari!

As an exchange student from Politecnico di Milano, I am excited to explore and learn about how things are done here in the UK. I am all about community engagement, sustainable design and global citizenship. Getting the chance to work on a project like this is very fulfilling.

You can usually find me travelling around taking pictures of landscapes and landmarks or sitting down enjoying a good book.

First Site Visit

On the 31st of January, the BAM! team went to Brinnington for our first site visit. We were taken around by the amazing client representatives Ross and Lisa, seeing what the potential threats and opportunities for an intervention. Brinnington had an incredible history and a tight-knit community, where their opinions and needs helped shape the direction of our project.

Through the walk, we spoke about many aspects that could lead to an intervention including signage, fitness and health, digital identity and access to green spaces.

Poster Proposals

20/02/2024: After hearing what the client's requirements were, and what Brinnington needed. We began to brainstorm ideas by creating proposals for the poster. We soon realized that our main focus was all about getting the community engaged through active movement. The proposals were therefore a reflection of this. In our search for a name, we wanted something that was just as “punchy” and thus BAM was born. The 3 proposals showcase various members of society on the move.

Both the MSALive supervisor and the client loved the idea, especially the first option. We were recommended a few graphic tweaks and that the people in the poster reflected the demographics of Brinnington. We took this on board and updated it using data from the National Census.

Second Meeting with Lisa @ MTC

28/02/24. Just finished another meeting with Lisa on the latest updates on BAM! In it we debriefed on a range of topics including the portfolios of intervention, poster developments and budget allocation. Lisa was very helpful and helping us coordinate with BBL, a grassroots community initiative and finding ways of collaborating to achieve the best results. We also learned due to the nature of the project there was a need for a risk assessment and filling the appropriate ethics matrices to protect the data the community is entrusting us with.