Busra Yildiz

As I decided to work on the word gurbet and homesickness I interviewed my mother on zoom and asked her questions about home, food and language. The same questions I asked other interviewees and it went really well she responded to all questions well and she chose to speak to Turkish because she can explain herself better so my publication will be bilingual including both Turkish and English transcripts. This is a challenge as there is a lot of content and I need to figure out how to create not too text-heavy pages as including both English and Turkish on each page can be too much. I will solve this issue later on. I wrote the transcribe and did exactly the same as other interviewees and annotated in different sections.

The blue highlights are the parts I believed was the most important sections and that needed to be highlighted she told me so many stories about us moving to here that i didnt rememeber or realised at the time, i didnt know how she felt or thought about as i was so little and i only remember things from my perspective. i believe this project kind of made me connect back to the days we left home and started a new life here i realised what a huge impact it had on all of our life and its a very challenging times for all of us and im glad im able to share these stories with people.

Once i did my mothers interviews i knew i needed to speak to my dad as well as his experience was completely new and more challenging as he came to uk to work without us and this probably had made his expereince lot more harder. I know he has loads of stories that would shape the project in a more deeper way. So thats another thing on the to do list.

I started to create mind maps about home within home concept and even cover page what kind of visual symbols can i use to represent these feelings. In the mindmap there is traditional symbols and objects which i thought can be used to show the culture. one of them is the curtains (perde) which are hand made the patterns are very unique and i remember them from my childhood. Another thing is the the home inside, my first initial was taking photographs of objects and tools brought back from home that migrants connect with maybe there is a way that i can incorporate that into my publication. This is a significant issue because every Turkish person that i know of whenever they go home they always bring back ingredients such as foods, inside the house such as caydanlik which is a tea maker specifically for turkish tea that every turkish household has from turkey or they are bought from the turkish shops in london. Also, i thought the car journey is also iconic for people travelling back to turkey these are mostly called alamanci or gurbetci as it comes from the guest workers in germany as german turks travelling back in cars full of stuff they are bringing back. This is also an iconic and significant migration my research showed with a plane it is 2,106 miles between turkey and uk so i thought maybe i can play with this figure in the publication to show the distance and the feeling of far away. Other things I thought about was colours, red and oranges are very traditional and common colours used in many designs as it comes from the flag and other symbolic objects, I thought about using symbols mentioned in the interviews such as plates, cutlery and dantel which is what Melin said she always has in her house in cardiff it just makes her feel safe and reminds her off her grandmother. These are all symbols i thought that can work well with the home within home concepts as they are creating mini turkey in their houses in UK.

After the first mind map I did more and this time it was mainly focused on the cover imagery and this was just to get the ideas out of my head and so its there when i need it. The most common ones were like border lines, showing borders in lines but i know this was already done many times before. The next were again focused on distance and miles between turkey and uk which i thought in really cool typography it would look different.

These were the contents I thought about the publication, this process was all about thinking about everything I have and deciding what needs to incuded and message of the publication. As I decided the now will focus on gurbet theme and homesickness in turkish immigrants in swindon especially my parents. The content sheet on the left was tge old one which i thought about including every single interview including the designers which didnt fit into the homesickness theme but i decided that thats not what i want to communicate and i want to explore the word gurbet so now the final content includes:

articles

Migrant, memory, food and home-building article

History of Turkish migration

Interviews with parents

Photographs about migrated objects into UK

Food recipes and language differences.

I know as the time goes on and as I develop this project i will have more content.

VISUAL DEVELOPMENT

To start off the visual process I first chose typefaces where I felt represented the two cultures, the first one is a script typeface called Bickham Script Pro and then a modern sans serif typeface Roboto regular . The colour i was using was #e82629, this really nice deep rich red which i think works for both cultures and stands out. The first initial type combination can be seen below, I thought the script typeface showed the romantic and delicate side of the Turkish culture, most typefaces in Turkish and turkey are mainly scripts as due to the Arabic history and ottoman Turkish, I feel like I can do more research into typography to develop my knowledge. Once I decided on the two typefaces I started to create the layouts on each section.

I also did some sketches today to visualise my editorial pages from the beginning, these are rough sketches to try and understand how i can place the content and what kind of arrangements i can make in order to create the best outcome. It includes some sketches about article pages, interviews and mainly mixture of photographs and body copy. I think i will use these drafts as a start to build the spreads. They seem to work together and focused on information.

these sketches also are different arrangements of content pages or other photograph page where its focused on migrated objects. I think these sketches will be a good start to the desiging process and its mixture of all the inspirations from other projects.

The below images are the first initial drafts of the publication, it foucses on two coloumn paragraphs and the two typeface titles. I wanted to keep it very simple and clean, the first article in the publication will be about the migration from turkey to UK to give the reader a history of how turkish people came and it includes the different categories as people shouldnt just say turkish a theres kurdish turkish speaking community and then cypriot turkish people so its not good to generalise. The second page is the top right, I tried to break the quote into the other page, this is the story from an articlr about a guy who misses home, the end of the page he said migration is a hard thing in lebanese so i made the text the script to communicate the feeling of home. I dont think i like this page as its not readable and it doesnt work. The other design is bottom left is another article I want to use in the publication this article i read and it instantly made me think i need to include in the publication because it talks about the memory and food related to migrant memories that it might not all be negative. The paragraphs are seperated into 3 on the right and then the pull out quote is seperated intwo three parts on the right.

I then worked on how how to add the interviews and I wasn’t sure how to place them as I liked the style from the german graphic designers in small short paragraphs but I do have loads of content as I asked many questions. I’m still playing around and trying to figure out how to place these interviews. I used gradient on the left page as i thought it showed memory feeling and looking home as its fuzzy and shows the nostalgia.

These are the photographs I took when I was home, I editted them b&w so it fits the nostalgic feel of the editorial.

INSPIRATION

I needed some inspiration so I came across these editorials which are so nice and works perfectly with the style I am using.

These are the editorial pages for the interviews, I included an image of a simple home table to give that raw and simple feeling and added the title on the page in separated sections. The mixture of sans serif and script represents the Turkish and Kurdish culture. I liked this page and I think it was a good way to break up the system.

I needed some feedback at this point because I was doing loads of sketches and layouts but I didn’t know whether it was working or not as we was in easter break I asked my friends in my course for their feedback and this was their main points. I agree with all of them. I will take on board all of them and develop my editorials more.

FEEDBACK 1:

Needs another colour maybe

more imagery

text too heavy on some pages

softer red to make it more delicate

FEEDBACK 2 :

Break white pages with visual or oriental symbols

needs more colours

symbols?

Visuals from Turkey and UK, more cultural objects and visuals.

Today I had a group tutorial with Carol just before the easter break, this recording was going to be recorded so we can watch it over the break and make the necessary changes. I made a presentation showing carol the stage i am at now. I included all of my works and the research I have done I knew there was things I am missing as I wanted to get as much as feedback as possible. I made some layouts to show her the type of style I want to have, very delicate and modern influenced by the moodboards.

The group tutorial went well carol said she is really happy to see all of the research and evaluations I have made, she said needs to see breadth of ideas on visual language and layout sketches as experiment. She also said she wants to see home within home concept using either typography or photography. She said communicate the contrast so the reader can see it. She also said she wants to see a good grid system as I want to have delicate spacious system which means it needs to be tight grid. I knew all of this feedback would come as my visual language is not decided and i dont how much visuals yet so the next step is to create the visual style I want to and work on the feedback from carol.

I also wanted to do some existing research into editorial designs, I wanted some inspiration and what kind of contents they all have so I can have an idea on what to include in my publication.

Migrant Magazine

the first magazine I found was Migrant magazine it actually focused on the theme I was working on but it in a different way, they focused on different types of migrations such as food, animals, under water, not just human migration which I think is really cool. The design is also very experimental and beautiful. It is very easy to follow and focused on two column paragraphs or covers the whole page. The text heavy pages are structured in a way to have good hierarchy between titles and sub headings. The gradient textured left cover page for each article is also refreshing and breaks the heavy text feeling. I really like the typeface they used which has unique points such as the R and the S, something that makes it stands out. I liked the theme on each a magazine as it followed the same colour throughout the magazine and different articles. Overall I like the editorial design, it has some different elements and the typefacee choice is also contemporary and eye catchy.

NANSEN –

“The last half-century has brought increased international travel and global connectivity via the internet, and yet the proportion of the world’s population living outside their country of birth hasn’t changed. A lot of people use the word “unprecedented” when they talk about migration today. We prefer the word “human” – after all, getting up and moving somewhere else is something humans have been doing since forever ago. We are all descendents of migrants, those people who walked out of Africa more than 50,000 years ago, slowly populating the globe over thousands of generations. Today national borders and visa regulations ensure the journey is challenging in different ways than it would have been for our ancestors. But human migration is still driven by the same factors: a combination of basic needs and curiosity.”

“NANSEN Magazine aims to connect and celebrate migrants of all kinds. We do this by getting to know one migrant per issue, homing in on the minutiae of lives lived away from ‘home’ – moments that all migrants can relate to, and many non-migrants can, too.For us all, the word “migrant” conjures up a particular image. We want to expand the way each of us see migrants and the way we, as migrants, see ourselves. With 258 million migrants roaming the planet right now, we don’t think we’re ever going to run out of stories.”

I think this magazine is really inspiring and its so bold and experimental. As the layout system focuses on passport like style, shows the grid systems which is a design system I never seen before, it makes it look very graphical but in a very positive way. I loved the sections and grids make it easier to read. The off placed cover photo also adds to to the playful essence throughout the magazine. im glad i found a design like this it as a good purpose and shares stories from all around the world. I dont think the design system is my style or what i have in mind for my project but it is again a really good inspiration from the content it has in the magazine. they focus on all sorts such as the history, food, culture and akins personal journey which is a interview with him, this is deffinetly very full and rich content that i want to have in my project. i loved the colour systems and experimental typefaces.

Alina Derya

This publication is created by Alina Derya, she is a Turkish graphic designer living in Germany and I came across her work in itsnicethat article, it said how she uses cultural elements and her identity to produce work which is why i wanted to use her in my research. Her publication below is a thesis publication focused on flanuers, which was just like our psychogeography project in second year. she tries to explore a area in Germany and creates a thesis about reimagining space without assumptions and from her perspective. her design system is very spacious and empty, these are a small part of the book but the images are edited in light grey mode and the paragraphs are very experimental very different to normal grid systems. I liked the spacious style and it felt very brutalist as it breaks the guides and follows a different structure. I was highli impressed with her other work such as a poster which focuses on her parents.

These are her posters and booklet about a turkish poet, she uses two typefaces and i really liked this, she’s communicating both turkish and german culture as he lived in germany too.The modern and script writing i think has a huge clash but it also works because its so different. I think this style is really smart and maybe I can do something with two typefaces making them contrasting so it shows off the two different cultures. The spacious style also used in these posters they are floating on the page which i think looks reallly good.

A-B magazine – Behance

This is also another editorial design I found on behance, it focuses on refugees and includes articles and interviews. I think the design is really smart and really communicates the message with the packaging off the magazine and the overall design system. The orange colours stands out and it is used due to the life jackets and theres a black and white image which orange is florescent and its so bold.

This is a interview section which is very clear and clean, they used large paragraphs and the colour system also works in this section. I really like the black and white images it makes it stand out and fits well with the design system.

TASTE OF HOME – LILIAN LEE

This is another editorial I found which is very similar to my project, a four year design student focuses on her parents migration story. It is full of photographs and other post cards which she collected. I really like the name “taste of home” it makes it feel really personal and with all the photographs its like she’s opening a part of her family story. I liked the design as well the stamp on the cover which makes it give the migration feeling and borders. The page on the left, is really good with hierarchy, the two languages and the big typography really stands out. Overall this project gave me an idea of what kind of things to include, I have loads of post cards and other objects from when we was in Turkey we would send post cards to our family back home. These post cards can be really useful in my publication.

MOLD MAGAZINE

This is a magazine about food, the magazine includes articles about different aspects of food such the science of food, culture and all other types of things. The reason I chose to use this as inspiration because it is very experimental and the grid system is very different. They placed images and the use of overlaying pull out quotes is also really interesting. I liked the type face as its very contemporary and each page is very unique to one another. I think i will be using this style in my magazine and especially the text on both pages.

https://www.nansenmagazine.com/

https://alinaderya.com/das-quartier-als-buch-ansichten-einer-flaneuse

https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/alina-derya-graphic-design-220620

http://jungeunlee.net/

https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/20180/a-migrant-s-mother-tongue-a-language-with-no-value

https://www.lensculture.com/articles/anais-lopez-the-migrant-a-book-and-multimedia-story-for-our-times

Once I have done the primary research I also wanted to read more papers and do secondary research to understated the concept and different perspectives on migration. The papers I have read contain similar themes such as migration, food, home-building, Turkish migration. From the interview evaluations i realised I should start to decide what groups I want to focus on who’s my target audience and what am i trying to communicate. these papers really helped me understand my purpose and what group I am focusing on. It was also beneficial to understand why these thoughts and feelings are caused as it developed my knowledge to understanding why people live a certain life style.

The first paper I read about food when I decided to work on this theme was this paper called :Food and Cuisine: Part of the Migration process”. It includes small sections on all types of aras such as migration of cuisines, market cultures, restaurants everything to do with food. In this paper the most interesting parts I highlighted and I believe it answers some of the questions i had on my mind . “Immigrants’ culinary practices and food habits travel with them. Perhaps they do not form parts of their primary luggage, scarce or non-existent, but once settled they do not delay in recovering them.” this part was really important for me because it was very similar to my experiences all of my childhood we would always bring back food from Turkey. When Turkish people go back to Turkey they always have certain goods they bring back they can’t find in UK, these would be home made tomato pastes, dried peppers. Thse are the goods people in my community would always bring back and I grew up these being made in Turkey and packed to the car. It’s like the food was migrating too as well as us. The article also supports this migrants need these goods to make the certain dishes. It also talked about how small markets opened up run by immigrants. This is also very common and in Swindon there are loads of small shops run my immigrants that sell goods from Turkey, India, Poland. These are all used my immigrants to buy goods that are used in there home country. These shops are slowly growing into larger supermarkets and especially in London when we were little we would always visit a Turkish shop to do a monthly and yearly shop of the ingredients that we couldn’t find in Swindon. These are all very important parts of being a migrant because it allows you to find foods ingredients from home and you can cook these in your house and connect to maybe your childhood or a memory.

Migration, food, memory and home-building. – Ghassan Hage

This is one of the first papers I read about these concepts and it’s the one that gave me a lot of ideas. Initially as I read it I made notes on the important sections and quotes that I found so important. Briefly, the paper talks about how nostalgia and memory that immigrants feel should not always be considered as negative. These can be used a way to move forward and doesn’t mean they are rejecting the society they live in.

“This essay aims to emphasize that diasporic nostalgia as a memory of ‘‘back home’’ should not be always treated as a form of homesickness. Homesickness is, as its name suggests, a sickness: a state where one’s memory of back home plays a debilitating function and produces a state of passivity, where the subject is unable to ‘‘deploy’’ himself or herself
in the environment in which he or she is operating. This is why nostalgia should not be conceptually collapsed with home-sickness as it can readily be conceived in a far more positive light as an enabling memory.”

“Of course, that nostalgia can take the form of homesickness is clearly the case. This
is especially so since diasporic nostalgia is often grounded in an experience of disempowerment, in the sense of an experience of an inability to do certain things: inability to speak properly, inability to direct oneself, inability to socialize, and so forth. This is made clear in the introduction to Hamid Naficy’s well-known work, The Making of Exile Cultures, in which he associates his nostalgic memories of separation from the homeland with ‘‘the separation from the native language and the control one has in using it—a control that is gradually diminishing.’’2 It is useful to interpret this state of homesickness, from a Bourdieuian perspective, as a state emanating from a dysfunctional habitus, that is, a habitus that finds itself unable to strategize and improvise in the face of a radical newness. Homesickness, in this sense, inserts itself in the unbridgeable fissure opened between the self and the environment when a person finds themselves unable to act. One takes refuge in the memories of the past from the potentially traumatizing encounter with the present. This is perhaps the difference between having memories and inhabiting them. Homesickness is a case of the latter. Nostalgia on the other hand, as will be emphasized here, is an active insertion of memory in the construction of the present and the future.

The paper talks about home-building and concept of home, it says security, familiarity, community and sense of hope/possibility is all feelings that are needed to consider somewhere as a home. “Homes are homely because they provide intimations of homeliness and hints of those feelings and the possibility for more” I found this quote really accurate because whenever I asked someone home and homely feeling they always talked about comfort, safety and familiarity. Just like Michal and Melin did, so did Lia and Memet all of them say comfort and security was vital.

The feeling of community was also very important and I also experienced this in my childhood and as I growing up too. Recognizing people as “ones own”, it brings people together and creates a belonging, “shared symbolic forms, shared morals, values and shared language” these are all things that bring together together as they are similar and creates a community. In the community I grew up in, we all mostly cam from the same place the same town and majority were family anywhere but we wasn’t. When we were younger all mums would get together make loads of Turkish food and drink Turkish tea talk about things and the kids would just play together. It was a ritual we would or they would do it every week as a part of community meetings. They stayed in contact and shared similar thoughts and ideologies. In addition, they were all remotely new in the area as well it was like holding into each other as everyone was new and didn’t know anyone else. The article also talks about how many migrants have the fear of rejection such as from the food they eat. The paper has a small story of a Lebanese family eating their cultural food and they are worried to tell the next door neighbor once they ask. They thought they would find it weird or even judge them. They thought they would get in trouble because they are eating their traditional. But once the response from the neighbor was positive and engaging they were relieved. I think this story is very similar for many migrant families, they feel like they are very different from the outside culture so they see themselves as “other” or they have a fear of not being accepted. This is very sad as every culture has foods that other people who are not used to maybe find strange but living with this type of feeling or not being accepted or the fear of being rejecting i think pushes people from fitting or socialising with the rest of the society Maybe we need to find more ways of bringing people together and showing that differences aren’t a bad thing.

I decided use this article in my publication as it tells a very good story and has loads of different stories from migrants that show the experiences that are challenging. I found the story of the cucumber really interesting and heart warming as well. From the research before, everyone has foods or ingredients that has memories either positive or negative. Finding these on a different country unexpectedly is also very interesting to me I find it very heart warming.

Turks in London: Shades of invisibility

This is also another paper I read that had loads of helpful facts and it talked a lot of how migration process is different for many migrants and also it separated “Turkish migrants” into mainland turkish, cypriot turkish and kurdish turkish speaking.It is very impportant to acknowledge the groups are not generalise. A they are going to intrview people from the gorups are focus on points susch as

• Action – actualising the desire to move or failure to do so). Relevant policies – encouragement or control – as above, plus the level of information available to the
migrant at this time.
• Arrival – as a legal vs. undocumented migrant, or asylum-seeker, or tourist/student and overstaying. Relevant policies relate to housing, education and training, employment, health and welfare assistance.
• Adaptation – working and living conditions, securing of migrant or refugee
status. Policies here relate to the broad field of social integration, protection from discrimination, and other policies listed for ‘arrival’.
• Settlement and future – to stay long-term or to return ‘home’; or to migrate to another
destination country; or to adapt to circulation and a transnational lifestyle.

The interviewees varied from different job backgrounds, ages, to reason they left the country. As if it was diverse it was very interesting to read about different factors such as their adaptation process or what they plan to do.

Migration from Turkey to the UK

This is another paper that gave a lot information about the migration and overall just how the migration process happened. It was very clear and included political social reasons of the movements. I think i also want to use this in my publication because people need to now the history of the Turkish migration ro the uk as when people talk about it they usually just mentioned the german turks as the famous guest worker scheme but there is a large Turkish community in UK and as one of the papers said they are invisible compared to the other ethnic minorities.

This paper relates to show Turkish people are trying to fit into the culture and through their research and interview their findings.

“The term ‘Turkish-speaking community’ refers to those Turkish immigrants who live in
London, regardless of whether they came from the Turkish part of Cyprus or Turkey. This
research focuses on the latter group. As these Turks, Kurds who lived in Turkey, and Turkish
Cypriots prefer to speak Turkish in their everyday lives (Atay, 2006, p. 21), they are all
referred as the Turkish-speaking community. The first ones to reach the United Kingdom
(UK) were the Northern Cypriots, who were followed by Turkish immigrants from Turkey
(Ali, 2001, p. 6). Although it was not possible to access precise population statistics concerning this community, its population is estimated to be around 500,000. But according to Sirkeci and Acık (2015), this 2011 census figure, which was based on visa applications and granted settlement permits data, revealed that the real figure was somewhere around 200,000 and 250,000 people. The push-and-pull migration theory is a valid explanation model of what causes Turks living in Turkey to migrate to the UK, for it explains migratory movements in terms of the intended destination being more attractive terms than one’s current location (Lee, 1966, p.47). An estimated one-half of the country’s 6 million expatriate population lives in Germany (Sirkeci & Erdoğan, 2012, p. 298).”

Findings
Immigration from Turkey to the UK, after the first post-colonial wave of Cypriot Turks,
can be categorised into three main phases (Duvell, 2010). After the two-part Greek and
Turkish Cypriot immigration, in the 1940s and 1970s, respectively, immigrants from Turkey
comprised the first phase (the 1980s). The second wave of refugees, primarily Kurds, came
during the 1990s and caused many immigrants from Turkey to settle in various areas of
North London. The third phase comprises those who arrived with student or au-pair visas
and decided to stay. Tourists, workers, businesspeople, and students are represented in all
of these phases. The numbers of those who came to establish a family or for the purpose
of family reunion is substantial.

The number of asylum seekers who immigrate for economic reasons is rather high; others immigrate to London to study and enhance their careers. Immigrants are relatively
integrated, have overcome the initial language and orientation issues, and have achieved
a certain socio-economic status. In addition, they have formed their own social cosmopolitan environment. However, the majority of asylum seekers and economic migrants settled in “ghettoized” areas. This is especially true for female asylum seekers who had lived in Turkey’s rural areas; they frequently voiced their satisfaction with the reduced neighbourhood oppression that they experienced in London. And yet researchers have observed that they have not entirely found the happiness that they had sought. Lefebvre’s thesis that oppressive life in capitalism programmes individuals by subjecting them to self-regulation appears to have a high level of validity in such metropolises as London. The lives of London’s Turkish immigrants are mainly focused on work and business, excluding housewives who do not work outside the home and students.

References:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1c999bq.32?seq=12#metadata_info_tab_contents

Toda first at 10am I was going to speak to Michal and then to Melin. The first interview went amazing, I was so happy with it and really proud as I was able to speak to a really amazing photographer creative person which he creates projects that I admire. The process was really easy I introduced myself as said on the sheet, I separated the screen into two so first one I can see Michal but then the sheet was open on the other to read through questions and keep the structure going. He answered everything question with so much knowledge and I was able to learn from him. I asked questions about his projects and how he felt about them. Every question he answered very clearly and I think he understood all of them as I never had to repeat or reword them. Once we went through each question he wanted to follow my design account and said he would like to see the end result. It was a huge moment for me as I was able to speak to a creative that found my project really interesting and expanded my thoughts about home and belonging. Told me many stories that relates to home language that he experienced when he was doing this projects. It was very beneficial to me and I think it will help a lot in the future of this project. The next step was to write up his transcribes and annotate the answers.

The next interview was with Melin, this also went really well first of all it was great to speak to Turkish designer as we had couple things in common like the food we like and our experiences. I’m much younger than her much we did have similarities, the questions went really smoothly and she was able to explain her thoughts. We had some technical issues where our house wifi turned off and I quickly connected to personal hotspot to solve the problem. I apologised to her for the short delay and carried on with the interview, she gave me lots of things to think about and also I was having an issue with emailing Memet Ali it kept saying wrong email so I also mentioned that she corrected my mistake so I will also email him later on.

The next thing I need to do:

-Write up Melin’s interview

-Annotate the interviews – evaluation

-Research more papers related to migration.

-ISTD research on publications.

-Visual Research

INTERVIEW ANNOTATIONS

Today I listened both interviews and created a transcribe for all before this I researched how this process works as there’s different methods. I chose to listen the whole interview and write down the answers as I went along. I didn’t include the pauses or extra bits of information that is not needed. I included the main parts of the answers and like word repetition or mistakes I didn’t include so it’s refined but all answers are their words. I did this for both Melin and Michal and I realised how long this process is I had to stop every second to write down as sometimes they would talk too fast so it was a long process but it was really good to listen back to these as I was in the interview I was thinking about everything so I wasn’t able to really understand and evaluate the conversation. This process is really important for my project.

I colour coded each category such as belonging, home positive, home negative, memory, identity. These were the main themes that came up in the interviews, I also highlighted really impactful and interesting parts as maybe I can use them as quotes in the zine/publication.

I was speaking to Michal he suggested I should message Lias Kitchen, his friends project that focuses on importance of food he said I mentioned your project to her and she found it very interesting so she is willing to speak to you. I was really happy to have another person to speak too as he said she has also lived in Turkey before and knows the culture. I messaged her introducing myself she quickly responded and I organised a zoom call with her next friday.

I also emailed Memet Ali again and this time it did go through so I am waiting for a response from him to see if he will have this talk with me. It’s a very exciting process as Michal mentioning my project to someone allowed me to get to know a new creative person that can contribute a new things to my project. I’m really excited to speak to her and hopefully I will hear back from Memet Ali soon.

I had the zoom call with Lia today and it went really well, she was a lovely lady that had so many insightful stories and experiences. We spoke about home, food and I really did appreciate speaking to her as her memories were also related to home and she said she doesn’t have the same connection as her parents do as first generations but she does miss the memories she had there however it’s not the only home for her. I will be evaluating all interviews at the end but overall it was another different perspective that made me question a lot of things and my own thoughts about migration and home as well.

I also had the zoom interview with Memet Ali today and it was a really good experiences first of all he’s a celebrity a famous actor that i get to speak too as a student I think that’s really cool. In addition, we had a really nice chat I went through all of my questions he was a very calm and collected person, answered every question very in-depth and it was overall a great experience that i think i will always talk about to my friends.

EVALUATIONS.

Firstly, I believe all interviews went really amazing and it all felt so relaxed when we fully got into it as I was very nervous at the start. I structured the interviews so its short and simple questions then more complex and personal questions about home, food and language. Each question led to other one smootHly and I felt like they also enjoyed the interview. My findings were really interesting, exciting but also eye opening. It allowed me to reflect on my initial thoughts at the start of the project. This is mainly started with Michal Iwanowski, he has projects which himself focused on home and it was amazing to speak to him. This project was suppose to be on migrants missing home and using food and language to connect and i was going to use these interviews in the publication. It was simple and I was familiar with the notion. But once I spoke to Michal, his thoughts on home is different to my experience. He challenges the borders, territories, concepts created by people. He calls everywhere his home. He doesn’t miss home, his home is Cardiff and he explained it as I made it my home by everything in it choosing the colours where everything should go. For someone to miss “backhome” they need to consider that place as home or homeland. My experience and the starting point of this project was my own personal experience, these interviews were completely opposite. I thought migration meant always wanting to connect back as well I guess in my childhood thats how we was. He told me your experience was different because you were a child and your framework was your parents they chose right and wrong. I think this sentence will shape the project because I realised all of these designers, artists experiences are different because they don’t see home like my community did or people around me. The have expanded and went beyond the limits and none of them miss back home. So they were not the right people and I realised what am i trying to communicate it gurbet. It took me weeks to figure it out and I realised after all of these interviews. These people come from middle class backgrounds they have high professions and they don’t have deep rooted emotions like many migrants feel. They are part of this society so they don’t have to connect back to somewhere they don’t live anymore.

I wanted a chat with my aunty who is also interested in sociological topics, she suggested I should do a “Reflexivity is the process of becoming self-aware. Researchers make regular efforts to consider their own thoughts and actions in light of different contexts. … By being reflexive, case study researchers self-critique their frame of reference, cultural biases, and the ethical issues that emerge in field work”

This is a completely new method which I have never done before, however I realised i am part of this project because it started off as a project that was created from my experience and if the answers I got are not similar to my experience then it is where I need to solve the challenge or the problem,

Following the image below, as the researcher I expected all of the interviewees to give me similar answers as my experience was because that’s the migration life and beliefs I know. I assumed that they are all cooking and eating traditional foods, I assumed they all get excited or felt the force to go speak to a random person just because they are from the same country or speak to same language. I assumed they all visit the home land and bring foods and items back. I thought they follow the same culture as before. However I realised these thoughts and assumptions were all narrow and closed minded. I didn’t think about the interviewees socio-economic backgrounds, the reason they left the country. I realised there isn’t one migrant experience and this is all depends on factors such as culture, job, socio-economic factors and your connection with homeland. After all of these thoughts I got really stuck because I didn’t know what to do with all of this information. Should i show the differences between home concepts or shall I focus on the missing homeland concept and do more research into it.

I think the next thing I need to do is figure out who am I focusing on?

What am I trying to communicate?

As I decided to do interviews as primary research to understand home and displacement, I need to figure out who I will be contacting and then start the emailing process to hear from them. The first person I wanted to talk to was Melin and Esma, they are the creators of ME studio. I heard of them back in RSA project as Katie a graduate recommended I should speak with them as the project was about migration but I didn’t have the time back then so I thought this is the perfect time to interview them as ask about their experiences. I believe they are both Turkish so it was perfect as they would talk about their experiences in UK and I would be able to hear a different story other than mine. So I decided to email them and explain my project and who I am and that I want to speak to them if they are free at any point.

Melin replied back to my email couple days later and said my project sounds really interested and that she will speak to Esma to see when she is free and then get back to me. This was a huge step for me because I got my first response and it was a confidence boost how she thought it was interesting.

A couple went past and I still didn’t hear back from her I was getting worried because we have milestones that we need to meet and I can’t move onto visuals if I don’t have the content and figure out what I will be doing. I decided these interviews will result in something and it will give me an idea what approach I would take.

Couple more days past and I was waiting for an email back from Melin, I decided to check out Michals website as I was writing my word press, I saw he included his email address in the contact list so in a moment of confidence and hope I started to type an email to him just to try my luck and see if he would respond. I wrote a very similar email as Melin’s but included how important his project were to me as well.

IN 5 MINS HE REPLIED!!!!!!

Michal responded in 5 minutes and said he would love to speak either today or next Friday! I was so shocked and so happy I didn’t prepare anything as questions so we arranged to meet next Friday through zoom and I would set it all up for me and email him consent forms and the zoom links.

I couldn’t believe it I was going to speak to him on zoom and interview him. I was very nervous and I had to figure out what was this interview was going to be about.

So I had one meeting organised and now it was time to prepare more.

I started to create a sheet of who is best to speak too. As I was watching creative morning talks I came across Meltem Arikan, Turkish novelist and playwriter that she did a talk on Cardiff Creative Talk, her talk was very inspiring and she spoke about her experiences and her move from Turkey to UK. I thought maybe I can speak to her about her experiences. In addition, in the same Creative Talks I came across Pinar Ogun, her talk about Taboos focused on women and gender inequalities and how we should get past these taboos and how she dealt with it. She is also Turkish actress that lives in Cardiff and I found her talk very moving and inspirational as a strong woman she talked about her experiences that pulled her back from learning english and other experiences she had which shaped her identity. I knew she would also be a great person to speak about with my themes as she also moved to Cardiff couple years ago. I was staring to have a list of Turkish artists designers I could speak with that can shape my project.

In addition, I knew Memet Ali Alabora also lived in Cardiff as he is an actor from Turkey I remember watching his TV series when I was younger so it would be an amazing opportunity if I could get ot talk with him to hear his migration and his experience living in a new culture and how he adapted. I created a sheet of potential interviewees and started to email them. I messaged him on instagram as I couldn’t find his email anywhere but I haven’t heard anything from him for a week I didn’t have much luck.

Melin responded and she said she’s happy to speak to him and she wanted to know more about the project and wanted to see some questions so she knows what we will talk about. In the emails I also mentioned how I messaged Memet Ali and haven’t heard from because it’s from instagram and she said she can contact Memet Ali and ask if it’s okay to give his email! I was really happy as I knew they worked together in a poster branding project for a theatre show. Melin replied back his email and said you can email him he’s willing to talk to you. My potential ontervieww list was growing and I arranged a meeting with Melin next week.

Things to do:

-Write questions and send it to Melin

-Email Memet Ali Alabora

-Create consent forms and send them out.

Things done today:

-Sent out the consent form to Melin and Michal before the interviews.

-Emailed Memet Ali Alabora

INTERVIEW QUESTIONS.

I have never interviewed anyone in my life, let alone actors or designers. This was all very new and exciting for me and I knew it would be so beneficial for my personal development. I started to research into how to prepare questions for interviews and the main thing that every website said was make them open ended. I knew my interviews would be quite formal but I also wanted them to be relaxed and comfortable with questions that they feel like they can open up as these are very intimate and personal themes.

I have friends who study product design and as I always see them interviweing and doing primary research so I asked them for advice. As they are master students their recent project was user testing. They interviwed me before so I aksed them for tips about how to set a good interview. We had a small chat and it was so helpful, the layout goes like this:

–Introduction

Who am I?

Why am i doing this interview?

About my project

What the structure of the interview will be

Check consent form is filled out yes or no

–PRE – STUDY (mini questions to get to know them a little)

Where are you from?

where do you live?

when did you move to UK?

What’s your profession? maybe?

Age? maybe

–ACTUAL STUDY (3 categories)

always ask why

Ask follow up questions

and chat back about their answers.

10-15 questions

Ending

Thank you for your time

Is there anything else you would like to add.

Each interview will be recorded just for myself as then I can write up transcribes, it is all included in the consent form. This will also be checked right at the beginning just as politeness.

My notes:

QUESTION DEVELOPMENT

Potential question topics about food, home and language.

Do you speak in your home language regularly?

Do you feel like at any point you are mixing two languages together? if so, please give an example.

Is there any words which sounds similar or mean similar things to your home language?

The importance of food and language for migrants connection to home and identity.

I think this is the potential question for my project I want to work on.

Please describe what home feels for you?

Do you have any memories about language or certain Turkish words?

Can you remember any memories related to food? It can be from your childhood or recently that had a positive impact on you?

Can you describe the feeling you had the first day you moved to Cardiff/wales away from home.

Is there anything you do which makes you feel like you are in Turkey again.

these were the type of questions I thought about asking, all related to memories, home, food, language and feelings when they moved away. I want this project to be shaped from real human feelings and experiences which is why these interviews are so important to me. I know many people in my course are already designing visuals etc and im not there yet but this is the research that I need to do to be able to get to the visual stage and shape my project.

QUESTION CHECK WITH HOUSEMATE

I finished my first draft of the interview questions and I needed to check whether it runs smooth and whether the questions make sense so I asked my house mate to help and I interviewed her. In her case, she is welsh and she moved to Cardiff from university so the she would answer questions focused on university movement rather than different countries.

I ran the interview questions as if its the real thing and I think it went well she answered all of them easily and understood the question. I asked her couple of questions outside of the structure which I think is okay as my interviews will be more like a chat with them but I kept it as formal as possible and structured each topic. I asked my friend what she thinks of the questions she said they were good and she was able to answer them easily. They are straight forward questions but I realised I need to dig deeper and ask why when they mentioned something I feel like is important as then it will be useful for my project at the end. If I ask why it will allow them to explain there thoughts more

THE FINAL QUESTIONS FOR INTERVIEWEES.

This is the structure I want to follow for my interviews, I split the questions into three categories and I will be able to develop their answers from the other questions. I believe it is easy to answer and not so complicated. I practiced it with couple of my friends and also practiced the Zoom call with my friend to see how it works and how I can save each interview. I feel like I am ready for them and I just want to read my papers related to migrants, food and language to develop my knowledge until I finish the research process and I can evaluate.

In one of the group meetings, David mentioned I should check out this artist which focuses on home and similar themes as me. He said check out his work I’m sure it will be good inspiration so once he sent me his name I was very happy because it was Michal Iwanowski, I studied his work for Psychogeography his project go home polish I was in love with it and when David said check him out he also lives in Cardiff I was so happy. I started to dig more and look into his other projects and understand his perception. From this I thought it could ive me some ideas for my project at the moment im focusing on differences in two cultures and displacement. I feel like my idea is all of the things at the moment I need to refine and make it clear what am i going to focus on.

Firstly I watched Michals Cardiff Creative morning talks where he was so friendly and warm chatting about his projects briefly and what it means to him. He is a photographer so he communicate his meaning through those compositions. The first project he talked about was minus the mother, series of photographs of his mother in several different locations al related to exploring loss with his mum he said I wanted to experience her loss when im with her to see what it would feel like. I found the project so deep and intriguing, exploring loss but with the person you are scared to lose is I think a difficult thing to work with but the project had amazing photographs you could really feel the purpose and the feeling they wanted to communicate.

The other project he talks about Clear of peole , this project is related to his grandfather in his website he explains this project as

“My grandfather Tolek, and his brother Wiktor, escaped from soviet captivity and crossed over 2000 kilometres on their fugitive journey home in 1945.

This is not an unusual story. There are no heroes in it, and there is nothing glorious about the events. You have seen it happen before. And you will see it happen again.  

I followed his footsteps for personal reasons. Hoping that if I walked long enough I might find him. Tell him it mattered. Hoping that the landscape might connect me to a time and people long gone.

But what had started as a quiet tribute soon turned into a meditation on the strength of the human spirit. How do you carry on when your body gives up? What hope drives you blindly forward when your life is so obviously disposable?

I have no interest in judging history, nor am I interested in glorifying my relatives. But just what happens to all those people who one day wake up to a war? Who mourns the lost ones? Our landscape is crowded with ghosts on their way home. East. West. North. South. There is no room in history books to fit all those people.  

This book is theirs.”

As I was watching him explain the meaning behind each photograph and what he meant to him he said for one photograph, “I’m a British citizen but still not enough” so the photograph was him trying to squeeze through this small gap. Each photograph had a meaning a message he wanted to communicate related ro refugees, home. The next project was Go Home Polish which I studied before but never heard the project from him so it was very interesting. I made notes on what he would say, he said”who’s power is it to tell me if I am home”, he said answering that question is limiting himself and that he finds it suffocating. He said the reason people ask these questions is the “human need to claim” which I think it related to belonging.

It was amazing to watch his creative morning talk and understand his perspective and thoughts about his projects and the meanings behind it. I realised all of his projects have a personal drive, it’s either his story or someone around hims story that he wants to communicate. This is a huge inspiration because for this final major project I want to be ambitious and create something that will push my limits and challenge myself. But also I want it to have meaning and a message that people can feel something from. I realised the person I should interview is Michal Iwanowski, however I knew it would be really hard to get in touch with him.

http://www.michaliwanowski.com/go-home-polish/4594130098

http://www.michaliwanowski.com/minus-the-mother/4577307583

http://www.michaliwanowski.com/clear-of-people/4577315405

Today we had a lecture on methodologies we can use in our project which I found very beneficial. We saw told about several different methods we can use for research in our projects which can benefit our project. The lecture carol gave us she talked about different design methods, these are focused on postioning yourself as a designer and understanding where you stand? Mnay different methods were mentioned such as IDEO methods cards, speculative and critical design systems, typohraphic systems, and social design methods. I was thinking what methods can I use. There was user journey methods, branding but none of them really fit into my idea the only thing that did was I think it was typography and social design. Some of the methods can be found below.

Speculative/Critical

Critical design takes a critical theory based approach to design. This kind of design uses design fiction and speculative design proposals to challenge assumptions and conceptions about the role objects play in everyday life.

Speculative Design may be understood as a new design approach – an open set of tools, techniques, and methods; ready to be used and adapted to various contexts in which we live and act – that emerged in the developed centres of the West around the turn of the last century. Over the past two decades it has increasingly taken on a more global character and influence. But even within Europe, Speculative Design and related approaches such as Design Fiction are more familiar and used more widely in some countries than others. In France, for example, Speculative Design is flourishing at present; in other countries such as Switzerland or Germany the designers we spoke to described it as having a more muted, understated or niche role, blending with other practices or being confined mainly to a few higher education courses. Czech designer Markéta Dolejšová sees the current marginal status of the approach in her country as a challenge for the future: “Through workshops, field trips, discussions, and various experimental activities our aim is to shift the ‘Bohemian Speculative Design’ from its current non-quite-yet state towards a real thing.” Overall, our survey suggests that the influence of Speculative Design is constantly expanding into new regions and disciplines as new waves of designers embrace and adopt its techniques in different aspects of their work – and the approach itself is also evolving and adapting to new realities and calls for change.

The lecture ended in a workshop which Carol wanted us to pick a research method and write down what our idea was about and key words related to it. I realised not many methods such as speculative or critical design links to my idea but I knew typographical and social design would I’m thinking of doing typography related work which merges Turkish and english culture together. So from this I created this presentation, I wrote about whyI think type design and social design is related to my project. Also, some of the research paper or existing works I found which was related to the project. I found the lecture very helpful as it made me think about what am i trying to investigate which was human centered approach to understand peoples emotions and experiences. I think to do this I need primary research, I decided I want to interview migrants and shape the project from there as only working from my perspective and experiences limits the outcome.

Things I could research:

Psychology of attachment:

• belonging
• place
• religion
• culture
• immigration
• home “otherness”

To do primary research I need to construct questions and they should be open ended.

https://spark.adobe.com/page/C2T5SLulVLucx/

Today, I want to go into Cardiff city road and do some field research, as I was hugely inspired by flanuers I wanted to go to a area in Cardiff which has a lot of Turkish migrants and food restaurants to look for some imagery and typography. I wanted to explore the area and take photographs just like I did in pyshcogeography project in second year.

These are the outcomes from my walk it was a very different experiences I felt exactly the same way as I did when I did this in swindon. I felt uncomfortable taking photographs in public and I just didn’t have the confidence however I realised how much diverse the one single road it its full of different ethic restaurants food shops, clothing foods, barbers cafes and normal food stores like Tesco. I took some photographs in an international market it was massive I walked in because I just wanted to see what kinds of things they would sell. I had a really weird and surprising experience. The market was selling all of the international products migrants would need in their house. It has special curtley and glasses that we use in our home. It had a place jug that we used to have in my grandmas house when I was so little it was so weird to see that product in a shop in Cardiff when I’m 22. I took loads of photographs to show the essence of the placed it has so many products from food, to home ware to hair products it has everything migrants want in their home. The journey was very interesting and it gave me a lot insight into how we stay connected to home with objects, products in our home.

These are the photographs, I also went into a food shop to see what kinds of things they sell. They have everything my dad always buys from Turkish shops, all ingredients needed for our Turkish dishes and products that come from turkey as well. These are all products migrants have and buy for their house, the turkish cups are something we’ve always bought and regularly use.