THE FUTURE IS OURS

2020

 

In 2020, 42nd Street and The Horsfall facilitated 'The Future Is Ours' festival to celebrate young people's creativity, voice and action. The festival launched in November featuring original artworks by over 130 young people - including interviews, video performances and literature. The project involved young artists from the Horsfall Gallery collaborating with professional artists to create work that communicated what the young artists wanted in the future. The progress highlighted key experiences and feelings of the young people – feeling weird, anger, the need to creatively deal with past experiences of bullying and recovery resulting in work that looked to reach out and help people feel better. The work was shared online, on billboards and street posters across Manchester.

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Mark was paired with and mentored young artist and photographer Caitlin, who wanted to create a visual image exploring journeys of recovery. Here's what Caitlin had to say,

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"The message I wanted to get across was to show the process that comes in the middle of a journey before you reach the end. I’m still in recovery for cancer and it’s not been as easy as I thought it would. I kept getting frustrated but once I began to pay attention to the idea of progress rather than perfection that’s when I began to feel better about my recovery. This journey is not a race but rather a marathon... once you realise the truth that perfection is not available to us, the sooner we can begin to live better and happier lives."

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Mark worked closely with Caitlin to explore new ways of working with digital illustration and expanding their initial concept into a graphic striking image that was showcased across billboards throughout Manchester and an accompanying short film.