The Morgan Centre for
Research into Everyday Lives

In October 2015, I began work on a fascinating commission, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, sketching a year-in-the-life of The Morgan Centre for Research into Everyday Lives. I was given the freedom to draw pretty much anything – following individual academics on research interviews; poking around in professors’ desk drawers; ear-wigging students conversations in the refectory… I recorded it all in a series of 2 metre long, concertina-format sketchbooks, which were exhibited to celebrate the Morgan Centre’s 10th anniversary.

The residency was also interactive: a dozen academics, most of whom had no drawing experience, volunteered to keep sketchbooks throughout the year. To help empower them, I ran workshops and SketchCrawls, and passed chain-sketchbooks round the department, using the concertina format, to mirror my work.

General Tips

How to draw people in public

First steps with watercolour pencils

Hot tips for sketching on location

Making a quickie concertina sketchbook

A 15-minute film about my residency with the Morgan Centre for Research into Everyday Lives (Due in August 2016).

The green area outside the Morgan Centre became a building site. I captured each part of the process, from mud-pile through to the finished Blackwells.

Desk drawer of Professor Heath. I documented every item, down to the last bent staple. The results were unexpectedly funny, because so much was so clearly redundant.

The Head of Department’s personality and interests are reflected in the nature of the items crowding her office, and in the manner in which they exist.

Morgan Centre offices. People round the corners off corporate work-spaces with their personal clutter. I discovered that academics attract a good deal of clutter.

Observing students in the times between their studies. I recorded snippets of overheard conversation, to paint a richer picture.

1: ‘Urban Design’ – analysing the ways outside spaces are designed to manipulate how they are used. 2: Discussing the meaning of ‘home’ and objects students brought with them to university, to recreate ‘home’ in their student digs.