Youth@Work

A visit to Mersin, Turkey

The Erasmus+ programme is a European Union initiative that provides support to cooperation projects in the fields of education, training, youth and sport. Their goals include improving the level of competencies and skills of young people; levelling the playing field in terms of opportunities in democracy, the labour market, intercultural dialogue, social inclusion and solidarity; fostering quality improvements in youth work; and complementary policy reforms at local, regional and national levels. Just to name a few.

The Youth@Work conference was part of the Youth@Work Partnership, and it took place in Mersin, an agricultural and educational hub in southern Turkey in December 2019. Cooked Illustrations was selected to participate as a delegate; a welcomed surprise that we later learned was part of an effort to diversify away from the youth work and education sectors, by injecting entrepreneurial voices from the grassroots. And so, our founder Ian Cooke-Tapia set out from Cardiff to Mersin, via two trains, two flights and one bus ride straight to this seaside city where Turkish tea was tasted for the first time.

Networking done right:
While the emphasis of the conference was on the cooperation between formal and non-formal youth education providers and the social and business sector’s employers, the reality was one of pure network-building.

Unlike other conferences we’ve been to, a lot of time, space, and facilitation was provided to allow moments of real cultural dialogue. The conference opened with a dance and music number! Which provided Ian, as a visual journalist reporters on the floor, with fascinating and energetic material that would later influence the visual identity of our visual report.

Our Illustrated Report Service is based on the belief that conferences have more value to share beyond keynote speakers and presentations. The building connections and friendships through serendipitous encounters, often involving food, booze, comedy, shared tragedy, or dance. For best results, make sure you use all of the above. Conferences are, as poet Donald Hall puts it, a Third Thing; not about the conference itself, but about the bridging of different people who would have never met one another.

Why drawings and not photographs?
When we encounter photographs online, we often glance over them; drawings however have a deeper emotional hold on audiences.

By drawing a conference in situ, we allow our reporters to make choices in subject matter and approach that results in work that is both evocative and surprising. Combining this with a specific editorial approach to focusing on aspects of the conference allows us to create a wholly unique record of the event that supports learning outcomes and audience engagement.

The Reportage Process:
We recorded the events on site via sketchbook and pencil. The use of non-photographic recording, or “reportage illustration” is a particular decision we as a company have taken with this type of project.

Reportage illustration, or the practice of drawing in situ with the intention of capturing some observed subject, gives us a lot of creative freedom, and results that we think cut through the noise of existing forms of note taking and event reporting. When encountered online, we often glance over photographs; drawings however, have a deeper, emotional hold on audiences. By drawing a conference in situ, we allow our reporters to make choices in subject matter and approach that results in work that is both evocative and surprising. Combining this with a specific editorial approach to focus on aspects of the conference, allows to create a unique record of the event.

‍——————————————————————————————————

We talk more about the use and power of a client’s editorial hand on this process in a different article about a project with NoFit State Circus in Rwanda. The event is uniquely experienced by our reporter and witness, and the specifics of how and what we focus on during a conference often leads to, as Louis Netter puts it, “a complex summation of what happened.” In other words, a unique visual language can be created. A style! A look that once we return to our studio, will lead to a stand-out piece of content. That is, once we combine sketches with additional research. Notes taken in talks are corroborated with external sources, making sure that the information is not only accurate but communicated in a language that gets the message across without eliminating complexity. Sometimes it is in the supplementary research to support the talks that we discover new ideas that would help communicate what was originally mentioned on the conference floor.