So, its funny as I approached group work totally differently this time, not necessarily deliberately and so got a very different experience from it. I am usually always team leader, with there only being one time since I started this course when I wasn’t and all that happened was that the person leading turned to me after a couple of days panicked and said they wanted me to help them, with ultimately me sticking my oar in and pulling things together on the final two days (yes it was a nightmare). I hope its not because I’m bossy (!) but because in my family we are just “take charge” sort of people. We don’t like fuss or faff. My parents always just taught us to get on with things and to try to see everybody’s point of view.
This time, we had a Masters student in our group who had come with the aim of improving leadership skills and a very strong willed French girl in our smaller group of 5, so I stepped back and let them take charge. With interesting results. it’s the first time I have had real design input into a team task. Often friends on the course say that I will end up doing project management or policy or presentations and things like that as that is what my background is in my current career in finance, but that I shouldn’t worry that my drawing isn’t as good as others as I probably wont be so involved in the design side (yeh thanks friends, its not that bad!) haha. Anyway, I actually always have a zillion ideas and so it was great this time to be able to step back from organising people and resolving group issues and to put my ideas on the table. First thing I did was suggest we look back to the textile history of Lille and use this as a theme or concept to base our new design on - so basically there are layers or threads in a city such as roads, canals, promenades etc and we should try and make a grid to connect up both sides of the canal on our site as at the moment it was too separate. Now I actually thought that idea was a bit naff and basic, but Simon our Masters student thought it was a great idea and said we should run with it. I thought it was an obvious one that everyone would choose yet after the first round of presentations, I was chuffed that several people said that our team had the strongest concept. Very surprised. I’m going to get confused on which day was which so bear with me.
We slept on it after 13 hours…and no dinner again and in the morning I took in a doodle I did, which I will add here (now covered in glue etc) where I took our team ideas of an ecological aspect, long term view and self sustaining living and pulled them together. So houses right on perpendicular smaller stretches of canal which alternated between being used for leisure such as swimming (Simon suggested natural pools - great idea) and boating and my favourite - as I want to live there - living overlooking a piece of natural wetlands replete with birds swirling around. I felt this connect to a wider ecological area on the other side of the river. A new way of living. Anyway, Russell loved this, Vero was coming round, but Simon took charge and sadly it was decided not to follow through. I found it very difficult to get my voice heard that day and tried to explain that we needed to move forward. Several times. Simons leadership style is different from mine and he said he just wanted to see how things naturally went. Of course this meant when it came to our first presentation we were told it started strongly and then petered out - which is how our discussions had gone to be honest!
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