WHAT IS IT?
Leftovers labels itself as a non-conformist community amplifying work by women in design through digital and analogue publishing. By exploring the complex relationship between women and design, we are remixing archives, voices and work.
THE THINKING, INSPIRATION AND CONTENTS
Founder of Futuress and self-described feminist designer Nina Paim spoke on the podcast “Scratching the Surface” about the importance of critical conversation within design in order to expose structures that marginalise communities, sometimes without meaningful intention. She spoke about how coffee-breaks ignite conversation, which led me to think about my voice within the design community and how I have started to situate my practice. Through conversing with fellow women designers, we discovered that there isn’t a space where we can exclusively publish our work without harmful patriarchal pre-conceptions reinforced persistently. That’s where the idea of Leftovers came in. It aims to support female creatives who are in the process of discovering their practice by helping them understand their personal relationship with being female in the design industry.
The main goal of my project was to help women situate themselves more comfortably as a creator, and to find out what lies within the core of female practice. An exhibition that influenced my discovery for the meaning of female practice is called “Add to The Cake”, which where the work displayed stemmed from a symposium surrounding, forgive me for saying it again, female practice.
The concept of inaugurating this visibility was to create a platform with a collaborative manifesto featuring core values and healthy boundaries where a collective will operate. The discovery of female practice throughout this project was founded at the heart of community and critical, open conversation.
In order to launch ground rules for Leftovers, I found myself working in a collaborative environment, engaging in analytical dialogues to help form a mission statement that was current for my specific audience. It would not have communicated an effective message that encompassed the average woman’s needs as I, a singular, cannot communicate for a collective without their input. This structure is shown successfully through Spare Rib Manifesto. Spare Rib was a women’s magazine which was an active part of the emerging Women’s Liberation Movement in the late 20th century”, and a key part of my discovery to collaborative female practice.
THE FUTURE
My intentions with this project are to let the community grow organically, by curating experiences and forming archives through projection, observation, and conversation. While it is still a work in progress, I believe it will be an essential starting point for my current projects connecting female-centered communities.