Creative and Cultural Products

Via The Creative Apprentice

film courtesy of Andrew Bell

Today I went out to get a bunch of Stamping Ground t-shirts printed [Stamping Ground's summer starts this Saturday!]. So, I bought a bunch of blank vests and tees and hauled them over to get printed on.

Amid the t-shirt talk, I was reminded about a crazy cool t-shirt printing company me and a few friends started while we were in school. It was terrible and hilarious and filled with scissors and virtual trips to cheap wholesalers on the internet. It also marked the initial foray into customer/consumer interaction and consultation [obviously aside from my extremely important stint as a Saturday girl at a local cafe].

Going along the subject of the value and quality of creative and cultural products, that I touched upon yesterday following a session at college, it's important that what you present holds true integrity. As consumers [intellectual or physical], we have the right to fully scrutinise what we are investing in. And we should. The shame comes when people don't realise they have that right, or worse, when they choose to ignore it. You only live once, so you may as well strive to experience, seek out and appreciate quality.

You know, it's these cultural products and services that give dramatic value to society. Able to present ideas, interpretations and views of reality and the world around us, they challenge the stable and static views of humanity and interject a sense of wonder and fluidity, change and movement. They provide an abstract education that may not be achieved elsewhere and can garner a sense of community that perhaps transcends physical boundaries.

If only we had known how to properly construct our product and actually learn how to screen print. It would vastly reduce the amount of huge messed up t-shirts that occupy the bottom of my wardrobe.

NB: Pretty Rough are a design collective from Glasgow. If you want to know how screen printing works, then check out their nifty short film above.

And one more thing! For information on Stamping Ground visit www.dance4.co.uk/stampingground10.php. If you want to seek some quality work presented by the next generation, then get yourselves over. It should be fantastic!