 Thank you. Good morning everyone, it's great to see some people here and thank you to everybody who knows how scared I am to be up here and come to support me, I appreciate that, thanks. So yeah, I'm Suzy and I'm going to just talk you through the phone box and how it came about and how I turned it to a printmaker's studio and what's happening next because I just thought it was an interesting thing to share with you so let's go. The project originally began as tackling loneliness really. The image that you see here with the lovely sky, I live there, that's where I live up in Bilstil in North Yorkshire and in that area loneliness is a massive issue and when we think of loneliness we think of it about the elderly but loneliness is not just an issue with the elderly, really teeny tiny children right the way through to the elderly can suffer loneliness and in 2019 I became really aware of the impact that this was having on families because a lot of families, the elderly people in those families would turn into alcohol as a way of combating loneliness and I was like this isn't good and that happened in my own personal family. I was like this can't keep going, I've got to do something about this and one day I was out in the country and I was having a little look around and I kept seeing the phone boxes that are everywhere hands up if you've seen a phone box, see they're everywhere and I was thinking maybe there's something I can do here maybe I can actually do something with that phone box to tackle loneliness so I had a crazy idea to put a printmaking studio inside a phone box inside a village to entice people out because guess what it's really hard to find lonely people because they're lonely, they're not out there so I hit on this idea and I thought okay I'll put this in the villages, I'll put the phone boxes in the village at the printmaking studios in the village phone boxes problem, the phone boxes in the villages are disappearing so I couldn't do it, I couldn't do it everywhere and a friend said to me well wouldn't it be brilliant if you had a phone box that could go places so I looked up Doctor Who's number and unfortunately it wasn't available so I thought okay what I really need is a phone box that I can build and that can really go anywhere challenge accepted so I did the bridge that you see there that phone box on top of the bridge it's not an edited picture it's real that's the transporter in Middlesbrough and that's the phone box that's here on site we took it up on top of the transporter just for the crack really just to say that we've heard and we also took it to lots of beaches and things this is in the process of thinking can we do this so yeah I cracked on and thought right let's build one let's go ahead and actually build a phone box and see if it can be done and I worked with a local company we came up with some designs and thank goodness for Arts Council Arts Council gave me some money and I put together the project to tackle loneliness and got on and built the project yeah phone box obviously a traditional phone box is made of very heavy stuff and takes a crane to move it so this had to be transportable so the phone box that's on the site here comes apart into six pieces so there's the base, the top and the four sides I'm dismantling the phone box between half five and six tonight so if you want to see how it's built this mantle's come around at that time and you can have a peek and see how it works and you can help me look it into the van that would be great so this is it, this is the shell it's just a soft wood and I've coated it with a particular type of resin to make it waterproof when it's outside hopefully so far so good but what I really wanted to tell you about today was how it became this travelling art studio so T-Side Hack Space is my local hack space let's hear it for Hack Space and they're brilliant, the guys at Hack Space now remember, I'm an older woman sadly and I have very little to do with technology I'm a print maker I sit in my studio and I carve away at little blocks with teeny tiny tools most of my days, that's what I do and suddenly I had this vision in my head that I wanted to turn this phone box into this travelling art studio how? I don't know so Dana went to Hack Space and I was like, well this is what I want to do how can we do it so you can see on the image there when we first launched it this is what it was like there was an information panel there which I can't believe how easy that looks the panel with the numbers to this side but getting to that point was really difficult a lot of workshops and focus groups to understand how that would work and everything in there except the phone was made at Hack Space everything in there so we have the little blocks that hold the papers we have the workbench, we have the ink box and right at the front there the funny looking white thing with the green tabs on top that's an actual printing press that really works it's an open source project and it's an open press project if you want one it's absolutely brilliant and that's 3D printed and I've got it with me unfortunately some hurly burly guy didn't realise that turn clockwise meant go like that and not go like that so he pulled the handle off a few months back so when I've got it doesn't work but come and look at it anyway it's cool so yeah Hack Space really helped me to develop it as a concept and to make it real so to take this idea that was in my head actually go well what if you do this what if you do that let's do this the other thing that's inside the original box is you'll see that the phone box has the world's biggest solar panel on the back it weighs a ton it's ridiculous honestly it would just power this entire campsite it's ridiculous and what that does not today unfortunately but what that does is it enables the box to be completely accessible so you can see there everything in there you have to be able to read English you have to be able to read or you have to be able to understand English if I'm there or hear if I'm there but what if you can't do any of those things then how accessible is that to you what if you're blind what if your main language isn't English how do you then make that print if I'm not standing there and I can't guide you through how do you make that print so the box and I'd love to explain what these gadgets are to you but T side hackspace I helped me understand that as well at the minute but basically it has an amp in there and it has speakers and the phone is set to ring and that's to attract attention when people are walking by and I'm not there so people go oh it's not just a phone box and they'll pick it up and they'll step in and hopefully do something creative rather than have a pee in the corner so that was the whole point so the sound drops down so you pick up the phone and it comes through the speaker on the phone but also the sound drops down and around and I'll tell you in a minute how I've gone a little bit wacky crazy on that and what the new boxes are going to do and that was all through hackspace the entire creation of that was through my local hackspace thanks Jim but what I've done today is I've deliberately left out the techie stuff coming here which might be a bit weird thinking that I'm coming to this amazing festival and it's all about technology amazing sci-fi stuff to me but the reason I've done that is to show people bring you back to basics bring you back to creation well not creation because I'm not God but bring you back to a point of creativity so you can actually have an experience of making something already in the phone box here all the time so many people step inside that box and go oh I can't do anything creative I can't draw, I can't make five minutes later they're going oh my God I made this I've seen it over and over again it brings me such joy to see people make these little prints and to keep them and take them home or share them or bin them it doesn't matter if you make them that's the point it's absolutely lovely so what I've done now is my making process you can see on the screen there those tools are just little teeny tiny tools like this little miniature very sharp points I've got no finger ends left because you're forever slipping as a print maker and put your hands off and that's the traditional way to make a line or cut is you do your drawing all the drawings you can see are mine in the box you transfer the drawing to the block and then you carve it away so that the image is left in relief on the block raised up on the block okay and line or is the traditional material that's used for that okay well it's not actually because the traditional material that's used is way back when in very very ancient times the Japanese you'll have seen ancient Japanese wood blocks so here am I at Hack Space thinking this is fantastic we've built this amazing phone box suddenly the phone box took off well no it didn't it's not a rocket it didn't take off but suddenly what happened was the interest in the phone box took off and people wanted it because people realised after the loneliness project that that small space really did have a big impact truly it really does it's a way of reaching people that you can't reach it's a way of engaging with people struggle to engage with purely because it can pop up at a bus stop it can pop up in a chip shop it can pop up anywhere at a great festival so people suddenly became very interested in it and wanted to book it I was over the moon because as an artist this suddenly gave me an income stream that I was struggling to have hello we've all been through lockdown and artists in the room will particularly understand just how harsh that's been when work disappears like that it's wonderful then to come out of lockdown with a project like this and to be able to keep developing it and then a living let's be honest so here I was at Hack Space and now the demand has grown for the box and suddenly people are saying we'd love to have the box we'd love it to do this PS can you make us some artwork that's particular to our theme and I'm going yeah give me two weeks and they're going well actually it's the weekend I'm like what back to Hack Space I'm like how can I make the printing blocks really quickly so we investigated this and we obviously we came up with ways to actually make these printing blocks so instead of the tools I've now shifted over into using lasers the laser cutting machine to make the blocks and as look would have it I did a project on a farm and they wanted me to create a walking trail around the farm and I was like well actually we could really do with laser cutting these and actually the cost of laser cutting these is through the roof but have you seen this machine over here if you buy me this machine I can then actually make these for you so I actually was able to purchase a very small laser cutting machine of my own it's alright it's one of these Chinese imports I'm sure lots of you have seen them it does the job just there are about 400 quid to buy so they're a really good investment so I'm going back to the olden days because the printing blocks that I was creating through Hack Space, the Lino Cut the stuff is absolutely hideous God knows what it's made of but it's just going to ruin the planet in three blocks I'm sure three little blocks and that's it three trees have gone I can't use this I can't justify the use of this material so I've gone back to wood remember I said about the Japanese wood cuts so I'm just we're back then we're back in history using all this amazing technology and my printmaking friends are up in arms they're going oh you heathen what are you doing you're not a purist you're not using the true methods anymore and I'm like hey like I said to some folks yesterday if Da Vinci was in this room guess what he'd make a beeline for he'd have a 3D laser cutting he'd have the works he'd have absolutely everything call me Da Vinci so that's where the project's gone and that's the journey that I've been on and the phone box now goes out it's here come down and make some prints if you haven't already and I can see most of the people in this room thank you for coming and supporting me by making a print already come back and make some more you deserve it so where am I going next chatterbox is my next thing and chatterbox is I'm now building more phone boxes but I'm using absolutely 100% recycled materials these will be made of recycled carpets and recycled industrial waste and that's what we'll make the standard form with through these I'll be creating imagination workshops in schools linking schools up with scientists and linking schools up with engineers I'll be the boxes the new boxes have technical innovation inside of them the windows are screens so when you say a particular word the screens light up so I'm talking to various hospitals and the NHS and we're looking at dementia programs through these new boxes it's just really exciting but I'm still going around and popping up with my phone box because that's the truth of where I'm at and if you'd like any more information I'm in a phone box down there come and talk to me and there's my contact details thanks very much