THE MANIFESTO ON HOW TO BE AN CAPTIVATING TEENAGER, THE ART OF DEFIANCE AND PROTEST :

- Gen z bible verse 23 chapter 1:17

Hello, fellow teens and Generation Z, I am currently writing to you from a Mac book pro in the library of the second best arts schools in the world, my name is Jamila Leal Fernandes and I am 18 years old. In my 6 long and painful years of teenage hood I have made several detailed observations of how to present ourselves to the world. The term 'teenager' only became common in '1944' and since then we have been notoriously  defiant, rebellious and argumentative , which basically means that no matter what we stand for Piers Morgan will think that we're special snowflakes. The world that we live in today has become increasingly problematic, and in our true argumentative nature we talked back, whether this be in protest, riot, demonstrations or general anarachy and still we struggle to be taken seriously by those above us. Edelweiss pirates (circa Nazi Germany), Kent state 1968, London student protests 2010 and most recently Extinction  rebellion. Our voices deserved to be heard , the kids are not alright and we refuse to be ignored. To my fellow teens I understand that we can't all be Greta Thunberg but we can follow these small steps to practice the art of defiance and captivate the older generation.

1) Make noise wherever you deem nesesscary ( School funding cuts, unjust wars, Instagram algorithms), don't be afraid to shout in the faces of adults

2) Carry a a black or white marker wherever you go in case you need to vandalize capatlist propaganda or private property

3) If you do not aim to be a public figure, create an anonymous instagram account to where you can express your views, preferably pick a slogan and symbol that can be retweeted on twitter

4) If your ever walking in Oxford Circus and you see a mob of young people carrying signs and banners, stop what you're doing and join them immedeatly

5) Protect your future at all costs!!! Stop the adults from making mistakes in their tracks before we have to clean up their messes in the future.

 Today I walked into class with a much better mood than Monday, after going to the library with one of my team members and finally writing our group manifesto, I felt a lot more confident with my  idea. When I went home to research oil slicking in the ocean I found a lot of interesting imagery that I developed into sketches and collages. I started to get a lot more excited for our project and our group was starting to become more of a group, I also was glad that I had caught up with book work and had a lot to show my tutors.

Now that we had all done independent research for our concept we had to bring all our ideas together into one coherent banner, we all worked together by cutting out our favourite shapes from our collages and arranging them but when we showed our mock up to the rest of the class it wasn't obvious what it was. Since we were making a statement about illegal oil slicking in the ocean, I thought it would be a good idea to put a shell logo somewhere on our banner. One of our group members cut out the shape of a oil canister and we combined our two ideas, so now our banner was a lot more obvious. For the construction of our banner we all worked together on one individual part and hand stitched it, we used contrasting zigzag stick so the poster looked more home maid. I think that the contrasting stick, elevated the banner a lot more.

I think that as a banner I am quite proud of how it turned out, I think the message is clear the oil canister really represents the idea of illegal oil dumping, and everyone we showed understood the idea. We added a hazard sign onto one of the spills to represent the danger and sinister nature of this crime because it is a form of environmental vandalism by big corporations that most people ignore. One thing I do wish that we had done was played more with the shape of the banner, I saw other groups make banners in different forms which made theirs really interesting, I think for our banner it would have been interesting to create our banner in the shape of a spill.

For our final day of the group project we had to turn our banner into a wearable garment, we had already created a pretty successful banner that I was proud of, but now we had to transform it into something for the body. Working on the body has always been something I have struggled with ,even though fashion is one of the main degrees I am interested in, the real challenge for this task is to keep the concept clear while transforming it for the body. In my original research I was thinking about creating a banner that can transform into a human sponge that could clean up the oil in the ocean, because in my research I found that environmentalists use natural sponges to clean up spills. I also looked into making a hazmat suit our of our banner to protect locals who have to clean up spills on their beaches.

Both of these ideas were quite ambitious and considering we only had the morning to do them, we opted for a similar concept, we decided as a group our favourite element of the banner was the oil canister with the shell logo so we cut it out. Without the the canister the banner only had the shape of the spills.

We then looked at some of the shape of the spills and looks for a section to turn into a head hole, once we we put it on it looked like the oil was being leaked onto us, which relates back to my research. I looked into the consequences of oil spilling, it can kill sea life and birds that come into contact with it, but if we continue to litter it will eventually encompass us. So, for our final presentation we held up the 'Shell' canister over the model to represent the environmental effects of oil slicking.

Overall, I definitely had low points in this project and hardships to overcome, working with my group has taught me a lot about team work and how to incorporate my ideas with others, I'm really pleased as to how this project came out, especially after last weeks project. I gained a new understanding of working with people and learnt how to manage my time more efficiently.