We wanted to create something that lived within our usual style; bold colours, graphic shapes and an intricate layout; but we wanted the initial input for all of those visual things to come directly from the public. To do that, we wanted to run a few hands-on, accessible creative workshops, where we will work with members of the public to creatively respond to ‘what Stockport means to them’.
After establishing a few core words around what makes people proud of the place where they live we would use those words as a base to explore shape and graphic mark making. Through a variety of different tools and processes, we’d be trying to draw simple or minimal versions of these large concept, trying to figure out how we could graphically show something like community, or how we might paint the idea of openness.
It all sounds pretty complex, but in the room it becomes really simple; using paper, pencils, paints and tools you’d find anywhere, and that’s the point behind the artwork. We all communicate visually, so it makes sense to think about meaning as a group, and then learn about how we can use abstraction and creativity to make those things into shapes and visual expressions together.
We should come out of the workshops with a few hundred different scraps of paper, collage, paintings and sketches, and that will be the arsenal that we can pull lots of things from for the final design. We’ll be scanning things in, cropping into them, tracing over bits here and there, and we’ll bring a load of these experiments together in a sort of unified visual style to create the final artwork.
The end result will be a big, bold, striking mural, made up of shapes and forms that come directly from the community, exploring what Stockport means to them.
Mikesian Studio are a Design and Art duo from Manchester, made up of Mike and Sian. 
Mikesian Studio