Project: Rubinho is connected - update 2

It's such a magical feeling when you see ideas coming to life, wouldn't you agree?

  

Dalila and Paula have been working on the app and doing a great job with it!

They have released the first version ready to be tested with Rubinho! 

Updates very soon! Fingers crossed he loves it as much as we do. And if he doesn't, we will keep working on it! 

Project: Rubinho is connected - update 1
(For all updates on this project click here)

It took a while but we finally have put the team together and we are ready to start building the app for Rúben. 

Lucinda and Carlos - Rúben's parents, they are the most important link between Rúben and the designers/ builders.

Dalila and Paula - IT Students for the University of Porto. They will develop the app as part of their curriculum.

Gwendolyn and Maki - A German brother and sister that will help on a long distance basis. Gwendolyn work with kids with Cerebral Palsy and Maki works in IT.
João - he will be responsible for the graphic design of the app.

I met first with Rúben's parents so we could sketch the first ideas for the app and main functions. I then took the ideas to Dalila and Paula and we brainstormed about how we could make it happen and how to make it even better. 

They are now off to make it and we should be ready to test the first version is a couple weeks!

Project: Natália Moreira Cabeleireiros

Before I went to France my mum was considering changing her Beauty Salon to a different location, and sometime during my time away she called me saying she had found the perfect spot! I was asked to do the decoration project.

A 3 month project where I was given complete freedom to do as I wanted. I enjoyed getting up at 5am to go to fabric stockists with my father (who is a textiles retailer), various trips to Ikea and many days building furniture, choosing lamps, colours...

I focused on key elements to bring colour and personality to the space and left many areas free and clear to allow the space to breath and be less cluttered. Along with the architect we studied different options for the space and used furniture elements and colours to divide them.

Besides very few elements that were bought, most of the other things are from the old place but used in a new way, or even from my own home but with a new colour, fabric or simply dusted off.

I also did the brand identity and services redesign for the salon, as well as their website and online presence on the social media.

Research

Construction

Result

        

Project: Rubinho is connected 
(For all updates on this project click here)

For years I have known Ruben and his family. Ruben is a 15 year old boy with cerebral palsy and a 98% damaged brain. When I attended high school, I had some curiosity about the challenges that his family had to overcome every day when pushing his wheelchair around our town. That led me to do a project on it. 

For a few weeks I went to different public and private buildings in Ovar and surveyed them on how well prepared they were in case Ruben went to visit. I collected measurements, statements, photos and opinions that helped me write a furious paper on a how-the-hell-is-this-possible tone. But what really amazes me is how long it took me to actually turn myself to Ruben and try to work with him, instead of working with things around him.

Last week, as I was next to the bed where he spends 95% of his time, and as I was speaking to his mother, I told her about this amazing girl I saw on Youtube, Carly.

As I showed her this, she turned to me and said she felt exactly like Carly's father. Through these 15 years she had wished countless times for her son to tell her how she can help him. And she believes that he has the answers to this question but fails to find a way to communicate it.

I went home that night and the event stayed with me.

Before I went to bed the idea was born.

We were going to find Rúben's voice.

Project: Taizé Strasbourg 2013/14

For the past 3 months I have been living in France, working as part of the decoration team for the Taizé Strasbourg meeting.

My role mostly included: research, experimenting with different mediums, painting, preparing the work for shipment, meet with the contractors, sound and light team, serve as a mediator between the Decoration Team and the contractors, help prepare workshops for the event, give tours to visitors to our work area, pigment mixing.

Most of the time we tried to figure out how use well known figures and artwork from around Strasbourg, in new ways so that both people from the town and participants from all over Europe could relate to them. By the time i joined the Decoration Team most of the research was done and I focused on uniforming the style of the different artwork into images that could be painted into fabric and hung in the halls.

Living with 80 girls from 20 different countries and 12 different languages may seem like chaos, but it was in fact a great environment to be creative on and an experience that will live on in my memory.

Spending Christmas away from home, in a tiny room with one Mexican and two German girls seemed like the perfect place to be, as we exchanged the cosy time at home for this time of work and preparation for the 30 000 people expected to arrive to the decorated places 2 days from then.

One of my favourite moments of the whole project was when I got a chance to be part of the Workshop "Finding God in Modern Art". I acted as an ambassador for Christopher Payne's work at the Strasbourg's Contemporary and Modern Art Museum. I got to speak about two of his photographs to the visitors that were interested in knowing more about them and a debate would start about whether or not we could find God in the theme of Mental Health. The 3 hour long experience was deeply touching and I don't think either me or many visitors were expecting to be so moved by it. When we were preparing the workshop we spoke about the challenge we would face with people that don't necessarily consider art a talking subject or simply "don't get it". For me, this was the best part. Getting people that maybe would have just walked past, to stop and think, and understanding that the message was about much more than what they could see at a first glance on these pictures. It gave me a real hope of doing some more work like this in the future.