Psychogeographical Project

Over a period of three weeks, I was told to work in a group, to create an online project using the Situationist theory of psychogeography. The idea of psychogeography was to investigate the connection between the geographic and the human mind.  The plan was we would investigate the way a built environment, Leicester, affects us as well as explorations into aspects of the cityscape that are often ignored or remain unnoticed in our everyday life for example sensuous aspects, imaginative connections. One of the main investigative methods that psychogeography uses was derive. Derive is an attempt at analysis of the totality of everyday life, through the passive movement through space. It is translated as drift. Guy Debord is widely recognized for the development of the idea of derive.

Based on the background research my group and I did, we decided that we would base our project on how friendly Leicester was for people that are not locals. We decided that we would symbolise how friendly certain areas were by hugging random people that were walking on the streets of Leicester. We would do this by asking individual people for hugs and mark it off on a map where we received the most hugs. We would also tally the gender as well, so we present more information to the This would help people that are not familiar to the area, to know where the friendliest areas are in Leicester.

As group we decided that it would be unrealistic to film every area in Leicester, as it is a very big town and we do not have means of transport to do so. So, we decided to choice the focal points around the town centre, such as Highcross, Leicester Market, HayMarket and Town Centre.

Before we started to film, we bought props to help to aware the public of what we were doing. We wrote on some props ‘Free Hugs’ or ‘Xmas Hugs’, to encourage them to give us hugs. When began our filming in Highcross, at the beginning we were not successful, a number of people just walk passed us and about 1 or 2 people hugged us within the shopping complex. This led us to believe that people in Highcross were not very friendly. We then left HighCross and continued in Haymarket. In Haymarket we were very successful, majority of the people we asked hugged us. This shows that Haymarket is a friendly area. We then went to the town centre, were we received 5 hugs, which was ok, not great. Finally, we went to the Market, were we received the most hugs. A random ealderly woman told me that I smelt nice and wanted another hug. This signifies that the friendliest area in Leicester centre is the market, we are aware of this by the amount of hugs we received.  

This projects has allowed me to use the media and combined it with geography, to map out certain facts about Leicester, which I felt has been very successful. To improve this project, I would have gone to more areas within Leicester to base our topic on.

Here is the outcome of our project;