Creative Challenge
Give me the good news
One artwork, with real newsprint worked into it, carrying a story worth telling. Take the bad news apart and build something hopeful out of it.
Why this one, and why now
The reason behind the challenge
Switch on your phone and the news arrives before you have had your first cup of coffee. Most of it is bad, a good deal of it is not even true, and all of it is designed to keep you looking.
We have phones that are far too smart, and people who are far too dishonest. Between the fake news and the bad news, something simple has gone missing.
We need good news for a change. So this month we are going to make some.
Where the title comes from
Crocodile Harris, 1982
Give Me the Good News. Crocodile Harris, the stage name of Robin Graham. The song came out in 1982 and it is an anti war song. Listen to it before you start, and listen to the beginning especially. You will find them written out below.
Crocodile Harris, Give Me the Good News, 1982. Lyrics Geoff Coxall, music Tully McCully.
Press the picture to play it here. It needs the internet, and it opens on YouTube in a new tab if it will not play on the page.
What this challenge requires from you
One artwork, with the news inside it
One artwork, and newsprint has to be in it. Not a photograph of a newspaper lying on a table. The print must be part of the piece, worked into the picture so that it belongs there.
It can be newspaper or magazine print, your own or found, old or from this morning. What matters is that there is no doubt that real printed news has been used.
Photography or mixed media photo alchemy, the choice is yours. In camera, with multiple exposures and layers. Or by hand, as a photo montage or a collage, which is what we would most love to see.
Inspiration, and nothing more
Two pieces by Martin Osner and Samantha Lee Osner
Everything on this page is here for inspiration and nothing else. These pieces are not a guideline, not a template, and not something to work from. Please do not take an idea off this page and make your own version of it. Look at them, enjoy them, then close the page and come up with something that is yours. Two of them we could not trace an artist for, and we have said so honestly in the credits at the bottom.
How we recommend you approach this challenge
By hand first, and from your own photograph
Start with your own photography. That is the foundation, and it is what makes the piece yours. Please do not simply work in Photoshop with pictures you did not take. Keep your original photographs on hand, we may ask to see them.
By hand wherever you can. Tear it, cut it, glue it, paint into it, stitch it, photograph the result. Pure Photoshop is discouraged, because the pleasure in this one is in the handling.
AI creation is not what we want here. As a place to start a thought, to talk an idea through, that is fine. The artwork itself must be made by you. It is human art we are interested in, which is the whole point of this community.
Let your artwork do the talking
Introduce a narrative, suggestive and always positive
Your piece needs a narrative. It does not have to be literal, and it certainly does not have to say the words good news anywhere. It can suggest, it can hint, it can leave the viewer to finish the sentence. What we are not looking for is pure abstraction.
And it has to be positive. This is not the month for despair. The small print does not have to be legible, and the little stories buried in it need not be good news at all. But the headlines, the words that carry, should bring the good news.
That is the craft of it. Take the bad news apart, and reassemble it into something hopeful. Cut the words you need out of whatever you can find, and let them say the thing you want said.
Work in the community, it is far better than working alone
Our new engagement policy
Post the thinking, the mess and the halfway versions in the Inspire Community as you go. Ask for help, give it back, show us the workbench. The best conversations we have had all year came out of somebody posting a piece that was not working yet.
From this challenge on, engagement counts in both places. The reactions and comments your artwork collects in the Inspire Community are added to the ones it collects on your challenge entry, and they become one number for that artwork.
It follows the artwork, not the person. If you start a piece in the community and carry it through to your entry, and it is plainly the same piece, every bit of it counts. We will measure it as accurately as we can.
How to enter
- Accept the challenge on Friday 30 OctoberInspire Community, then Creative Challenges, then accept. Committing early is half the battle.
- Take your photographMade for this challenge. It is the foundation of the piece.
- Gather your printNewspapers, magazines, whatever you can lay your hands on. Start collecting now.
- Make it, by hand wherever you canMontage, collage, multiple exposure, paint, stitch. Then photograph the finished piece.
- Share the making as you goIn the Inspire Community. It helps everybody, and it now counts towards your engagement.
- Enter one artworkOne piece only this time. Keep your original photographs in case we ask.
- Name your file properlyYour name, then the title of your piece.
John Creative - Letters From Home.jpg - Write one paragraphWhat you photographed, what print you used, and what you wanted it to say.We judge the artwork, not the paragraph. Your piece has to speak for itself, with no words explaining it, and that is how we will look at it, without letting your description sway us. The paragraph still matters, because it goes onto our website alongside your work, so the Inspire Community can enjoy the story behind the piece.
- Post your entry before Sunday 22 NovemberOnce you are certain it is the best you can do.
What happens to the work you enter
Everything entered goes onto the challenge feedback page inside the Inspire Community, so that we can all learn from one another. The featured piece, and a selection of others, may be shown publicly on the Academy website, so that photographers considering joining can see what happens in here. Your name always goes with your work. If you would rather stay inside the community only, just tell us when you enter.
Credits
- Martin Osner, Be Still
- Samantha Lee Osner, Autumn Memoirs
- Jamie Pavlich-Walker, Everybody's Favorite City, Torn paper collage, Santa Rosa, California
- Neysa Winterer, Old Blue, Torn paper assemblage, Excelsior, Minnesota
- Artist unknown, She Carries History on her Skin
- Artist unknown, Mosaic of Headlines, Fragments of Being
- The banner at the top of this page, a picture of torn newspaper clippings made with AI, for this page only. It is decoration for the brief. It is not an entry, and it is not an example of what we are asking you to make.
- Crocodile Harris (Robin Graham, 1950 to 2015), Give Me the Good News, WBS, 1982. Lyrics Geoff Coxall, music Tully McCully, published by McCully Music.