I took the responsibility of locating the material shop in Clapham where it was neccessary to find a place that had natural materials to include in the Scavengerhunt game. I researched on the Internet before I went out and looked for any shops relating to wood, tiles, stone and glass. Initially, it was difficult as the searches I typed into google were not very helpful so I went about asking the locals around Clapham. I found The "Stained Glass" shop, Broomwood Road, and "Anitico" were very good examples of material suppliers as they gave samples that would have been ideal as part of the group's clues. As for the "Stained Glass" shop, I found several terraced houses along the next road down with stained glass panels in the doors, as part of the architecture of the area. This seemed ideal as the material was vividly used as part of the design for the middle class housing, which depicted the shops use in the area showing its old "culture". The decor reminded me of the old Venitian culture, where the locals would display their brightly coloured rugs outside the windows of their houses, which became integrated with the buildings.
However, with Clapham being such a large area, I soon found out that the Stained Glass shop did not fall into our given location of SW4, so I had to research Clapham again and came across a Discount Wooden furniture shop and Britainia Tiles. The majority of the group had found their research in Clapham Common. They agreed that the wooden furniture shop made more sense to be included in the game as it was nearer their location points. I thought that this group decision made the wooden furniture shop seem too much of an easy way of finding the location, with it being very near to theirs, it did not enable the other group to thouroughly learn about Clapham area as a whole. On the other hand, the Discount Furniture shop is probably a more practical choice than Britania Tiles or Stained Glass as it promoted pine ornaments since the group wanted to link the locations, so wood naturally links to green space.
The Scavengerhunt was organised with our individual responses to each of the categories listed to cover the area quickly and efficiently. This proved to be successful as the group produced a wealth of information with each indivual contributing to the group, and it progressed collectively. It was soon noticed that the meetings became more about controlling what decisions were made, as opposed to the group all agreeing on meetings and the way in which the the scavengerhunt was put together. The Clapham group effort worked well as a whole but some breakdown in communications and over dominating characters meant that perhaps the team didn't all get along well and this affected the amount of input from the group, and the teamwork wasn't distributed well amongst everyone equally after a period of time.
When it came down to playing Walthemstow's game, I learnt a lot about the way in which their group had worked. With the clues being distributed over a mass area, it forced us to learn more about the location. The game was clearly constructed in a better way than ours, with the clues not linking (like ours did), so if one struggled to find the first given clue, then we were able to move onto the next one to save time. Their use of imagery in the clues made the game easier for us to get involved with local people for aid, and constantly made us more alert for signs and buildings, keeping the momentum going in the group.
If we were to do anything different to make our Scavengerhunt game more successful, I would ensured a different approach was at least considered, as opposed to our riddles, because on reflection, they are quite hard to crack. It would most certainly slow the group down playing it if they didn't understand one of the clues, perhaps even prevent them from finishing it. Also, I would make sure everyone had their individual input of ideas on how the game was put together.
Bibliography
Experiencing Architecture, Steen Eiler Ramussen
www.upmystreet.com/ukfindmyneareset/home-and-garden/furniture/results/in/clapham
