Contribution short abstract:

Drawing in from my previous work in "slow journalism", and my current romance with Urban Sketchers, I would like explore the ways in which 10-minute sketches go beyond the tourist postcards.

Contribution long abstract:

While walking 1,200 kms across north and northeast India on the 33,000-km "Out of Eden Walk" with Pulitzer-winning journalist Paul Salopek, I learnt to see India from the lens of a person walking, sweating while walking, and trying to stay alive in a world that has become accustomed to the car-brain. It allowed me to slow down, and thus see deeply: almost ethnographic.

Now, as I try to spend my Sundays in any city with the local chapter of Urban Sketchers -- sketching en plein air -- in a chosen location, I am trying to appreciate a location slowly, and see it deeply for a few hours: almost ethnographic.

At this workshop, I would like to combine both of these previous experiences, in sketching the "sketchy" -- AKA "non-touristy" -- corners of Aberdeen; the parts of the city that are alive even if their scenes do not make it to the tourist postcards. At the end of the workshop and the conference, I hope to have created at least three postcards, each distinct from each other, and yet (hopefully) reflecting everything that this city was and is.