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Today I assisted the running of a one day paper printing workshop at 3rd Rail Print Space! It involved setting up the space ready for the participants, then assisting them and the workshop leader Melissa throughout the day, and cleaning the space and equipment afterwards.

We had a mixture of people who had never screen printed before and people who had dabbled a little in attendance, so we had to be quite hands on and thorough, dividing our attention as necessary. The aim of the workshop was for the attendees to leave with an edition of 10 prints that they designed, prepped the screens for, and printed themselves; so we began by getting them to either draw their designs then and there, or prep their digital designs to be printed onto film. We then took them through the process of prepping a screen for coating and the actual coating- each person was expected to coat their own screen after a demonstration. Once the screens where ready we took them through the exposing process (where the designs are transferred onto the screens). After lunch we then asked them to choose their colours and demonstrated how to do the actual printing- we both assisted where needed and where on hand to guide them if they needed help.

Working with adults is always a little different to working with children- if a child suggests an idea that is tricky to do, for whatever reason, they can usually be persuaded to simplify their idea- but if an adult has a difficult to pull off idea they are often adamant about doing it their way, even if they are completely new to the process. This can be quite frustrating when you are trying to run a workshop and make everything go smoothly, but it is a good way to hone conflict resolution skills and get used to being more flexible.