Celebrating Mentees & Mentors

Five years after the Alphabettes Mentorship Program’s (AMP) initiation, we thought it’s time to throw a (online) party! The achievements of the many wonderful people are certainly worth celebrating!

We’d love to present all projects, but the roughly 200 are simply too many for one evening. So we decided to select a bunch of mentees from various backgrounds with different goals and challenges.

The projects are developed, advanced and critiqued within their mentorship in 2020. Each of the mentees will have a short presentation to showcase their work and discuss their learnings, experiences and next steps. We very much look forward sharing these stories with you!

Additionally the opening dates for the 2021 AMP season will be announced and we keenly welcome feedback and new ideas for the program.

Come and join us for the presentations on Zoom and then for socialising on Wonder. The party will take place on 21 Feb at 16:00 GMT. You can check starting time for your timezone.

Please register at Eventbrite for details.

We look forward to welcome you on the 21 February,
Eleni, Katy, Liron, Shani and Veronika

The end

When Bianca Berning suggested creating this series, I found it hard to join. What could be the little thing that made me get through this horrible year? A year that has put us so much outside our comfort zone that we forgot there was such comfort once; a year that has shown us vulnerable; a year that has polarised our feelings so deeply that we made mistakes, we were angry, we fucked up.

Nevertheless, I added my name to the list. I wanted so badly to find the one thing that made me get through, but I couldn’t find it. Because there wasn’t one. Just one. Instead, I have memories of the days we made pizza at home (some Pinterest some Pinstrosity!), or when my new flatmate Juana made piña coladas, the hours I spent sorting out the jigsaw pieces (yes, sorting by size, form and colour! So soothing), or the excitement when the post arrived after two or three weeks (in the UK this is unheard of). There was the happiness of the day I found flour in one shop during the flour shortage and the healing bike journeys in and out of a deserted London. I remember the moments staring at the neighbours’ cats and then, when we were able to access their back garden, the time spent watching the wrens, the robin and the blackbirds, or suffering together with the blackbird when her nest was gruesomely attacked by a magpie. There was the time when I tried to save the sick laurel by washing meticulously each leaf and the excitement when the dried ferns came back to life after some watering.

2020 mix and match
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Home is where the heart is

I left my home country of Iran and my parents who live there in 2014, and since then I have made it a priority to visit every year for a few weeks. This was perfectly manageable, whether during a one year MA degree course, financial strains, or times of political uncertainty, I made the trip back. The last time I visited was September 2019; I told my parents I would be getting married, and when they hugged me goodbye in the airport, somehow separating seemed less painful this time. I would be returning soon for a non-negotiable wedding party. I trust I don’t need to explain what happened next. This is the longest I’ve been away from my parents and the home I grew up in—my mom’s cooking and the smell of her hugs. My dad’s dad jokes and his reassuring smile. Continue reading →

Challenging myself

Mental clutter: Heaps of articles I want to read, podcasts I want to listen to, photos and thoughts I crave to share. Organising my digital assets (aka mess) became a feel-good activity. With so many things unclear and uncertain in 2020, the thought of having a clean inbox, an organised closet, or a quarterly plan gave me peace of mind. Continue reading →

What mattered to me

After deciding to become a graphic designer at some point during the first 23 years of my life in Siberia, I remember spending my days alone, in front of a computer: taking online classes, watching design conferences, and making self-initiated projects. I preferred to avoid client work that didn’t show promise in favor of my own, made-up assignments that would look good in my book. Instead of collaborating with people around me, I focused on getting better at my craft with as few distractions as possible. It seems that eventually I got what I wanted: I made a portfolio good enough to move to New York.
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Better Vegetables

Iceland hasn’t been hit by the pandemic quite like most other countries have. Few permanent residents, very few tourists, vast space and clean, crisp air meant that the virus had little chance to spread up here in the North of Iceland. Travel cancellations are the one noticeable sacrifice which meant we had to stay in our little safe, but chilly and remote place.

However, there is something that I generally really really miss in our remote part of the world – pandemic or not: a variety in fresh produce. Continue reading →