August 2026

The theme of the month for August has been trying to take it easy. Not always succeeding, and in truth mostly having the worst of both worlds which is neither really resting nor making much money, but so it usually seems to go over the summer for me. As there’s no teaching and lots of colleagues take long periods of leave there’s less to do with my academic work, but there is still prep for next year, and after the success of my EMF installation I’ve had a couple of talks to write. As for freelance work, it always quietens down a great deal over July and August, but still not enough for me to entirely log off. 

For example!! Here I am trying to have a day of doing nothing. (But when is a nothing day ever actually nothing)

Goodbye to a real one. She was a sweet girl with fur like a storm cloud.

Every day I am glad I had breast reduction surgery back in 2022. In truth I find myself wanting to do visual diaries on this topic often, but there’s only so much you need to hear about my tits, right

Because it means I can wear silly dresses with no bra!! (I have been spending too much on Vinted so it’s probably for the best September needs to be a more financially lean month…)

Another thing I think about a lot is what a hottie I get to share my life/house with 

A delicious dinner at Lai Rai, where I felt like I’d inadvertently ended up eating somewhere much cooler than I deserve, like when you go out on a date with someone a bit out of your league

I went to the Escher exhibition with my friend-colleague Alex and had a lot of thoughts about it which I mostly condensed into one very-long-probably-annoying voice note to a friend. Tl;dr though is I think I kind of hate these ‘experience’ art exhibitions we seem to increasingly be going in for. Also the worst gift shop of all time which is surely a missed opportunity when Escher could have had the most bangin’ merch. Anyway I enjoyed loosely emulating his style in this drawing of a cool church, some great gnochhi, and a very good ice lolly I had (finally found a London place that does those dipped ice lollies I’ve had in Lisbon and Seville but actually vegan!)

Walked the next section of the Vanguard way with Alice (still entirely skirting making any progress whatsoever on the London loop). It was a slightly too hot day but just about tolerable, and I had a very nice time. Across the M25!! (The vanguard way runs from Croydon where Alice and I live down to Newhaven on the coast)

Went to help my partner choose some new glasses and obviously I tried on all the glasses. As they regularly like to remind me, my glasses time will soon come, but when it does you’d better believe I’m going to be a total glasses babe

Had a very very nice summer day excursion down to Brighton with my old uni friends Michael, Lyall and Lucy, and Lucy’s toddler Rowan. I’m maybe misremembering but I feel like it might be the first time we’d all gone back together since we graduated in 2010?! Surely not. Anyway it was another gorgeous day and I felt very nostalgic and happy to have kept hold of these lovely people.

We (well, mostly my partner) had grand ambitions for a meadow in our front garden, and it was going well, but the successive heatwaves have rather done a number on it.

I don’t tend to go in for ‘space stuff’ (as I dismissively refer to all galactic phenomena), so it was that I was sat on my sofa with the curtains pulled eating pizza when the eclipse was happening. But I DO go in for social phenomena, and I could hear that there were loads of people out having fun in the (slightly grotty/dodgy) park right next to my house, so I popped out and found my neighbours who lent me their home made eclipse viewer (It was a box with a hole punched in it and you wore it like a robot helmet). So I enjoyed that, and I also enjoyed the way the shadows of the trees on the front of our building formed little crescents. 

Somewhat manically wrote an over-long talk alone in the dark all day while sweating

Even though I am well aware how problematic this summer’s heat and dryness has been, physically and mentally it is mostly very good for me (35+ is pushing it though). But I do not like how gross London’s streets get, especially when I want to walk along them in sandals.

Me and my partner went out for vegan fish and chips in Peckham and it was GOOD!!! (I normally only let myself have chips when I’m at some off-season coastal town looking at a pier, so a nice treat to just do it like, here)

I finished Disco Elysium!! Everyone is right!! It’s a masterpiece!! I will never stop thinking about it!! (Look, I’m just sad I didn’t get to romance Kim okay)

Went to see V do visuals at Algolush, an ambient version of the usual Algoraves. Everyone got to sit down!! Very good

V has this automated blind which opens at a set time, and I am really into it because the whirring sound and daylight always wakes me up nicely — more gently than an alarm. Anyway, opened my eyes that morning to GREY SKY for what felt like the first time in forever (I’d like to say I was pleased but I’m sorry, blue sky makes me happy, even as we all go down in flames)

 The life of a freelance designer (perpetually pulling this face alone in your house 😑)

Went to V’s monthly boardgame night with her, George, Ada and Kitty and played… Magic Maze? It’s that what it’s called? Anyway it was good and we all managed to team work well and not fall out over it like I could quite easily foresee happening (this picture of a mall is from the Whitgift Centre in Croydon)

The perils of not doing much

Okay look maybe the other reason I’m broke this month is I went out for TOO MANY DINNER DATES (But I love dinner dates) (and I had to try the Purezza Summer lemon special pizza!! It was so good!!)

Okay in news which will surprise absolutely no one, after finishing Disco Elysium I returned to the yakuza franchise (which, despite writing a zine and over 200k words of fanfic about, I have only actually played two of the games). Time for Yakuza Kiwami! Which I will try not to throw over 100 hours at like I did the others 😬

 
Okay enough drawing fictional Japanese gangsters, it’s time to draw an actual real naked human! (Went life drawing to a new place with Ellis and enjoyed trying out black brush pen and white chalk on blue paper)

Got a chest tattoo! (Not over this whole area, but this is indicative). It was actually surprisingly one of the more chill tattoos I’ve ever got? Even ‘red’ areas were like, entirely tolerable for reasonably prolonged periods, and during yellow and green I even felt kind of sleepy and chilled. I think all of the leg ones have been much more painful! Anyway it was a very nice experience and I love it so much I think I’m going to ask the artist to extend it up over the shoulder next time they’re in the country.

Some nights it do be like that (aside, if you know what I’m referring to here, good god I have takes and nowhere to take them, so ask me if you want an extended voice note on the subject 😓)

Over the last couple months this weird little guy has become a local celebrity. He’s got a disabled back leg and loves to scream, which has led many well meaning people to respectively call his owner/take him to the vets/abduct him and attempt to claim him for their own — to the point where he now wears several explanatory collars and there is a neighbourhood campaign of posters about how he is ABSOLUTELY FINE. Also he loves to break into people’s cars/houses etc (with absolutely no regard for the possibility of them containing, for example, an angry German shepherd), so he is surely not long for this world. But in the meantime I think he might be my favourite cat I’ve ever met and I can totally see why several people have tried to steal him, because he really is anyone’s

Beth and Angus came over for boardgames and dinner, and we played this specific genre of game

Since coming off the pill a couple of years ago, I now endure approximately 1-5h per month of excruciating pain, which can be mostly avoided if I get in fast enough with painkillers (but I failed to do that yesterday because I wasn’t paying enough attention). 

Still, in the spirit of trying to not do too much, I lay very still and actually watched a movie which is extremely out of character for me (notoriously movie indifferent person) 

(I actually also watched Project Hail Mary earlier this month as well as Knives Out and both were so good I was even able to forgive the moderate to severe emetophobia triggers in both)

One of my 2026 goals was to table at at least one zine fair, and I finally managed it! As always, the RTS gang showed me a lovely time down in Newhaven, and I made a great new tabling buddy! (Also saw lots of good dogs, clearly)

Mum dropped in to say hi for the bank holiday and we went to see the newly (well, -ish) repainted Crystal Palace Park dinosaurs. They have done a lovely job!

I am now braced for September where everything starts happening again. Lots of people have been saying they are ready for it to be autumn, and I've gotta admit I am NOT, but so it goes. I don't mind the weather getting cooler and I also don't mind the nights getting darker, but both at once is TOO MUCH. 

Anyway, off we go regardless, see you next month I hope! 

July 2026

 Hoooooo boy, it's been a big month for small Emma!

 
July marks the end of the academic year, which should mean I get to chill out a bit, but this year I decided to take on an insane extracurricular project (more on that later). Job number one for me and Keir though, was to clear out the MA Design for Data Vis studio ready for next year. 

Is there a greater joy than an evening walk through South London streets and parks on a balmy summer's evening with someone cute?! (This is maybe one of my favourite digital paintings I've ever done?!)

 Well, it is maybe matched by going to the tip and ikea with someone cute, on a balmy summer's evening.

And maybe that in turn is matched by having your fav friends from another city come and have tasty dinner at your place on a balmy summer's evening (can you tell I like cute people and balmy summer's evenings, and have been having a lot of joy this month?!) 

 
Look I could keep that whole thing running even longer. What a joy to meet a friend on a sunny summer weekend and go see some good (?) art! (I thought the Liam Young show at the Barbican was good, and kind of like nothing I'd ever experienced before — I recommend a visit before it finishes)

Anyway back to that ridiculous extracurricular project I mentioned. 

I called it 'The Data Emporium', and wanted it to somehow bring together my work teaching design for data vis, my general visual diarying vibe, and make it something that other people could get involved with. And so, I won a funding bid from the university to build and run this ridiculous live-action participatory data vis installation, and run it at EMF camp. It turned out, conceptualising the thing and winning the funding was the 'easy' bit. Building it was much harder, though that was mostly due to having certain conditions attached to the funding which involved having to work with arcane university purchasing systems (which meant many things I needed arrived late or not at all).

Anyway, two things I needed to do were to obtain a LOT of sticky dots, and to riso print these worksheets I designed, both of which I accomplished this day.

Went to a university conference/staff development day thing and was quite looking forwards to it, but it turned out to be a series of depressingly luke-warm takes about AI (admittedly with one or two fun highlights). Here's a montage of some doodles I did during. (Should I publish my opinion about this 'out loud'? Oh well, I have done now)

In summer tradition, the house is full of flies. I enjoy my electric fly swatter.
 

Went to the RA Summer Exhibition with mum, as is our annual tradition. This is my take on my favourite piece from this year: 'Somebody talks about the desert, the wet drips down the tropical eaves' by Joseph Grigely — an assemblage of assorted scraps of paper with scrawled notes and drawings, which somehow added up to more than the sum of their parts (which I've kind of been having the realisation is a lot of what I do in my own work)

Also I had a nosebleed, lol (luckily not at the summer exhibition)

 
Had an absolutely insane ride on the tube back from my Samaritans shift as three enormous concerts kicked out at once, at various points along the Jubilee line (My Chemical Romance at Wembley for the goths, Ludovico Einaudi at the O2 for the Classic FM fans, Pitbull at Hyde Park for... well, whoever those people are) 

This one is for my boss Keir, who keeps telling me I need to log off (I will never log off)

It is... STILL somehow too hot

That's my girl.

Last minute EMF panic prep — the incredible EMF installations team collecting my installation boards and materials in their van to drive to the site, plus furious last minute laminating, packing and trying to predict every possible eventuality and what stationery might meet my needs.

And then packing my bag, while the weather was still a little uncertain. Would it rain?! Would it heatwave?! Would it storm?! (Spoiler alert: it was simply hot, as it has been, and apparently will continue to be)
 

Finally — time to go to EMF Camp. 

Electromagnetic Field Camp (EMF) is described on its own website as:

“A non-profit camping festival for those with an inquisitive mind or an interest in making things: hackers, artists, geeks, crafters, scientists, and engineers.”

The four-day festival with approximately 3,500 attendees primarily consists of a vast programme of esoteric talks and practical workshops, accompanied by a wide range of art installations, pop-ups, creative technology projects and other communal activity spaces. The entire festival is overseen and run by over 300 volunteers, with everything from design, logistics, infrastructure and facilities supervised and/or run by the EMF community. (I did a load of design stuff this festival and last festival, including the attendee booklet, wristbands, and bunting!)

The festival brings together an extraordinarily diverse selection of people from across the UK, Europe, and beyond, who seem to share a sense of curiosity, engagement and participatory spirit that is like few other events of its scale, in my experience.

Attendees often camp in small ‘villages’ (for example, hosted by regional hackspaces, companies, or other shared interest groups), who often host their own off-programme activities and events, meaning that the entire site is just full of STUFF HAPPENING, with few attendees not also being part of some kind of creative endeavour of their own which adds to the overall richness of experience across the long weekend.

There's also raving at night :)

I travelled over to Ledbury with V and Ada, and met my colleague Keir and one of our MA students Erica on site (as well as another LCC colleague Dolica, the installations team Jonathan and Becca, and Amy, Mike and Sophia, just a few other members of the design team). I've been to the last two festivals (2022 and 2024) and already always feel like part of a big weird family when I go there.

Anyway, we immediately got the installation piece up and running, and perhaps entirely as predicted, everyone wanted to get involved immediately, which was an exhausting joy.

EMF runs from Thursday to Sunday, and unlike at previous EMFs, I did not go to ANY talks or workshops, and barely spent any time exploring the site compared to usual. I did manage to have a bit of a walk round on the Friday though, and see some cool stuff and meet some interesting people. Mostly though, I was just running my installation (with Keir's help), which was pretty all consuming, but very very fun.

It was only by the Saturday though, that I really started to get a sense of whether the installation was actually working as intended — i.e. the data visualisations were expanding, and more contributions from all sorts of people were flooding in. Keir had to leave for the weekend to go to a friend's wedding, but on the Saturday, EMF pal Bel helped me run the piece (very helpfully!)

And finally on Sunday, I was supported by MA student Erica to get the piece to its intended final form. In the words of my fancy academic write-up:

Framed as a ‘one stop shop for data’, the emporium was an interactive installation space with a focus on analogue, human-centred data-collection, undertaken playfully and experimentally by attendees of EMF camp.

EMF camp has always collected deep, rich data on a wide range of aspects of its events. With a combination of sensors placed around the site, trackers for various functions (like beer cup returns, bus transport, internet connectivity and more), the EMF community’s passion for data collection and analysis is clear.

We wanted to expand on this by encouraging a new, more participatory approach to data gathering and visualisation. For the 2026 EMF camp, we ran an interactive installation and activity station which enabled festival-goers to get hands-on with data collection, and see their insights transformed into bold, playful, collaborative visualisations which offered fun new insights into the collective EMF experience.

We wanted to ask attendees the question: What matters to you? Be it tiny spiders, steampunk accessories, mysterious aerials, quality toilet experiences, or any other aspect of their time at EMF, we facilitated interactive data gathering using hands-on, analogue collection methods, and brought it all together into a bold, entertaining installation piece which grew and changed over the course of the festival.

And look, it worked. (Some pics here and here). Extraordinarily well, in terms of what I'd hoped it would accomplish. Super high engagement, loads of laughter and great conversations with people, loads of interest in the masters course, and we met SO many incredible people (some offers to come and run the piece again in different contexts, some offers to come and speak at other universities around the country, and a bunch of other potential collaborators in various directions).

Standing in a field, exhausted, next to this big good mess of hundreds of willing participants silly little drawings, sticker collections, insights and experiences, I just felt truly truly blessed to get to call this kind of stupid project my job (more even than that — kind of a career triumph).

I stayed one more night, travelling back on the Monday, and did these wonky drawings about my EMF highlights on the train home with V and Ada again.

I had been so stressed in the build up to EMF that I had been imagining I would take it easy afterwards, but what I had not quite been ready for was the fact that a) lots of stuff I had been putting off would now need urgent attention, and b) the installation actually opened loads of doors that then needed pursuing...

Great time for my laptop to have a total meltdown! (Bad things about having a work laptop: random updates sometimes break everything / Good things about having a work laptop: when things go wrong sometimes Walt from IT can fix it?!?!)

Just in time for me to do a whole load of online tutorials (because the other online MA I teach on does NOT stop for the summer)

A cool guy on my window.

Busy Saturday of nice things — a walk with Vicky, another tip trip, making some fancy sandwiches, going to the Quaker garden party with said fancy sandwiches, finishing playing Blippo+ with my partner (it's very good!) and going to see Sean Morley's Edinburgh preview 'Backchannel' (it's very good!)

KJ is here to help (possibly)
 

So the day before I left EMF Camp, I stumbled across an opportunity to pitch for another funded installation piece that was basically PERFECT for a second iteration of the 'Data Emporium' concept (look this is the month I became a real artist or something I guess). In collaboration with BFF* Justin and his collaborator Rob, we decided to go in for it.

*I am loling while calling him BFF, because he recently called me 'former housemate' in an instagram post, which I found an amusing way of describing our... 13-14 year friendship... My partner thought I should be offended by that description, as it drastically undersold it, but I mostly found it amusing. When called out on it (by my partner), J's argument was that actually 'former housemate' implies greater connection than mere 'friend'. But I'm going in hard with BFF, hahaha

 
And once we'd committed to the bit, there was nothing for it but to commit wholeheartedly (in between other tasks) (the deadline was the 30th) (and I actually dated this one wrong, it's the 28th, look I am all over the place okay)

 Furiously scheming

 
And then flinging in a wild punt for it and going to get my nails done. (We probably won't get it, but if we do, oh god, then we actually have to do it...)
 

In uncharacteristic Emma fashion, did some vaguely camping adjacent activities — a bushcraft workshop with a group of assorted London queers who occasionally drift together to do light apocalypse prep. Buried some childhood ghosts about not being able to light a fire! Also coincidentally it was George's birthday! Here we all are marshmallow toasting over a fire we made.

I just re-read that and it all sounds a bit incoherent and manic, oh well. Good news: tomorrow I hope to do nothing at all!! Maybe there might be other days in August where I do nothing at all, God willing.

See you all in a month...