The project began with a little exercise. I'd begun to look into mockumentaries and the idea of subverting comedy into the form of a more serious medium.

The idea of using social media came to me very early on in the project and in the end became the main focus on how to present my "cause".

The research was a little unorthodox.

As I mentioned before, mockumentaries played a large part in developing how I wanted my project to be interpreted. By portraying the idea as a serious issue in British culture I hoped to amass a following of those who might share the project, including their own stories with it; and therefore continuing the hyperbolization of a such a trivial matter, adding to the humour behind the campaign.

As you can see, social media does have a tendency to follow stereotypes at times, such as the British loving their tea. Other outlets I looked at were famous publications with spoof headlines/titles, achieving the same reaction as I would hope to attain.

Social Media is a fickle thing. The internet can give fame, but only to things that are interesting, or have some sort of catalyst to ignite the campaign.

I always have felt that tangible projects are much more powerful, being able to interact with something, to alter it in some way or another is always more fun, and in the end isn't the final project of your student years meant to be fun?

In comes the teapot.

My mind began to race with the possibilities of something interactive, yet simple enough to achieve in a matter of weeks.

After some more research and development, I had two very clear ideas:

Stickers - easy enough and a more accepted form of vandalism these days, but something that could easily be utilised to create awareness for the main part of my campaign, especially if I were to give them to children.

Social Media - I always knew I'd utilise the hashtag ability of Twitter, as it makes searching for the interaction of my project on the internet a little easier. But what if people could see their tweets at my final year show? I put in place the simple idea to a friend of mine, more knowledgeable of the hardware of technology than I, and we decided that a printer would work well.

I found a teapot large enough to accomodate a small thermal printer and the assembly began. My associate used javascript and some existing code he altered on a raspberry pi, we attached the printer and used the hashtag as a search index as to the content it would print. Naturally there were hiccups, I had to use a dongle so that the wifi was not overused by nearby students and teachers, and everytime the printer was turned on, I had to use a keyboard to manually code the thing to turn on.

Overall it was a success. I received over 200 tweets, designed to look like steam rising from the cup. Viewers of the exhibition loved seeing their words materialise in front of them, meaning the sole purpose of the project was completed - people had fun.