We are Together Culture: Meet Lele
Member since August 2023
Photo by Tom Attridge
Together Culture is growing a community of outrageously curious, open-minded and creative members who care for each other and want to build a more inclusive and ecological Cambridge. Today, we’re introducing you to Lele, an illustrator and designer. You can find out more about her work here.
Why did you become a member?
It was initially a little bit selfish! I was thinking of it as a space to work, but now I realise it’s more about making connections, meeting like-minded people and getting outside of my house, so I'm not there just working all day.
I think the final thing was seeing the Together Culture team talking at a CamCreatives meetup, and I felt your enthusiasm and belief in what you were saying - I thought, ‘these people mean serious business!’
Tell us a bit about what you're working on at Together Culture
I’m an illustrator and designer, so I work on books, magazines, advertising campaigns, games, and all sorts of products.
I dip in and out when I'm at Together Culture. There’s always someone that you can meet and I really enjoy attending the workshops, Helping Each Other Forums, and if I can contribute something it’s always interesting and exciting to be a part of.
Two years ago I did an illustration for a course I was on - it was part of an assignment to imagine a world in which creatives are happy. It was me manifesting Together Culture in a way! Because I tried to include different types of creatives in the illustration.
Yes, that’s part of why we liked it!
I think that’s the difference about Together Culture - it includes all different types of creatives. Creativity is about anything you can do.
Anyway, I came across this illustration again recently, and I realised it looked like Together Culture. I just made a few changes like the message on the wall, so that it spreads our community message.
And what about the Character Generator performance?
Ah yes, the Character Generator was a live illustration performance at one of our Saturday Lounges. I wanted to do an activity showing the community and neighbourhood what I do. I had an idea to do live drawings as a response to prompts that the audience would give me. My hope was that this would also spark conversations about the development of generative AI technology versus artists in action.
Basically I was trying to prove I draw better than AI! Some visitors to Saturday Lounge gave the same prompts to DALL-E as a test, and they got not very creative images - each element of the prompts put together in a non imaginative way. So I think you can probably get amazing results but it is missing the spark that comes up with truly exciting or quirky things.
Your hope for Cambridge
I hope that Together Culture stays for a long time and grows. And brings hope and more positivity and creativity. That the community can build up more. Every person I speak to says they feel seen, heard and connected to people like they haven’t in the past so that’s really valuable.
You can explore Lele’s Together Culture collection of t-shirts, totes and prints here.
If you’re interested in finding out more about the Together Culture community, join us on 22 June for Saturday Lounge - a free event celebrating our neighbourhood!
