photography

Reflections at the halfway point – the Making of Us

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Yesterday was session 4 out of 8 workshops we are delivering for Ashcroft School in Cheadle, as part of our involvement in the Making of Us programme. So we’re now halfway through, an apt point to do some reflection – with the young people and between ourselves as facilitators.

This session should have taken place during the last week of the Autumn term but Covid enforced a delay. I think this had an impact on how it went and where we’re at more generally. It’s now around a month since we saw the group and this was only their third day back at school. They didn’t seem enthused.

Our session was structured around reflection – casting our minds back to what we’d done in sessions 1-3 and looking forward to possible activities for the remaining four weeks. Activities so far have been a photo walk with disposable cameras, followed by collaging using the prints from those cameras. We have also done light painting and Jamie-Lee made lithophanes/3D prints out of the group’s collages – which they saw for the first time yesterday and could take home to keep.

We looked at the prints from light painting and gave out the lithophanes to the members of the group who were present (two were not there). We then played a game Jamie had come up with to make the reflective process more fun – it involved an elastic band attached to four strings. Four people had to work together to control the band and to pick up paper cups. Under the cups were post-it notes with prompts. We hoped everyone would contribute their thoughts and help us shape the rest of the project.

Of course there’s theory and there’s practice, and things do not always work out how you hope. The game was good fun and the group seemed to enjoy it. A few thoughts came out of it but it felt like getting blood out of a stone at times. Group members are not the most forthcoming with their thoughts and at times it felt like we and the teacher were in danger of putting words in their mouths, which is not what we wanted to happen. But what to do when a young person shrugs and says ‘I dunno’ to everything? It’s a really tricky one.

The energy levels in our group fluctuate quite wildly during our 90 minute sessions. Someone can start off quite engaged and apparently into it and then five minutes later they’ve left the room, never to return. Some participants stay but fold into themselves and stop engaging. They make themselves small. This is a challenge for us as facilitators – I am not someone who is very experienced (or naturally very good) with teenagers – let alone those with additional needs. It all gave me a lot of food for thought.

How to ensure we are designing our sessions in a way which works for these participants? Reflection is great and important but I came away feeling somewhat at sea, since the activities that some people had enjoyed were those which others had not enjoyed at all. Which direction to go in next?

This is all something we are now working on and we have some ideas, some of which we want to try for ourselves while we have this chance and others we are designing especially for them.

But some other points struck me as relevant. One weakness for how it went is that we’ve had a long break, worsened by Covid forcing us to postpone our last session. That has broken the flow which we’d built up so far. One participant who had got really involved in the first three sessions and seemed to get a lot out of it – particularly the last workshop on light painting – has now decided he wants to drop it altogether, which is a shame. I wonder if that would have happened if we’d managed to do one long uninterrupted block of sessions.

This is not to say it’s all negative. We have had some genuine moments where it feels like we are connecting with the young people in our group and I can see they are enjoying aspects of what we’re doing. It’s an interesting and challenging journey to walk the path of meeting their needs in a genuine way, given the limitations of the small and unpredictable spaces we are being given to work with and all the other external dramas which can be happening around us at the school.

Next week we plan to do something more active which involves an acceptable level of mess – and to introduce the incentive of earning sweets or chocolate for engaging in our sessions. Hopefully this will make it feel less like ‘school’ and more like something fun and creative that they are happy to be part of. Fingers crossed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Goodbye 2021

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2021 has been a mixed bag personally and professionally. Aside from the obvious awfulness of this pandemic, there’s been a lot of loss.

My kids lost three grandparents in quick succession over late 2020 and the first part of this year, following long periods of illness and decline – a situation made all the worse by the limitations to visiting etc. A number of friends have also left the area and in some cases moved abroad, which for me has compounded this feeling of grief and loss.

I felt very at sea professionally earlier in the year but eventually started to realise that one of the things I was feeling was profound boredom. After 16 years as a freelance journalist, basically writing the same stories for the same outlets and feeling inferior every time I looked up my NCTJ peers (why do we do this?), maybe it was time to shift focus. This felt like a failure initially but I soon came to frame it differently.

Taking part in Crossing Sectors, a professional development programme put on by Open Eye Gallery, helped with this. It led me to run a socially engaged lockdown project in my neighbourhood, then to apply for Arts Council Develop Your Creative Practice funding – which I didn’t get but the process moved me forward significantly. That application then formed the basis for several other applications for arts commissions and I started to see some results. I got to the interview round for a project in a prison – which felt like progress.

Then I won a microcommission from Open Eye to make collages using litter I’d picked up off the floor – the first time I’ve used any kind of alternative media within my work. It felt like an outlandish thing to propose but somehow it worked. From there the good luck continued. I got on another training programme with the Turnpike in Leigh, the Making of Us, which has paired me with a talented young designer and 3D printer to design and deliver a series of workshops to five teenagers in a special school. We’re part way through this at the moment and it’s been a huge learning curve – you can’t get much more out of my comfort zone than this.

Aside from this I’ve got another two socially engaged commissions which are at an early stage – a Heritage Action Zone project in Chester with Open Eye Gallery, where I’m going to partner with the Spider Project, and another similar but bigger scale project in Wigan, where I will be working with community members to consider the history of King Street. That one is something I’m quite nervous about at this stage as it’s all such an unknown at this point, and there are two other artist commissions happening co-currently along the same short street.

Running in parallel with all this is my involvement in Post Photography Collective – a group of mother photographers who share lots of experiences and frustrations. We only meet on Zoom once a month but having a network of like minds has been a lovely and positive thing.

Additionally, I spent this term working as an associate lecturer in photography at Manchester Metropolitan University, supporting a small group of students to engage with the community of Clayton. This happened completely by chance, through a chat with the course leader at an open evening at an artist studios near my house. I don’t know if my contract will be renewed or whether the other projects will allow for this next term. But it’s been a good experience overall.

I don’t know what the point of writing this is, other than to remind myself of how much has happened in a relatively short period of time. I don’t think I’ve really taken many photos of my own, other than the litter portraits which then got turned into collages. One of those will be in the Manchester Open exhibition in late January/February.

But I suppose the thing that is worth remembering is that all of these professional changes have happened just months after I felt really bleak about my direction. It took me months to change the wording on my website and social media from ‘journalist’ to ‘former journalist’ and sometimes ‘writer’. It felt like a huge admission of failure but actually I’m quite pleased and surprised with the turn of events.

 

Making of Us workshop #2

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This week we ran our second workshop at the Together Trust for the Making of Us project. The first session we used disposable cameras with the participants – the only snag being that two of our five participants were absent, and their cameras needed to be filled up by other people. This was important as the resulting images were the basis for workshop number two – the downside was that because they hadn’t taken the photos themselves, there was potential for them to be less engaged. Anyway, after a bit of stress with broken machines at the camera shop (I thought for a while the pictures might not even be ready) we returned to the school with negatives and prints. We watched a couple of short Youtube videos about film photography and the darkroom, to give them a little bit of understanding of how it all works, and we did a warm up exercise that I learned on Crossing Sectors, where you draw around your fist and then respond to a series of drawing prompts within that shape, which then promote discussions as a group.

We then spent some of the session supporting the group to make collages out of their images – this was a bit of an ask it turned out, as I hadn’t thought about the fact this might be out of the group’s experience or comfort zone. Some participants got into it faster than others but all five ended up making a collage by the end of the session. This will form the basis for a 3D print, which Jamie-Lee will bring back to them in the final session. We also intend to do some light painting in the next session and I’m having to quickly scrabble about to buy suitable second-hand digital cameras (which allow users to use in semi-manual modes) as I have suddenly realised I’m not so comfortable with the idea of using my own work camera and laptop for this – I stopped paying to insure my gear a few years back. I don’t want to tempt fate in this way.

How socially engaged is this project at this point? We’re trying to build trust with the group and to get their feedback as we go along but it’s not clear how much they are getting out of it. We’re reflecting on our practice as we go along both together and individually. Thinking of moments which could have gone better, and which have gone well. We’re asking the school staff for constructive feedback as well. As for where we could go in future sessions, we have a rough plan but it’s subject to change if we feel the group could benefit from something different. I’m not as stressed out as I thought I might be about this situation – no doubt because I’m working with a partner, and have a support system in place and also don’t have the pressure of outputs at this stage. I’d like to build participant feedback into the process more but it feels like that could take more time and a lot more work. Anyway here are some of the lovely disposable images the group shot last week and a few of their fabulous collages that they made this week.

Making of Us workshop #1

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This week was the first of eight workshops I’m co-delivering at a school run by the Together Trust, as part of the Making of Us programme. I’ve been pretty nervous about this at times so it’s nice to have finally begun. I’ve been planning and delivering the sessions with another artist from the course, Jamie-Lee Wainman, who specialises in creative 3D printing. We’ve decided to try to bring our skills together to deliver something new, and to try to not only collaborate with one another but also be as responsive to the participants as we can be. Session one involved learning about film, playing with framing and experimenting with disposable cameras and session two will build on the images the group have created. We don’t entirely know where we’re going to aim up at the end, which is terrifying and exciting in equal measure.

Manchester Open exhibition

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I’m excited to say this image of eco heroes Nazar and Ash (from my Open Eye commission on litter picking) has been selected to be part of the Manchester Open exhibition at Home next year. Almost 2,300 people entered and around 500 of those were selected, so this is lovely.

Open Eye digital window

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Yesterday some participants from the Crossing Sectors programme at Open Eye Gallery got together in person for the first time – a year after we first got to know each other. Unfortunately I couldn’t join them as I had a Making of Us session, but I’ve been kindly sent some photos of my litter work which is currently on display in the gallery’s digital window. Exciting.

Making of Us – session 4

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This week was the 4th CPD session at the Turnpike and focused on the roles of artists and producers, relationship building and project planning. We also got a chance to share some of our own work with one another. The session was fairly gentle but as per usual there was a lot of food for thought.

I’ve always been quite sketchy on what a creative producer actually does – in fact I think I only heard the term for the first time earlier this year, so it was useful to hear from people who have worked in that role, including a few fellow participants on the Making of Us programme. When artists get to a certain status or work on projects that are larger in scale, there is a producer who can help with funding applications, research, practical things like scheduling and sorting snacks and managing budgets. In some ways this sounds good – many of these things are frankly a bit of a grind. But at the same time I quite like being the person in control so that could be strange. The engagement and research phases are things I am particularly wedded to – I like to represent myself. The takeaway from this part of the session was the importance of good clear communication throughout any project – it was interesting to hear examples of when relationships went wrong, which often seemed to be because of poor communication or crossed wires and people not really being collaborative or doing their own thing.

The other rather obvious (but still, for me, a lightbulb moment) piece of advice which I took away was the vital importance of reading contracts and artistic agreements really well and challenging them if unhappy with any clauses. I have to admit I’ve not really read these documents very well until now, I’ve looked at the section on photo rights and that’s about it. This is a bad habit which I need to stop. I’ll be making sure I read them properly from now 0n – again I heard examples of where the wording wasn’t good for either party but because the contracts were cut and paste documents they were still in there. Yet again it all comes down to communication. A key lesson to take forward.

As part of the Making of Us we have been paired up with another participant artist and allocated an institutional partner where we will be delivering a series of workshops with young people, over the coming months. That’s going to be the focus now going forward. It’s all pretty exciting.

Pandemic reflections – Levy Lockdown Portraits #2

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A year into the pandemic, I invited a number of people who I’d photographed for Levy Lockdown Portraits to reflect on their experiences of the past 12 months. Here is what they wrote:

The Making of Us, session 2

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Yesterday was the second session of the Making of Us, a professional development programme I’m currently part of at the Turnpike in Leigh, along with eight other artists from different backgrounds. The day involved making bread and taking part in a walk along the canal with artist Niki Colclough, which was rather lovely.

We’ve been thinking about collaboration, our experiences of it and the different forms it can take – with partner organisations, other artists and of course project participants. It’s been interesting talking to people who have come from different disciplines – the group includes a poet, a ceramicist, someone who uses 3D printing and several who have a very interdisciplinary practice.

My own experience of collaboration is a bit mixed. As a freelancer for 15 years now I’ve become a lone wolf on a professional level – I tend to work on self-generated and self-funded photo and multimedia projects in which I do everything: the research, finding of participants, engagement, photography, interviews, audio, multimedia production, book/zine design and dissemination. I am good at a few of these things, adequate at others and really poor at some (dissemination and marketing in particular!) I don’t think the lone wolf model is one to aspire to – but it suits a control freak like me, especially one with such limited funding for work.

I have limited experience at collaborating with institutions (outside of commissioning editors from magazines etc). This is starting to change a little this year, thanks to a few micro commissions – and will hopefully continue to do so. I have never collaborated with another artist so that is all wonderfully new for me.

However, I do feel I have something to contribute when it comes to experience collaborating with project participants. Not in a formalised workshop setting but in a more organic sense. When I worked with Roma families in 2011-2014, I was quite conscious about making the work as collaborative as I could as a way to make the power dynamic less glaring (although it still existed of course… after all, there’s no getting away from the fact I’m a white middle-class media professional holding a massive camera). I worked with families for extended periods of time (years); asked participants to take photos of their daily lives; invited them to write or speak about images and family album photos and used photo elicitation as a method to generate texts (ie interviewing with images – more on this here, along with some examples).

They also got to see and approve photos before they were used in books and exhibitions. All the accompanying words were theirs. It wasn’t a perfect project, obviously. But I am confident they felt included and I know they didn’t feel exploited because we are all still in touch. I consider this a socially engaged body of work but this way of working is a spectrum and I was definitely still in the driving seat – the artistic vision and final photos were all mine. I once asked Ramona to come up with an alternative edit of my photos, which was quite different to mine, as you would expect (You can see this over here)

It was a fun experiment but I wasn’t ready to cede that kind of power – I was (and still am) in thrall to the idea of making aesthetically pleasing photos and to a degree to the ego-centric stereotype of the documentary photographer – but in a different setting and a different kind of project I would challenge myself to let go of this.

In preparation for yesterday’s session we were asked to read the article Power Up and to make notes. These are the points which leapt out at me in the reading and session itself:

  • We should be responsive to the needs and wants of communities with which we are working – it’s about agency and empowerment
  • Reflection on work is crucial
  • Cultural capital can reinforce inequalities – how do we make sure we value the cultural capital of participants
  • We need to consider our positionality, privilege and subjectivity and how these play into decision making.
  • Beware of gatekeeping – we need to enable co-design of projects. Not just give people access to existing programmes. They need to be genuinely and equally invited.
  • Consider where power lies – is this just about boxticking? Who sets the parameters and guidelines and makes the final decisions?
  • Look out for cultural colonialism (ie asymmetrical exchange)
  • Listen and reflect what you learn
  • “Collaboration is often characterised by a degree of paternalism”
  • Collaborator or participant?
  • There’s a stereotype of socially engaged artists ‘doing good’ or ‘helping people’ – this can be paternalistic.