On Tuesday a group of photography and art students from BHASVIC (Brighton and Hove 6th Form College) came to Fabrica for a workshop with their teacher, Polly. I was nervous about the session because I was curious to see how what a workshop would be like where it was possible that not everyone would have seen the exhibition. Since everyone who enters the Fabrica exhibition has the choice as to whether to go in and see the banner or not it was important that this group had that choice too and that the individuals in it did not feel that they all had to look at the images just because they were there as an organised group. I think the session went very well in the end and the students were very articulate about their thoughts and feelings about the work. They had to come up with a brief for a new piece of work involving photography and their ideas were great. They suggested putting on a multi-voiced outdoor exhibition in as a protest against war using a stage and projections representing different views in the same spirit. Another idea was to throw paper aeroplanes from a tall building each with handwritten message on it protesting about how it is never the sons and daughters of those in power who are sent off to war to be killed. They thought it important that the messages be handwritten so that there was a personal touch to the planes and they pointed out that the planes would remind people of war. Someone raised the doubt about how to get so many messages handwritten and one fo the group really impressed me with her matter of face response to this that all you had to do was involve loads of people. She made it sound so easy to involve loads of people and spoke with such assured confidence which was really inspiring.
