earlier in the month, katie and i met to review the first four sessions. we had some positive thoughts (we felt we were offering an enabling, welcoming environment, with a low-pressure structure allowing engagement on the men’s own terms and as a result, relationships are starting to develop) and continue to battle with some known challenges (numbers remain low – between 1 and 5 per session, and no-one has yet brought their own stimulus material to a session).
we concluded that we would continue to trust the process and each other. we have worked together many times now over a long period, as well as developing a friendship, and we are very aware that for a challenging project, trust is a necessary bedrock on which to take risks and push structures and ideas. acknowledging this explicitly builds on existing trust and enables open and frank exchange – it means we have both communication shortcuts within sessions, and honest long-form discussion between sessions. i feel lucky to have this working relationship as the basis for this project, but it does expose a bind that is often read as ‘cliquey-ness’ when working in the arts: repeatedly working with the same people is what enables this trust to evolve, but this can make the arts ecosystem (appear) impenetrable and exclusive. i think we have to be more aware and open and discursive about this if we are to address it successfully.
so, where are we going from here? we are going to try and increase our numbers of participants by taking our workshop to other established gatherings of people, both as an offering to existing groups, but also as a strategy to encourage others to attend our sessions. we will continue to run fortnightly sessions, with our own ones running monthly, and our partnered ones between these. we are also considering offering the option of taking part virtually through a zoom link, as it has become clear that travel (be it through cost, time, provision or weather) poses a barrier for some potential attendees. of course, the virtual offer exposes other access barriers.
we have also decided to NOT PHOTOGRAPH the sessions for the time being. i have been considering notions of ‘privacy’ and ‘instrumentalisation’, in terms of our relationship with non-human animals, for a while now, and the blasé way we image them during ‘private’ moments … i am thinking particularly about plans i had to put a web-cam in a sparrows’ nest in the walls of god’s house tower, and live-feed the images into the building as they nested and raised their young. it was a lot of brain gymnastics (helped by angie pepper’s great paper ‘glass panels and peepholes: nonhuman animals and the right to privacy’). this has made me look more critically at how we freely collect images of those we work with in socially-engaged projects – it is a given that funding bodies will expect ‘evidence’ and that images both still and moving will be collected. i was part of a project in the holyrood estate over the summer and was repeatedly jarred by a camera becoming apparent in the middle of activities in the quest for documentation. not only does this disrupt the activities taking place by making us think about being looked at, or being seen, but i also feel strongly that we are so used to being imaged that we no longer think about what that means, so is consent really given in an informed way?
anyway, we have noticed in our sessions that there has never been the right time to talk about photography and recording sessions in this way, as we are trying to stay right in the moment. so we are going to draw each other and photograph the work as a record instead. i would love to know other peoples’ thoughts around photography in the community, particularly in groups of people who we might consider vulnerable.
