walking through…

after a massively positive response to the project on social media i’ve been able to submit it to a couple of online exhibiting opportunities.  it felt good to feel proud and positive about submitting it to upcoming online exhibitions.

i expect the organisers to be inundated with work to choose from so i’m keeping an open mind about the potential outcomes.

later this year i plan to submit the work to another opportunity, this time outside of the uk.  i’d love to be able to list other shows the work has been seen at / through.  how these current times affect language.

in making the second of the recent submissions, i took a step out of my comfort zone and created a screencast of the work – specifically so the project can be included in the exhibition.  this does present with me some ethical dilemmas but decided to put those aside for now and experiment with it.  if successful i think this might well be an approach to the exhibition of future non linear work i aspire to make.

it is with great pleasure and pride that i announce the interactive documentary(idoc) walking through the pandemic is available to view.

the idoc has been created from contributions from an online community who came together to share their experiences.  my role has been to orchestrate the project.

as 2020 began we didn’t know what was to come because of covid-19.    january carried on as normal.  february we were becoming aware.  by march our lives were different, the virus was going global.

as covid-19 became a pandemic, around the world communities began their lockdowns.

walking through the pandemic is a lens on those early lockdown months, the places we went, the steps we took and the views we saw.

– click here to view the idoc – *

the project has been gratefully supported by a grant from arts council england emergency response fund for individuals.

* older apple devices may not display the text, this is due to a known issue.  i’m sorry if you experience this.    if you do please try viewing the project on another device, laptop or desktop computer.

walking through is at the preview stage.  this means i’ve shared with the contributors their contributions within the work and now sharing with a small group of people who have been invited to look at the webpage introduction and the linked work.

at some point i need to pick a relevant date to “go live” with the work and share across all the socials.

so what’s it been like to get to this point ?

at a practical creating level it’s been really enjoyable.  i’ve been flexible with how i thought about the look of the project.  getting away from a stringency has given the work vitality and this makes me feel excited about what i’ve made.  i’m really excited about how the work has come together.

while creating i took the opportunity to be a participant at two idocs community webinars.  they were interesting, learning about a couple of projects also made during the lockdown and in the second edition about how some interactive documentaries covered the theme of climate change.

an aspect of the ‘the project’ funding was around how it would help me plan for the future.  i knew the project would directly inform my research around working with community and that has gone really well.  the unexpected insight that will help me has been around the workflow of the creation of the project.

today i feel in limbo.  wanting to share before launch is leaving me in a little bit of a state of not knowing what to do.  in an attempt to fill my thoughts i can talk about budget.

working with a fixed budget in a short time frame has been informative.  i’m going to bring in walking through in under budget and this leaves me with sometime to move the other part of the funded research forward.  having two projects running at the same time from the same funding stream has meant i have absolutely got the most out of the funding available.

if i’m honest with you i feel happy that i’ve nearly finished and sad that i won’t be working on it any more because i’ll have finished it.

the feeling of knowing i’ve nearly finished it is so good.  i know from contributors feedback that they all love the work and yes i’m really excited to soon be able to share it with a wider community.

the arts council have asked for a report within a month of ‘the project’ being finished.  as prism is also part of ‘the project’ i will have time to collate feedback about walking through prior to submission.

something i’m really feeling at the moment is with ‘the project’ nearing completion i’m going to be left in a bit of a wide open space.  how i feel about this is is starting to emerge.

sitting with the feeling for a while and asking what it feels like – it’s akin to the one in march; however, this time the what might happen in the future? doesn’t have the same feeling as it did in march.  for now i need to keep my nerve and complete what i’ve started.

focus andrew.

the plan is to hear the feedback from the previews and consider what i might act upon.  see what the feeling feels like in terms of when to launch the project.  i might do a staggered launch across the socials.  when it comes to it i know what the thing to do will need to be.  the end of the month might be a time to aim for.

so all in all i’m feeling good yet a little unsure.  i feel proud of what we’ve made as a community and i am so looking forward to be able to share it far and wide.

and to finish – making walking through has also helped me to realise just how connected i am – even at this time of lockdown in a pandemic.  i’ve realised  this as i started to consider where i want to share the project.

wow – the feeling of being connected is so uplifting …

the process of reflection is always easier – for me – at a point in time where there’s a groundswell of good feeling about what it is i’m working on.

sitting now with coffee, breaking sunshine outside and the tippy tappy sound of eggs boiling in the kitchen i want somehow to capture and record the feelings i’m experiencing about creating the interactive documentary (idoc).

firstly i’m finding the process of bringing together the contributed material really exciting.  working with content i’ve not created is enlivening (is that a word?)

this project is intended to help me to plan for the future.  i’m learning a lot about working remotely through social media connections and how building a community starts with people i’m already connected to.  the majority of early contributions have been coming from those who i have previously had physical meetings with.

i’m open to wide range of responses i’m receiving.  to be honest it makes me feel alive to be working with such diversity.  and here’s the thing about creating the idoc – there are human qualities emerging in the diversity.  so far what my expectations might have been have been surpassed.

then there’s the “will anyone contribute?” question.  early on i spent quite a time being concerned about how i was communicating the project wouldn’t be attractive and there would be nothing to work with.  reflecting on this, taking a step a back, this might be a thing connected to vulnerability and trust.  when inviting contributions how might i lessen these two when working closer than a social media connection?  this isn’t particularly a revelation about working with a community; however, it is something to bare in mind – to practice solving.

what’s been happening for me this morning is the beginnings of the feeling of emergence of what the idoc might be like.

the idoc format is problematic in it’s creation, as it lacks a formal documentary structure of what to get across within the beginning middle and end ( i’d love to find out the technical expression for this) to guide the editting process.  more over the contributed content is making suggestions of how to link the clips.

this morning i think i’ve reached a decision about a visual convention and in trying this out the feel and look of the emerging  work is creating a good feeling that i’m attempting to disseminate at speed here.

there are still contributors working to get their contributions to a point of sending.  sitting looking out the window i think i’m past the tension about will there be any content to work with.

from a learning about budgeting standpoint, the tracking of time spent is showing me i’m in a good place budget wise.  again making me feel good about myself and the project.

i like this feeling right now :)

——– invitation to contribute to the walking through project

when lockdown started i was already experiencing the feeling that the world was slowing down.  i can remember an evening where i stood and listened to sheep munching on the long grass…

 

walking became a way of gaining some perspective on the situation as covid-19 spread across the world.  either with the family or just the dog, it was our break from being in the one place all day –  the walking experience had become heightened…

 

as we start to ease out of lockdown i would like to invite you to join me in creating an interactive documentary about our experiences of walking through the pandemic.  to do this i’m looking for contributions of videos from your walks made during the pandemic.  they can be of walks already made or from one yet to be made.  together we’ll tell a storey of what it was like to walk through the pandemic.

 

i’m particularly interested in your reflections about your experiences of walking through the pandemic.

 

if you’d like to be part of the community of contributors please message me for guidelines and how to send the files to me.

 

invitation —–

as i write this there is a sense of lockdown starting to come to an end.  with this in mind i have done my best to work quickly to get the invitation out for contributions to the project.

initially i focussed on a formal approach with a community i’m already a member of.  to supplement this i took to social media.

within the stories of cats and activities were shared clips of things seen on walks.  in chatting with the authors a less formal invitation approach emerged – in fact the interactions on social media informed how the invitation now reads.

the covid-19 emergency fund from the arts council is enabling me to plan for the future as i react to the responses to the invitation and conversations i’m having.

reflecting upon the last 10 days i have experienced a lot about how to engage people into an emerging community.  that’s another way of saying the arrival at what the invitation read like was actually very taxing.   i was aware of what i wrote having a direct bearing on what responses the project received.

the other point to note is the invitations on social media have gone out very much quicker than via the formal network.  for the record i have shared the invitation with members of other groups i’m part of.

while researching the invitation i have continued to shoot video myself on family walks.  it’s been quite freeing using my smartphone to do so.

something i’m learning to accept is that for all the invitations and interest shown i have no control over what contributions are made.  ie how much material will be available to work with.  a consideration of scale.

on my social media channels i didn’t anticipate the reflective writings about walking  – of course this is encouraged in the invitation.

that leads me to reflect about the process to arrive at the invitation.  for several days i had an unachievable scale in mind.  what i mean by this is i was obsessing on a huge number of contributions to the project.  this visioning created anxiety as it put me under unnecessary pressure to connect with enough people to achieve this.

once i accepted that what we’re making is small, with a degree of intimacy to it, the conversations on social media became hugely important.

after those anxious days of preparing the invitation, the project feels like it’s currently where it needs to be.  :)

i’m going into the next phase feeling confident.