This street photography project was comissioned by Creative Health organisation, NAS Group. It was an integral part to a wider project which explored public health and heritage through creative arts.
Project Brief
I was tasked to create the education materials, plan and deliver street photography workshops for 8 - 12 year olds, which occured over a three week period. Approximately 10 young people attended each session on average. This specific project would then culminate in a community exhibition at the Church Street Library. There would also be an online exhibition, disseminated via the NAS Group social media. In addition to delivering multiple workshops, time was allocated to an initial ideation session, plus post production, editing of the images, and also prepping for the in-person exhibition.
Methodology
While this was a Street Photography project, due to the project objective I adopted a modified Photovoice approach (Photovoice is a participatory photography method that seeks to empower marginalised groups and share their stories).This was to draw out themes important to the young people, empowering their voice, and giving them the opportunity to express themselves. This qualitative data could also be used in final evaluation report.
To this aim, additional visual assets based on the session plan were created by Art Therapist, Ana Cristina (who was assisting in facilitating the sessions). Here are her supporting visual assets.
Reflections
At the time of writing the wider NAS Group "Health & Heritage" project has yet to conclude. I will update with the evaluation report as it becomes available. That said, they initial feedback from the young people has been extremely positive. It sparked an ongoing interest in photography in some of the participants (who attended the second set of workshops which NAS Group ran due to the success of this project). The Street Photography project has made a lasting impact beyond the initial workshops, which has been highlighted by both the parents and caregivers. The wider community that attended the exhibition gave positive feedback, and the youn people were proud to see their work displayed in public.
As photography sessions were all "drop- in", there was an initial concern about attendence. In addition to this, the extreme bad weather that we had experienced in the early part of 2024 threatened the feasiblity of the outdoor sessions. There was even a thunderstorm the day before the first session.
However, this challenge was overcome by the successful marketing, and community relationships that was established by the NAS Group team, and the flexiblity of the session plans that I had inbuilt into it's design.
The success of this initial Street Photography project, saw NAS Group commision an additional photography project, based around the canals of Westminster.
