journalism

Stalybridge #5

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I went back to Stalybridge for the fifth day of photographing yesterday. I had two appointments set up – with dance teacher Sarah England (above) and at the Music Academy, where owner Chris wasn’t expecting me (the message hadn’t been passed on) but was thankfully very accommodating and up for a chat. I also dropped into Stalybridge institution The Tripe Shop and persuaded staff member Tina to let me photograph her – she is the only person who works there who actually likes tripe, as it turns out, which made me laugh.

I now have 20 portraits, each with a captions of up to 250 words. It’s not a bad haul but certainly not in any way representative of the diversity of the town. I would very much like to secure a few more interviews if I can – I’ve put a few messages out so it’s possible it will work out.

The Local/Lokal exhibition is at Astley Cheetham Gallery in Stalybridge from 24 Sep – 21 Dec.

 

Stalybridge #4

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I’ve been back to Stalybridge on two more occasions since my last post and have met quite a few people and had lots of conversations about the town.

Last Thursday I cycled back along the Ashton canal (well, I did once my husband had kindly fixed a last minute puncture for me) and kicked off my day meeting Charlie, a recently appointed curate at Holy Trinity Church in the town centre.

This is clearly a super active church community which does loads of good work trying to combat isolation, poverty and lots of other issues.

From there I tried my luck at one of the local allotments. I struck lucky – it was a busy morning and people were very willing to chat. I then went on to Bridge Beers, a bar and bottle shop which someone at WeAreLocal (project commissioners) had mentioned to me. David, the owner, was up for taking part.

The following day unfolded in much the same way. I had one appointment set up in advance and other than that walked around trying my luck with people I chanced upon.

I have a mental checklist while running these projects – I want to be as representative as possible in terms of age, gender, ethnicity etc. I don’t want to be prescriptive but it’s something I am conscious of.

I walked around and around the town, trying to spot people who could be worth trying. I have found people extremely friendly on the whole in Stalybridge and most have been very receptive to my questions.

The lady in the portrait above, Seraphine, is someone I got talking to on the street on Friday afternoon. She was incredibly friendly and receptive when I tentatively suggested going home with her (she had things to do there).

I had first been attracted by the fact she seemed so sweet and was carrying her baby on her back in the African style and envisaged photographing her like that but I love the intimacy of having made the image in her lounge. That portrait is by far my favourite of the series so far.

I have lots of transcribing to do now – since I always use people’s own words with my images – and will be returning to Stalybridge this Friday and again early next week. I have a few appointments lined up already and have sent several messages  today to positively address the gaps within the work, but there’s only so much that is possible within the time constraints for the project. At least I’m trying though.

The exhibition opens on 24 September at the Astley Cheetham Gallery in Stalybridge.

Stalybridge #3

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I returned to Stalybridge for the second time on Friday – this time I cycled along the canal, which took me a little more than an hour but made me so happy. I felt like I was seeing a totally different side of the city and was so envious of people whose gardens lead directly onto the canal. I only had a few hours in the town because I had to be back by 3pm to collect my sons from holiday club, so I was only there from 11am to 1.30pm. Still though I managed to get two chats in, one prearranged and one serendipitous.

First I called in to Paul’s Tools, a shop opposite the train station which had caught my eye the previous day, because it has some unusual mannequins outside the shop (one is a teenage ninja turtle – either Raphael or Michaelangelo… it’s hard to tell!) I hadn’t intended to go and speak to the people inside but got chatting to the aforementioned Paul, who has lived in Stalybridge all his life. He pointed me down the street where the pub with the shortest name in the UK (Q) is a few doors down from the pub with the longest name in the world (The Old Thirteenth Cheshire Astley Volunteer Rifleman Corps Inn). He also told me Stalybridge is a key place in trade union history. I’m not happy with my portrait of Paul though so am going to have to pop back.

From there I went to meet Steven Barton, who runs a local food pantry from a shipping container outside the town’s Labour Club. He and his group support struggling households in the town with food parcels and other essentials and he says the need is growing massively as people’s bills rocket.

 

I had hoped to also fit in some street portraits and interviews but as usual I overestimated what I would be able to manage and had to leave it for the day. I had planned to return on Saturday with my kids and visit the Astley Cheetham Gallery, where this work will be shown but the rail strikes put paid to that.

I can only come to this work as an outside looking in, which is limiting at any point but especially so when time is short. I am not seeking to represent Stalybridge or to give an opinion on the place – that would neither be fair nor possible. I’m hoping to just gather a selection of different experience and present it for what it is, without making any big claims of how representative it is. I’m not really happy with anything I’ve shot so far – it all feels a bit rushed and I’m not yet sure of my angle – but I’m hearing interesting stories and views.

Over the coming fortnight my hope is to meet some people who run businesses or cultural enterprises in the area, as well as some more lifelong residents and a few new arrivals. I’m contacting some possible participants in advance but will also set aside some time to simply walk around the area and see who I meet. My next short visit to Stalybridge will be Wednesday but on Thursday and Friday I should manage a bit more time.

 

New project in Stalybridge

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Over the coming month I’m going to be working on a short project thinking about place and identity, in a Greater Manchester town I have never visited – Stalybridge. It’s going to have to happen in quite an organic and journalistic way – one step leading to the next – because I don’t have time to develop links with any groups in the way I’ve worked elsewhere lately. There is still three weeks of summer holidays – ergo childcare issues – which makes it even more complicated and challenging but it should be good. More info to follow…. This is a group project involving seven photographers – three here and four in Sweden. To kick things off we were asked to respond to some prompts about the issues we are addressing with the work. Here are my thoughts:

 

– VIEWPOINTS: What does it mean to be local/lokal?

IN looking IN

– How do our places make us feel?

My personal experience of place/locality has been mixed. I was born and raised in a town (Wrexham) – my family moved there shortly before I was born. Neither of my parents grew up in the UK so we’re a bit rootless. Wrexham is a border town but has quite a strong Welsh identity, and in the 80s/90s it felt very white/monocultural and quite stifling to me. I couldn’t wait to escape. In 1999 I moved to Manchester, were I’ve largely remained. I’ve lived in the same neighbourhood since 2004 and I feel like I belong here. People talk sometimes about ‘chosen family’ and that’s how this area feels to me. It’s diverse and creative and warm and friendly in a way that my hometown never felt growing up – although that could be changing now… or maybe it’s a matter of perspective. I remember being fascinated when I was about 18 and working in my local pub in Wrexham by the people who felt so connected with their place that they never moved away/never yearned for change. I am still very curious about people like that and understand it more now because I’ve found somewhere where I feel I fit.

– What heritage defines your place eg. for Greater Manchester it is perhaps textile, heritage, canals and trade routes.

Greater Manchester has a strong industrial tradition – it’s the birthplace of the industrial revolution. The social history aspect of this interests me – the migration it led to, from Ireland and Italy, then from the Indian subcontinent and broader British Empire. This has enriched the region enormously, and more recent waves of migration continue to do this.

– Contemporary culture – what do people like to experience in their locality?

My area is rapidly gentrifying – which has its pros (finally a few nice cafes and bars) but many, many cons as well (lots of people I know being priced out of the rental market or choosing to move away). One of the drivers of this locally is a weekly market, which was set up by community members seven years ago and is a social enterprise which aims to put money back into the local area. It’s a really lovely place to go eat and you always bump people you know there but it’s a space which doesn’t serve the whole community as it is unaffordable to many people. For me this side of local contemporary culture is jarring – I fear that places are increasingly being segregated by class. Recently I was part of an artist residency at the market – we got Platinum Jubilee funding to run a community portrait project there. We tried hard to pull in a broad range of participants. It was a joyful project to be involved in – people have a lot of love for this area. I am lucky to be part of a burgeoning creative community in the locality – there is a lot going on and artists are developing links with one another.

– What are our shared concerns, issues and aspirations and how do we feel about where we live and work?

I am passionate about where I live and have seen a lot of changes there over recent years. In 2016 I was commissioned to do some research for the local market into what factors were holding back our high street, because there were so many empty shops and it felt like a failing district centre. The place has changed enormously since then. But I worry about gentrification and who spaces serve/does not serve and how sustainable these changes are. This year I’ve been working in Wigan on a town centre project and some similar questions have been coming up for me. Who owns space? Who has a right to be in particular spaces and what kinds of uses are acceptable? How do we make sure access to our town centres and high streets is equitable?

 

OUT looking IN

– What is more important, external perception of a place, or our internal perception?

For me, places are for the people who live and work in them before anyone else. They matter much more to me than external image. If I make work I want it to have integrity and truth from that point of view. Passion shines through though – where I live for example, that pride for Leveshulme that local people have is what outsiders probably take from some of my recent work (the market project contains written reflections by local people. See our zine here)

– What stops people from seeing your place the way you’d like them to?

My neighbourhood is dirty. Litter and fly tipping are a huge problem. If I travel one mile into Stockport this problem doesn’t exist to the same extent (it is a wealthier area, which is also a factor).

IN looking OUT

– How does our locality influence how we think about the world?

Growing up in Wrexham, a monocultural place at the time, I didn’t connect with it because my family were outsiders (‘blow ins’, as my Irish mum would say).  I think I needed to be in a place which was more culturally mixed for things like this to cease to matter and there was a lot more space to be alternative, like different music, be arty etc. I was desperate to leave and had a yearning to travel the world. It took travelling and living abroad for me to realise that the UK is not as awful as I had previously thought and that the grass is not always greener. If you put love into where you live and try to make strong connections, hopefully you will get it back.

– What makes our places similar and what makes them unique?

I feel like the UK has quite a complex web of regional and national identities and local idiosyncrasies – maybe all countries do. I’m interested to learn about the context in Sweden.

– How can crossing borders and partnering with neighbours enhance our local experience?

Travel and learning about other countries has helped me see more clearly the good things which do exist in the UK and what could be done differently. It’s good to hear different perspectives and learn about alternative ways of doing things.

– How does your work challenge these questions?

I think my work often shows the pride people have in where they live but not in a blind way – I want my work always to show nuance and to ask challenging questions. I don’t know what this will look like in Stalybridge but it will include personal narratives of local people and their connection to place, I would expect.

Street Level Photoworks exhibition

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I’m chuffed to be part of the This Separated Isle exhibition at Street Level Photoworks in Glasgow at the moment.

The show features all the portraits from the beautiful book edited by Paul Sng – mine is of Owen Haisley, whose story I covered for Big Issue North.

Owen – who was born and lived for four years in Jamaica – lost his right to remain in the UK after serving a short prison sentence. He had spent over 40 years in the UK, never leaving the country. The result is that he now lives in limbo – unable to work and enjoy the same freedoms that most British citizens enjoy. It’s an outrage.

Thank you to Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert for the installation photo. You can order the book here.

 

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.

 

New term, fresh start and the Making of Us

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School returned last week, which means I’ve had more breathing space over recent days than I’ve had in months. For me too, it feels like a new beginning. This year, amid the chaos of Covid, home-school and grief, I’ve realised a few things. I’ve felt my identity shifting somewhat and have come to terms with the fact that my professional aspirations have changed.

I’ve been a journalist since 2004. Throughout that time it’s been a huge part of my identity, with an unhealthy level of my self-esteem and self-worth wrapped up within it. I think it’s that kind of job to be honest. That’s something I realised for the first time when I took maternity leave – that I wasn’t sure who I was once that part of me was stripped away.

I’ve had two parallel parts of my career since about 2008, when I started taking photos quite seriously and working on personal projects about the kinds of issues I already covered as a writer – regeneration, migration and so on. The more creative part was something mainly for me to be honest, I never really tried to get any of it published in the traditional sense and was quite happy making the work and putting it out there independently. The bit I enjoy most has always been the research: finding people, earning their trust, asking questions and making photos.

I think I expected to always carry on in the same way – writing for the likes of Big Issue North and working on independent projects, albeit hopefully with some grants to help me financially. But I think the pandemic and everything else which has happened in the past 18 months have had an impact on me. I realised I needed to do something different – that I was bored. I’m not bored with the subject matter or the people I meet – I still love all that. I think I’m just ready for a change – I’ve been working in the same way for the same clients since I went freelance in 2006, which is quite a long time. Even thinking about working up and pitching a story gives me an exhaustion headache at this point. It’s a physical feeling.

Even writing this feels a little dangerous… what if I change my mind?! Well, I’m not saying I’ll never take freelance journalism commissions again, I’m just taking a break for the time being. But arguably, I’m not going to be doing anything hugely different than before, just coming at it from a new perspective and with a new, more community-focused approach.

Earlier this year I was part of Crossing Sectors, a professional development programme for artists run by Open Eye Gallery which aimed to help us work in a more socially engaged way. This was like a breath of fresh air for me – if I hadn’t admitted to myself that I was sick of being a freelance journalist at the start, I was by the end. This programme informed the way I put together Levy Lockdown Project – a community effort to document the pandemic and the way it has shaped our lives – and I then went on to receive a micro-commission from Open Eye, which allowed me to use participatory methods to examine the issue of litter. I put in what I considered quite a mad proposal – which would see me make collages using litter – and didn’t expect to be selected. Not long after I was also offered a tailor-made residency as part of a big Historic England project I’d applied for, despite being almost certain I was unqualified. I would never have imagined to have this kind of run of luck at the start of the year, when I was feeling quite demotivated and fed up. Even a recent unsuccessful Arts Council Develop Your Creative Practice application has failed to bring me down.

One of the most exciting things I’m part of at the moment is called the Making of Us, which is another artist development programme, running from the Turnpike in Leigh. For me this feels as if it will build on what I learned with Open Eye. Over the coming months I will be part of a multidisciplinary group of artists who will work together on becoming better socially engaged practitioners and then be paired with organisations to develop a programme which we will deliver to groups of service users. The idea is that what we do is responsive and as socially engaged as possible – rather than us coming in with eight pre-prepared workshops at the start of the programme, we will reflect on their interests and needs and try to work with them to deliver something which works for us all. Workshops are definitely something I am a bit nervous about so this kind of handholding is exactly what I need, and it’s all very exciting. I haven’t felt this enthused for ages – which confirms for me that I have definitely been in a rut and in need of a change.

Here and There Ebook

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I am a terrible businesswoman. A lot of the work I do, I do for myself quite honestly – to satisfy my own curiosity and shine light on particular issues that I care about. I am less good at finding audiences in any meaningful or commercial way and that is normally a bit of an afterthought.

And so it happened with the body of work which almost no one has seen, Here and There.

My friend Ramona, aka Elvira and a collaborator in my Roma project, came up with the idea. By this time, 2018, she was working for a migrant support charity and came up with the idea of situating stories of Roma people within the wider narrative of migration and the issues faced by these communities in the UK.

Why didn’t I use my skills to tell some of these stories, she suggested? Maybe we could then present them to her employers and get them seen.  I think she envisoned  me collecting around eight stories and images, but me being me I took it a bit further. It felt important to try to make it all representative – of gender, sexuality, age and of different push factors. There are asylum seekers and refugees, Roma people and others who moved to the UK as children or adults. By the time I’d finished I had collected 26 stories – although one later withdrew consent.

Once I had them, I wasn’t sure what to do with them. Ramona and I had a meeting with woman from a human rights charity, who loved the work and promised to show it to others in the field, but then nothing happened and first a general election and then Covid took over.

I sent the work to the People’s History Museum in Manchester after learning by chance that they were programming a year’s worth of events around the theme of migration. I didn’t get an exhibition but they later came back to me to ask to use four of these stories within a broader show. They are currently up on the wall but the museum has been closed much of the past year, so we haven’t see it. Hopefully soon.

In the end I’ve just decided to throw it onto the internet in case anyone wants to read the stories. They don’t tell us much in the grand scheme of things – they just humanise a subject so often talked about in terms of numbers. Behind every number is a person with a story. That’s really all there is to say.

The Ebook can be viewed free of charge here.

 

Here and There: Lidia

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Following on from yesterday’s post about the four images and texts of mine which will be on show at People’s History Museum, I thought I’d start sharing the rest of that project, Here and There.

Here’s Lidia, who I think was one of the first people I photographed and interviewed for this series:

 

“When I was younger I made a lot of mistakes. I did not listen to my parents and spent my evenings out on the streets with my friends.

“My parents – who are Pentecostal Christians – didn’t let me go to discos but I would still go. They don’t drink or smoke but I did. I was supposed to see the difference between my parents and the people on the street but I was following the wrong example.

“If God had allowed me to carry on like that, maybe I would not be here now. Now it’s finished. God has given me a blessing – a child. I believe we have to say thank you to Him every day. If I make a mistake I feel a pain in my heart.

“My brother is in Africa at the moment, working to take the word of God as far as possible. Someone came to our church one Sunday to talk about the work Roma people like us are doing over there. They are building houses for people and giving tribal communities clothes to wear.

“My brother was very touched by their stories and asked if he could go too. My entire family helped him out – we helped him with the cost of his flights and we collected 20kg of clothing for him to take to the people there.

“They teach them how to eat with a spoon, how to get dressed and how to sing Romanian songs.”

 

People’s History Museum – #Welcome? exhibition

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It feels like a lifetime ago, but in 2018 and 2019 I spent some time on a self-initiated series of interviews and anonymous portraits which so far haven’t seen the light of day. The work was initiated by my friend Ramona – with whom I made a book in 2011.

Elvira and Me was my MA major project and told of the tensions which existed for Ramona – a Romani woman who moved to the UK from Romania – in her quest to pursue a career while also fulfilling her traditional wife/mother/daughter roles.

Ramona was by then working as a community organiser for a migrant support charity and thought it would be interesting to situate the stories of Romani people alongside those of other people who had migrated to the UK. Her suggestion was to do a handful of these vignettes – photos running alongside first person stories.

But me being me, I took the idea quite a bit further and ended up gathering 25 stories, featuring the words of migrants from across the world. Well, actually I collected 26 but one participant later withdrew his consent. The stories include people who moved here as children, individuals who came here seeking sanctuary and stories from people who moved later in life. The reason the portraits are all shot from behind is because there are asylum seekers among the stories – and they are not comfortable being identified. It made sense to photograph everyone in the same way.

One thing I have realised about myself over the past decade or more of doing so-called ‘personal projects’ on subjects I feel are important (and often doing them in ways that turn out to be basically unpublishable) is that I love making connections, talking to people and gathering stories. What I am very weak at is disseminating what I’ve made.

These stories have pretty much sat on my computer since 2019. I made a little dummy book but did little with it. But one of the few things I did was submit it to Manchester’s People’s History Museum, when I heard they were planning to programme their 2020 content around the theme of migration. The work was not selected as an exhibition in and of itself, but the curator later got back to me and asked to use four of the stories as part of some broader programming.

This was all very exciting. We had a meeting about it and then Covid arrived and it all went incredibly quiet. Until recently – after a hiatus of about seven or eight months the museum started putting together its #Welcome? exhibition. Sadly it’s not open at the moment, as Manchester is in Tier 3 and galleries and museums are shut. But once they can, I’ll be going to see the work, which is on until October 2021.

I think now is probably the time to start sharing some of these stories, so watch this space.