Authoring Our Own Stories: Year Two - Explores issues of Community, Connection and Belonging

In 2023 we recruited six art students from Harris Academy Girls East Dulwich (HAGED), to become peer researchers. We did self-portraits in our first session and shared questions we wanted to explore together about civic identity.  The group was keen to learn more about how we were going to use art practices to build our research projects. We wanted to highlight the skills and experience each group member already had and could contribute to Authoring Our Own Stories.

We did our peer training in the art studio at HAGED with the support of the Head of Art, Clare Stanhope. Group Photo l to R Yezi, Ling, Camron, Natasha, Sandra, Moshood and Zi

We have drawn a lot of knowledge from the group’s lived experience throughout the development of this work. For example, in the early stages of the peer training, the Young Leaders researched the spaces and places in their local area where they felt safe and welcomed and others where they were left feeling very conscious of their age, ethnicity and gender.

The outline for a Heat Map of how the Young Leaders experience their Civic identity in spaces and places in Southwark. ‘Tops and Pants’ is one of the evaluation tools we used to help the peer researchers self-assess their development.

 As our time has progressed together, we have experimented with different materials such as collaging, clay and building bricks and different crafts such as origami, to present research questions.

In July, the Young Leaders were tasked with putting together their own research project using the skills and tools they had developed through their training. We met at Guildhall to pull our ideas together and form a workshop plan for the focus groups we would be visiting in August.  Below are images of the group working through the questions that they wanted to ask in the focus groups and then developing activities to present them.

We used the symbol of the boat to represent identity, as historically London has been a city made up of diverse communities who have travelled to settle there…

Delivering Our Research Projects in the Summer of 2023

The Young Leaders visited seven youth projects over the summer to deliver their research projects. Feedback from the participants included sharing that using practical activities to ask the research questions maintained their engagement. The young men at Woodpecker Youth Club told us that they really enjoyed using building bricks, in particular to explore the research questions.

We are grateful to Yuk-Lin Tan, who welcomed us to Camden Chinese Community Centre Over Half-Term

Young Leaders will be invited  to use an art-form of personal interest to create a visual analysis of the focus groups. They will be guided to develop their ideas with artist, Drew Sinclair. Storyboard template by Drew Sinclair©.

Over the Autumn the Young Leaders will be sharing their initial observations from the focus groups through creating individual storyboards. We will then do a Thematic Analysis of the work, coding the data and looking for emerging themes. Once this process is complete the group will decide what creative medium, they want to use to interpret the data they have generated and what key issues they want to share from their work with decision-makers.