In a fast-paced and ever increasingly detached digital world, a world in which face to screen communication has seemingly replaced face to face interaction there is a growing and real need to reconnect with ourselves, each other and the world around us. That need is greatly compounded for people on the margins, struggling for purpose and meaning with seemingly no means of expression and their words drowned out without audience. This community facing and inclusive project The Camera Work, is a therapeutic photography project using traditional film cameras and the analogue creative process and is designed to specifically mitigate these issues through participatory visual storytelling. The Camera Work will embrace the therapeutic aspects of creativity through a series of 6 interdependent therapeutic photography workshops and weekly photographic assignments with people to experience who would otherwise miss out for economic reasons beyond their control.

What we'll deliver:

• 6 Interdependent Therapeutic Photography Workshops
• Facilitate Creative Skills Building
• Facilitate Group Public Exhibition

Why it's a great idea:

There's a unique experience that comes with traditional analogue photography. It’s purposefully slow, engaging and accessible for anyone to discover a creative approach to overcome obstacles in our way. The Camera Work helps people refocus, look again at the familiar and banal and make them new and interesting, discover a creative self and unlock hidden potential. In exploring the tactile and deliberate nature of analogue photography participants learn how to use cameras as tools to build skills. Skills that empower, instil confidence, self exploration, enrichment and reflection that lead to collaboration and creating a common language through making images and sharing story. It's a process where people feel they belong as they're encouraged to be experts, people can feel free to play, create, make mistakes and have fun in a non judgmental, non clinical and non competitive manner. Outcomes are individually led and are the results of insight and are unlimited and transformative

Steps to get it done:

• Final Exhibition

The Camera Work will benefit both individuals and communities alike in various ways. A particular focus is to work with communities that might be overlooked and left out of traditional creative projects and individuals within them that are automatically ‘deselected’ through circumstance. No one is ‘left behind’ on a Camera Work project, they are open to all so on a community level the projects cultivate ideas around inclusivity and communicating of diversity between people. We also engage, collaborate ad communicate with community for as people come together to create work and explore together they form stronger, more cohesive connections to one another through a shared experience. As The Camera Work is based in the physical world, the results are physical too. These results, exhibited photographs, can be used as a community archive as well as a social and cultural document. A document that can create in itself a sense of community identity, empowerment and a feeling of belonging.