The course activities this week have focused on completion of the portfolio, development of a website and consolidation of social media presence. I have made progress on all of these, but the major personal focus has been on development of networks for my project and initiation of image making (unfortunately, too late for my portfolio). I’ll post in more detail in the project development section of the CRJ as things develop, but to summarise actions this week:
Thames Ward Community Project. Planning with project lead about the following: photos of all community events by way of a community archive; photos of local spaces – especially with an environmental and health focus; photos that show the challenges to the local area – pollution, litter, potholes etc. as a prompt for inclusive growth/sustainable development: help with social media campaigns and synergies/collective action with citizen action groups.
JustSpace. Planning with Lesley from the Bartlett MSc for a social media campaign to run over 6 months focusing on 6 stories exemplifying different aspects of community engagement with the London Plan. Contact made with JustSpace communications lead. Lesley to draft proposal. Will involve going out to collect narratives and take photos.
Bengali International. In contact with leadership via Newham Partnership for Complementary Education, who have proposed the following around the theme ‘Growing up Bilingual’: (i) photos of the school in action, (ii) photos at family homes and in the community where the pupils are talking, reading, writing in Bengali directly with family and community members.
Loneliness and Social Isolation in Mental Health network. Launch event on Monday 3rd December at Friends House. This is a cross-disciplinary UKRI funded network seeking to develop links between people from different disciplines (including psychology, cognitive neuroscience, sociology, the arts, geography, public mental health, architecture, digital design and human-computer interaction) working on aspects of social isolation and mental health.
Together with the ESRC Urban Displacement project (on six London estates), this probably secures a critical mass of photographic work around the theme of social infrastructure, community and urban regeneration. The development of my own website and a range of focused social media campaigns tie in the development of my project neatly with the themes of this module. I’m going to focus on this over the coming weeks, once my portfolio is submitted.