We went to The Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club last night to an event organised by the photography students and their tutors, to see the photos and read ‘Glow’. I documented the night in a film. We were really impressed by the work on show and the open attitudes of the students.
Several students chose to interpret the text and I interviewed one of them, about her responses to the poem and how it inspired the pictures. It was interesting that her interpretation bought up themes that the writer hadn't thought of.
I have been thinking a lot about creative collaboration recently (not surprisingly!) so I think it’s great that the first year photography students on this course are being encouraged to respond to, collaborate with and investigate other artforms from the very start of their course. I think that this is another good example for our good learning examples file.
It occurs to me, that so often once someone becomes a little successful in their artform that they seem to focus in tightly on that, becoming very protective of it, and lose interest in working with artists in other disciplines which is detrimental, so teaching people to collaborate from the start is a really good thing.
Working with artists in other fields has always been what excites me, to develop my own practice and to hopefully stimulate other’s thinking too. Perhaps this is because my primary focus has been writing for the theatre, and I’ve been involved in a very hands-on way with producing my plays, so I have always been aware of cross-disciplinary working/thinking.
The brief for the photography students' project was, ‘Seeing what you say’, and the photographers had to respond to pre-existing writing. A further, and more exciting, step would have been to create some new work together, to see what the cross-fertilisation would bring up.
I also really enjoyed not being the one whose work was being read, and having a chance to document the evening on video instead! I must get a better video camera though...
