PHOTOGRAPHY AND FILM

With Young Roots in Croydon

Autumn 2024

We are delighted to be delivering a series of eight psychosocial art workshops with @weareyoungroots in the new setting of Croydon town centre in south London. The weekly youth club is used largely by young men living in Home Office hotel accommodation in the surrounding area who access English classes, music groups, games and various forms of support.

Co-delivered weekly by Thomas Etheridge with other members of our freelance team of artists and art therapists, our focus is on photography and film in a shared space alongside English classes, a wall of empty picture frames visibly affirming for us the potential of the space and project.

In our first week a couple of thermal cameras acted as an immediate and helpful linking object. Small domestic details, portraits and self-portraits in long strips were laid out on the tablecloth map, revealing a network of connections across the room where some relationships and familiarity are already present. This week, our collection of old black and white photographs started to be explored for tracing, reworking and collage. A roundabout in Yorkshire reminded a young person of a roundabout in Damascus; other scenes were cut up and then skilfully woven together - new perspectives and ways of looking at things, and possibilities.