Really Engaging….
Artistic Director Jem Wall, reflects on engaging participants for Hydrocracker’s BEFORE THE FLAME GOES OUT videos for ARTS/DATA/HEALTH’s ‘104 days later’
In June 2020, Hydrocracker asked by ART/DATA/HEALTH to work with them on their Tell Us Your Story project which collected stories from residents of our home town Brighton & Hove about how the pandemic had affected them physically, mentally, financially and any support they had accessed.
Our idea was to engage with at least ten local residents to make short user-generated videos in which, before the flame of a long match burnt out, participants would talk about what they wanted to be remembered from the lockdown caused by Covid-19. We wanted to capture a range of experiences so set about engaging a diverse group of people in terms of age, ethnicity, gender and background with at least a third coming from Brighton’s Whitehawk estate - an area that was part of my Food Bank work.
The videos would be added to the data and stories ART/DATA/HEALTH were collecting and be combined with other types of data, such as national statistics, by the local data designer and artist Caroline Beavon to create an online story that everyone could access. Hydrocracker would also make us of them for its BEFORE THE FLAME GOES OUT film - giving participants two creative outlets from which to tell their stories.
Finding and recruiting a genuinely diverse group of participants who have had little or no previous engagement with an arts project is demanding - I knew that from the start. As a local company we have built up good networks with whom we could work for such a project so we knew we reach people but I still underestimated how much time it would take to turn interest in the idea into a finished video of sufficient quality. The assumption was most people would self-tape after the project was explained to them and that I would simply collect the end result. The reality, of course, was different - not least because I had little filming experience - something confirmed immediately after a couple of pilot attempts with willing friends.
I quickly realised that every filming session needed to be carefully arranged in each participant’s house and in accordance with social distancing. Although we were going for a “DIY aesthetic” that still meant a consideration of different lighting and sound in each set up to get videos of sufficient quality.
But more significant than the technical and logistical demands was the time invested to build up relationship with each participant and boost their confidence so they felt able to make the leap of being filmed - striking the match and speaking from the heart about how they felt and what they wanted.
And because the stakes were higher for the participants than expected, their desire to debrief the experience afterwards was also significant. What we thought might be 30-minute interactions often became 2 or 3 hours as participants opened up and shared stories, insights and views. To reach our target of x3 participants who were sheltering, x3 from diverse ethnic backgrounds, x6 Whitehawk residents, x2 who identified as LGBT and x1 Wheelchair user with a collective age range 22 to 75 plus a good gender balance we ended up approaching and engaging in conversation with 33 people – 3 times the final number of actual participants.
However, the benefits of this investment of time and care have led to rich and surprising outcomes. The content of the videos was more varied, personal and strongly felt than we might have dared hope, and easily overcame our fear that they might be generalised, bland and tame. The technical quality of framing, light and sound even within a DIY Aesthetic was good and consistent.
The biggest and most surprising gain has been the extent of the participants’ engagement with “their” films. We expected there to be some interest in participants seeing excerpts of their contribution in the finished films but underestimated their engagement with their own and others work.
This has led to Hydrocracker to draw up plans to share all the Brighton participant videos in a community event in partnership with the Wellsbourne Clinic in Whitehawk (where 6 of the participants come from).
When this might happen I don’t know, neither do I know at this stage how our BEFORE THE FLAME GOES OUT film will turn out, but I am excited for both - as I hope the participants are.
Jem Wall December 2020