SPOKEN PICTURES
ONLINE PROJECT AND EXHIBITION
Spoken Pictures is an online participatory photography project run during the second lockdown in the Autumn. It has given our refugee friends an opportunity to be creative, to socialise and share their stories while also keeping their minds busy.
“The project helped me for my mental health recovery and also brought up my sense of my culture as I blended my African culture with Western fashion. I like to recommend anyone to do it”
For the past 8 weeks, we have been exploring ideas behind the meaning of photography, and how our refugee friends can communicate their stories to an audience. In normal times, there would be a large exhibition showcasing all our friends’ work, celebrating their personal journey on the programme. This year has been very different and we’ve collaborated with Fotosynthesis to design this exhibition and a webinar event for the Jesuit Refugee Service.
Our refugee friends have contributed so much to the project with a wealth of different themes: from personal objects, insights into their lives, landscape photography, lockdown activities, and documentation of their home culture. During the sessions, many refugee friends have stated how the project has helped contribute to their positive mental wellbeing. Many friends have shared how the project has been a way to voice the small positives of lockdown life, through the purposeful work of taking photographs when restrictions were semi-relaxed.
It has been a tough year for all refugee friends who took part in the project, but the engaging and heartfelt stories have been a shining light throughout these difficult times. Through weekly online workshops and one-to-one extra support, we have gathered these amazing, inspired, and inspiring stories.
We have been working. Together since our first project in 2012, where we exhibited the stories of our friends at the European Parliament in Brussels and then Refugee Voices in 2014.
©Sean/JRS/2021
©Sean/JRS/2021
“I want to give hope to people in society. To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong”
©T/JRS/2021
©JO/JRS/2021