CULTURE SHIFTS #1
Life Beyond Diagnosis Tadhg Devlin SURF Dementia group
Welcome to the Culture Shifts brochure series Culture Shifts is a socially engaged photography programme, working with 11 national and international photographers embedded in communities across 7 areas of Liverpool City Region. The project seeks to support communities to explore their stories in a way that is meaningful to them.
graphic image, and look at the various strands of collaborative practice each photographer and the medium itself can bring to the work. What happens when we move away from the voice of a single image-maker to that of the collective voice, co-creating, co-narrating and co-curating their own photo story?
Collaborating with photographers, communities have co-authored a series of photo stories: sequences of images that reflect on their identity, interests and lives. Collectively we hope these photo stories will inspire, surprise or challenge people, through exhibitions, an open online platform (www.photostories.org.uk) and within each of our specially designed Culture Shifts brochures.
Through Culture Shifts, photographers and communities have come together to curate their own messages and broadcast them in a way that is inclusive, collaborative and representative. This is the foundation of socially engaged photography. We are delighted to share both the outcomes and the process of each photographer and community.
Together, as communities, commissioners and photographers, we aim to explore the role of photography as a tool for expression and a platform to challenge stereotypes of localised identities. Each community collaborated with a different photographer, and although throughout the course of the programme some themes emerged time and time again, each project was distinct in its approach to working and in the final work created.
Culture Shifts has only been made possible through the collaborative approach to partnership commissioning and delivery and we would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the local authority venues, cultural, community and health sector partners across the region who made the project a reality. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank our core funders for the programme, Arts Council England, for our strategic touring funding support.
Culture Shifts aimed to challenge questions around authorship in the photo-
Culture Shifts Creative Producer Liz Wewiora
CULTURE SHIFTS #1
Life Beyond Diagnosis
A collaboration between Tadhg Devlin and the SURF Dementia group with Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust Liverpool based photographer Tadhg Devlin worked in collaboration with the Dementia SURF (Service User Reference Forum) group, supported by Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust. The group has a strong track record as ambassadors for those living with early on-set dementia. A number of the group worked closely with Devlin to create photo stories, which break the stigma associated with dementia, and reflect their lives as individuals, not as a condition.
The images created represent an honest and personal perspective of how each SURF member discovered they had the condition, how it individually affects their physical and emotional navigation of the everyday, and their resilient approach to their future. With over 850,000 living with Dementia in the UK, and numbers set to rise, the project acts as timely opportunity to use photography as a tool for raising awareness about the condition. In November 2016, the project took over the TATE Exchange space in TATE Liverpool. The best exchange is seeing the
“As a medical doctor, my knowledge about dementia is … scientific, I would say. Visiting the exhibition space gave me a new perspective, more emotional” Visitor (Doctor) at TATE Exchange showcase
world through my eyes was presented as an installation of photographic works and animated with a host of events led by both the health and cultural partners and the SURF members themselves. The events aimed to open up dialogue around Arts and Health and raise awareness around dementia in a creative and engaging way. The project is also presented as a newspaper, entitled Life Beyond Diagnosis, which acts as an artwork in its own right as you can pull the pages apart and create your own exhibition for wall display. The newspaper also acts an alternative piece of interpretation about living with dementia and the individual stories of the SURF
“I look at the photograph, and I think, this is me, this is completely me, everything summed up about my experience� Participant in Life Beyond Diagnosis
group members. The ability to distribute the work on mass as an informative newspaper was a key aim of the SURF group, who continue to present and promote the newspaper at a number of public events and conferences. Both the newspaper and pop-up exhibitions of the photographic work have been further exhibited across regional library services, supported through the Arts in Libraries programme, as well as the Museum of Liverpool and a number of health centres and university buildings.
Photostories
“4 billion photographs per day are uploaded onto social media. Photography is now as important as text or verbal communication in the stories we tell about our lives.” Sarah Fisher, Executive Director, Open Eye Gallery
Culture Shifts doesn’t end here. Contributing to the project is open to all through PhotoStories, our new online showcasing platform: photostories.org.uk. Photostories showcases the result of our Culture Shifts collaborative photography projects, but the platform is also open to anyone. There are resources on the site to help you think about the way you capture, select and curate your own digital exhibition of images. Everyone is invited to upload photo stories - sequences of photos - that reflect on the people, places and communities that make up your experience of the world. More and more, we are using photography to communicate to each other. But just like verbal or written language, we must use photography to communicate responsibly and effectively. To join in, get a free PhotoStories account. photostories.org.uk
Partners
#cultureshifts photostories.org.uk