BOSTIN NEWS: PORTRAIT OF A PLACE
“I couldn’t have predicted any of the work that was made. Some people wrote poems, some made animations, some people read other people’s poems - by the nature of having many people working together, we were all responding to each other and that was a unique experience.” Artist Sarah Taylor Silverwood was delighted and surprised by the wonderful outcomes of A Portrait Of A Place.
This inclusive and inventive poetry and animation project consisted of a series of online writing workshops with poet and playwright Nafeesa Hamid and further online animation workshops with Sarah to bring the poems to life in an animated film. Sarah thought that this was a particularly good mix of mediums as animation in itself is very open to collaboration; being able to divide jobs between different people, it can also be very experimental which parallels the very nature of poetry.
This project began in the Winter of 2021 and so the artists decided to deliver the whole project online and make it fully digital in order for as many people as possible to take part. Sarah explains that the animation side of things was always intended to be digital in any case, so responding to the immediate nature of the pandemic and restrictions at that time seemed to be an obvious factor in planning the workshops. Inclusivity, community and accessibility were cornerstones of Dudley Creates and Sarah and Nafeesa shared these common values. Sarah explains that “each workshop was designed to be suitable for someone who had never written a poem or made an animation before. Nafeesa devised a series of exercises to help people get down thoughts, feelings and memories quickly which we could then work with as our raw material.”
Participant Steve praises Nafeesa’s skill in delivering the poetry workshops in a fun, easy and accessible way. Setting micro exercises and inviting folks to share when they felt comfortable to do so. Steve explains
“We were prompted to think of a place, any place in Dudley and just jot a few things down and as the time goes on it just sparks all these memories. Sharing and hearing other people’s ideas really helped all of us too”. From never writing a poem before the project Steve is now a published poet! “I sent my final poem to everyone to have a look at it, I was really proud! I’ve carried on writing poems since and even had one included in a local magazine!”
He recalls how the workshops helped him through a particularly tough time.
“I’d actually got Covid at the time of the animation workshop, so I was just stuck in my room on my own and at that point, I was just ready to jump on anything that came along that would get me using my brain.”
Sarah adopted a very DIY approach to the animation workshops, sharing techniques and processes that could be done easily at home with very little equipment. During his isolation due to Covid Steve spent many hours creating drawings by hand to animate his poem. A process he feels significantly bolstered his sense of self-worth.
“When I watched my video for the first time I just thought, ‘Oh my god, I’ve created that’, to me, it looked really professional and I just thought I’ve written this poem that people might like, or at the very least relate to, and then there’s this really good, professional video of it now too. I just went from sitting on my own in my bedroom to knocking out a pretty professional piece of work. All the support we got throughout was just amazing.”
Sarah shares that her own creative practice was also changed through the delivery of A Portrait Of A Place:
“I like to see things visually, and Nafeesa’s process included getting us to cut up poems. This editing process made me think about writing differently. Also by slowing down and working through some very analogue animation setups, it allowed you to keep surprising yourself with what was created.”
The artists both learnt a lot about Dudley through the work of the participants:
“I thought we might focus on Dudley in the present day, but actually, the process of writing allowed us to talk about memories of the place. People brought up things like the feeling of being a child at the zoo or the walk to school.”
The highlight of the project for Sarah was seeing the group reading their poetry aloud for the first time. The growing confidence of members of the group led to the culmination of A Portrait Of A Place which was an online community screening of the fantastic short film. On reflection, Sarah observes: “It was great to have the belief in our idea (from Dudley Creates), that we could make something so exciting when we weren’t totally sure what would happen when we brought these different disciplines together!”
Written by Laura Dicken