Today I saw that LAMDA (London Acadamy of Music and Dramatic Art) has installed QR codes around the school, where students and staff can report microaggressions that they experience in an anonymous way.
I think that something similar could be a viable intervention for my project when we are back on campus, and would be a way of my stakeholders talking about their experiences truly anonymously. Whilst my project is not about microaggressions as such, I think it would be useful to gather data around events that happen on campus that make my stakeholders feel uncomfortable or inferior to their peers. I especially like how LAMDA have asked the people filling this form in to say what they would like to be done about it. If I do a similar intervention then I think it would be interesting to see what my stakeholders would like to see from UAL in terms of things changing or just simply support. An intervention of this sort could also educate universities on why more support for working class students is needed.
I think another good thing about this prospective intervention is that if I asked the gender of the person clicking on the QR code, it would allow me to collect data that is split into genders, which so far has been impossible to find in regards to UAL. It would also allow me to see if one gender is reporting more than another and this could influence my research question.
Richard talked about learning ecologies in class and how we should bring our whole selves to our projects. I realised that I was going about my research all wrong. I was focusing on the wrong things and trying to change something that didn’t have my whole self in. So I needed to change. Quickly.
I wrote notes about the things I truly care about, and then I asked myself “Felicity, why did you apply to MAAI?”
I went back and read my personal statement/study proposal from when I applied to this course. Admittedly I wrote it at 7am when I was half asleep so there are a couple of spelling mistakes (I only noticed them after I submitted it) but I think writing it so early in the day allowed my true thoughts to come out without censoring myself or trying to appear impressive. I wrote about how people from lower socio-economic backgrounds struggle to make their way in the creative industries, and how they don’t feel that they have permission to express their creativity. I come from this background, so I know exactly what this feels like. And honestly, I feel like a fish out of water at CSM most of the time. There is no visible support for people who are here because they worked their butt off and gave up a lot of things to be able to even think about affording their course.
This is what, and who, I care about.
I care about the creative industries truly being inclusive, and I care about anyone being able to have a creative career, no matter where they come from or how they are perceived by others. 16% of people in the creative industries come from working class backgrounds, compared to 29% across all occupations. 13% difference doesn’t sound like a lot of people but it equates to thousands of people. Thousands of people who are stuck doing jobs they hate instead of doing what makes them happy. Is it fair to deprive people of what could be a wildly successful career just because of where they were born? Of course not.
Freedom.
It’s all about freedom.
And if I can help even one person feel more free, then I consider that a success.
So having said all that, my new question is…
“How can arts universities better support female students from working class backgrounds?”
The Sustainable Darkroom is a London based initiative run by artists to equip photographers with the tools needed to develop an environmentally friendly darkroom practice. It was founded by Hannah Fletcher and is now run by her alongside Ed Carr and Alice Cazenave. It takes the form of publications, workshops, residencies, symposiums and training sessions, working alongside scientists and experts.
On their website it says that they “intend to lead a movement in challenging the environmental impact and sustainability of darkroom practices.”. This sentence made me consider the effect of darkrooms in a way that I had never thought about before. Analogue photography is often presented as kinder to the environment than digital photography but it just has a different impact on the planet.
I find the multidisciplinary approach to this intervention inspirational. I like how there are many different ways that they aim to educate photographers about how they can still use darkrooms but in an environmentally friendly way. I also appreciate the fact that this intervention was created in collaboration with scientists, as I think sometimes it’s easier to believe things when an expert is involved, especially when it comes to science or things that are hard to digest.
I also find it interesting that The Sustainable Darkroom has its own manifesto. I think outlining their aims, and how they are going to try to accomplish them is very successful, and something that I would consider doing for my own project. Writing down their aims and their purpose sets out very clearly what they are trying to do without having to read through a lot of materials trying to work it out for yourself. This makes their website very user friendly and easy to navigate, as well as not allowing any ambiguity about their purpose and goals.
When Hannah appeared on the Photo Ethics podcast she spoke about wanting to create a ‘holistic ecosystem within photography’. I find holistic a slightly scary term because I don’t fully understand it, especially not in this context. However I like the idea of creating a new ecosystem within an already existing and flourishing system. I also like this phrase because it implies that the photography industry is alive and changeable. This makes me hopeful for my project and that change is possible.
In January 2020, two months before the pandemic hit, Vogue Italia published an issue of their magazine, in which they produced no new photography. They did this to draw attention to the vast number of resources that just one issue of their magazine uses :
One hundred and fifty people involved.
About twenty flights and a dozen or so train journeys.
Forty cars on standby.
Sixty international deliveries.
Lights switched on for at least ten hours non-stop, partly powered by gasoline-fueled generators.
Food waste from the catering services.
Plastic to wrap the garments.
Electricity to recharge phones, cameras
I’m not great with numbers but even I can work out that this is a lot, especially when you consider that there are 26 different editions of Vogue monthly, and around 80 mainstream fashion magazines globally per month.
I think this intervention was partially successful – it worked because it drew attention to how wasteful editorial shoots can be and the impact that they have on the planet. It allowed the industry and consumers to see that is actually possible to produce an issue of a magazine without new photographs. I think another success from this intervention was that artists were showcased on a Vogue front cover, which is a big deal. It allowed their art to be seen by people who maybe would never have seen it otherwise.
However fashion needs photography so this was never going to be sustainable going forwards. I think this worked as a one off intervention but there is not obvious path forwards from it. Nowhere did they state their next steps, apart from saying that their packaging was now recyclable.
Another problem I have with this intervention is that it seemed performative – everything went back to normal the next month. So in actuality, Vogue Italia drew attention to something that people had previously been blissfully unaware of. This was now something that their readers knew about. Whereas before they might have speculated about how many flights were taken per issue, now they had a concrete number to think about. I am curious as to whether drawing attention to this impacted the number of subscribers to their magazine in any way. Vogue subscribers are at an all time high but would there have been more without drawing attention to this issue?
If an intervention occurs and no changes occur because of it, what was the point to creating the intervention in the first place. I think it would have been interesting for Vogue Italia to publish their findings from creating this issue – did they receive positive/negative social media comments? Was there criticism within the fashion industry? Did they get praised? How did the photographers who would normally have been used feel? The whole purpose to an intervention is to change something, and analyse the data from doing so. Maybe they did this internally, but I wish they would have shared this with the general public/
