photography | HaSS Research Impact

Here Daniel Mallo, Abigail Schoneboom and Armelle Tardiveau tell us about the ongoing work on their recent ESRC IAA funded project based in Scotswood Natural Community Garden.

Scotswood Natural Community Garden (SNCG), an independent charity, is located in Newcastle upon Tyne in a neighbourhood ranked in the highest 10% for income, health, employment, education and training deprivation in the UK. SNCG is the only natural green space in the area and one of very few organisations in the North East offering nature-based interventions for disadvantaged people. Established in 1995 and designed by the local community, the 2.5-acre garden includes wildflower meadows, forests, woodland, ponds and fruit and vegetable gardens. Last year over 5000 people participated in the garden’s activities or visited the garden.

This ESRC IAA funded project aims to engage garden users and stakeholders (volunteers, youth groups, staff, trustees, school staff and local people) in a participatory design and research process that explores the value of SCNG to its key users, working towards a shared vision for the future of the garden, developing a vision for a new facility that will expand the SCNG’s highly valued programme. The project team comprises architects Armelle Tardiveau and Daniel Mallo, sociologist/ethnographer Abigail Schoneboom, and research assistant Sophie Baldwin.

During May and June this year, SCNG’s volunteers, youth group members, staff and trustees have been busy exploring the meanings and value that attach to this wonderful community garden, nestled in one of Newcastle Upon Tyne’s most deprived neighbourhoods. With the goal of envisioning a new structure that will better serve users of this popular community resource, participants have explored the garden through sensory research and model-making, creating a richly textured portrait and a set of creative ideas that will inform the future development of the space.

In phase one, we worked with an inviting map created by research assistant Sophie, which highlights the garden’s spatial richness created by a diverse biodiversity and enchanting layout. Having marked our favourite spots on the map, we captured through pinhole camera photographs these special places in the garden. Pinhole photography requires a very simple camera but taking a single photo can take up to half an hour of exposure! For us, this was a wonderful way to immerse ourselves in the garden and spend quality time smelling, listening to, touching and noting down on a map our feelings about these treasured locations. Alongside the photos and notes, we collected objects (such as dandelion leaves, pieces of string from the den-building area, and a blue-green fragment of a bird’s egg) and made sketches and rubbings. Together, these create a rich interpretation of what the garden means to its users. Using the tool shed as a darkroom, we ended each workshop by developing the photos and watching the images reveal themselves.

The silvery, poetic photos created in these first workshops capture something magical about the garden, encouraging us to dream and imagine possibilities. This photograph was taken by a garden volunteer.

In phase two, we built models and framed aspects of the garden, thinking about ways to envisage a new facility with some of the values and sensory qualities we had highlighted in phase one. Working with scaled wooden blocks and a range of materials from felt to scouring pads to evoke atmosphere, we created models that explored possibilities such as opening the indoors into the outdoors or using the vertical space to create a viewing platform. During the modeling activity, we also worked in pairs to ‘frame’ and photograph aspects of the garden that might inform views from the new structure. We imagined being indoor and looking onto the reflective qualities of water or witnessing edibles growing and changing. We had a lot of fun (and a few challenges) carrying the heavy wood and hessian frame through the winding, narrow paths of the garden.

A tactile model shows the different textures of the garden

The garden is home to many great stories and memories, and much healing – the hum of the traffic on the nearby road, overlaid by birdsong and the rustling of the wind in the trees, is a welcome reminder of just how precious this place is. Themes that have emerged from our work together so far include the importance of building or growing something yourself, feeling protected and secure but out in the fresh air, and being connected to other people and the rhythms of nature. Also space overlaps and conflicts between the many groups of users enjoying the facility became apparent with its related ad-hoc but inventive approach to storage catering for all.

Our customised wheelbarrow holding the materials for the workshop

We have already displayed some of or initial findings and photos at SNCG. Our next step, over the coming weeks, is to materialise and enact some of the ideas with the input of the volunteers. These might be in the form of furniture or spatial adaptations that we will invite visitors to inhabit. This temporary and playful engagement, we hope, will move us further towards a design proposal for a new facility that grows out of the vibrant imaginations and experience of those who use it most and know it best.

How can existing stereotypes relating to age and gender be positively challenged? Here Professor Karen Ross explains how her latest ESRC IAA funded project engaged the whole community in challenging traditional representations of women in the media.

I have been researching the relationship between gender and media for more than 20 years and as I was presenting the findings from my latest study last year I thought, hang on, we know all this, we have known all this for years, about the marginalisation and invisibilising (yes, I have just made that up but it absolutely fits my point) of women from the mediated public sphere, why not do something about it?! So the idea for a community engagement project where older women would be visible and vocal was born.

The ESRC IAA funded project has had three aspects, digital storytelling, photography and public event. I began by designing a short statement of my ambitions for the project and asking for participants among local women who identified with being ‘older’. I sent the statement to a variety of community projects, networks of older people, organisations working with and for older people and it was further cascaded via a variety of different friendship groups, personal contacts and word of mouth. In the end, 16 women took part in the first phase (digital story-telling) and I ran three workshops in November and December 2016, facilitated by the brilliant Alex Henry and her team at Curiosity Creative. The resulting digital stories can be found here.

Fifteen of those women then agreed to take part in the second part of the project which was to be photographed at a place which either had a special meaning for them or else somehow ‘represented’ who they are. The last phase of the project was a public engagement activity which started life as a catwalk show but eventually became a Flashmob/pop-up choir, such is the way of consultation. This was a spectacularly successful event which took place on International Women’s Day, with groups of students from Newcastle University, Heaton Manor School, Gosforth Academy and Gateshead College covering the event from all angles, interviewing participants and shoppers and doing a brilliant job on social media. See here for a glimpse of what we got up to. At a conservative estimate, around 70 local women took part in the event and I have received some heartfelt thanks from participants for whom the event was the first time they said they felt part of something important.

For someone who likes to be in control, working with members of the public is a highly rewarding but very challenging enterprise because they can be unruly, unpredictable and unreliable as well as brilliant, bold and brave. But the plus point of actually doing something meaningful in the lives of people other than one’s own academic peers and the few random PhD students who together comprise the handful of folks who will ever read our scholarly exegesis, entirely overshadows the small irritations of poor time-keeping and loss of attention.

Community Choir performance as Grainger Market

Community Choir performance at Grainger Market, Newcastle

The photographic exhibition is up on the first floor of the City Library, from 9-22 March, so do go along and catch it if you can. The photos on display, taken by Donna-Lisa Healy, show the strength, resilience and humour of women and are accompanied by their digital stories which can be heard as the visitor walks around the exhibition. They were also displayed on the big screen at the top of Northumberland Street on International Women’s Day and the women who saw themselves in giant form were both bemused and tickled pink: I hope you are too.

HaSS Research Impact

Research Impact from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (HaSS), Newcastle University

Tag Archives: photography

Scotswood Natural Community Garden: a sensory exploration for the co-production of a new facility

NOT Acting Our Age: Older Women Challenging Stereotypes and Celebrating Life