Hand in Hand - part 1
A blog by Nicky Arscott exploring Hand in hand - a community project co-produced by Oriel Davies Gallery and Syrian and Afghani families living in Newtown and surrounding areas.
Our first Hand in Hand session was held during Eid, as families and friends gathered to celebrate the end of Ramadan. With the Oriel Davies between exhibitions, its empty rooms gradually filled with people and music and the aroma of delicious food. Soon we were joined by classmates and teachers from a local primary school, the gallery alive with noise after several months of being closed.
I brought two cameras – one an instant camera with a roll of cheap paper that dispensed blurry black and white photos, and the other a ‘nice’ camera with which I hoped to record some of the artwork made during this first session. The latter was soon requisitioned by a young participant who set about making some excellent family portraits.
The aim of the Oriel Davies Gallery’s Hand in Hand project, funded by the Alexandra Reinhardt Memorial Award, is to run creative workshops with local children whose families have refugee status, exploring how art can be used as a means to wellbeing. Work will be made for a touring exhibition later this year, but the process of connecting and creating together is just as important as any artistic outcome, as is the involvement of the children in shaping the project.
With this in mind I handed the instant camera to the younger children to take charge of. It gave me a brief insight into the world from their points of view. We can get so used to any particular setting that it becomes difficult to see it with fresh eyes, but there was something about all the paper photos gathered into a pile at the end of the day that felt special. Friends and siblings positioned and framed together; a series of unselfconscious selfies; moments captured possibly by mistake, or for the joy of pressing a button. Several reminders that sliding very fast in your socks across a shiny gallery floor is something that needs to be recorded.
This idea of ‘framing’ has lingered with me since then: I’ve been thinking a lot about the many different intentions behind taking a photograph, and the ways in which that photograph can subsequently be re-framed, regardless of – or even with disregard to – its original intention. With the Oriel Davies now open to the public again, exhibiting photography from the national collections of Wales, it’s an intriguing place from which to embark upon the project.
