Image: Street portraiture session, taken by Nazaret after approaching some 'tourist looking people' on Oxford Street. |
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I.D was a Youth Justice Board (YJB) project pitched to and then delivered on behalf of the Tower Hamlets Restorative Justice Programme during Autumn 2010.
Artists Fred Vincent and Ross Robertson were approached and asked to propose a 10 week (20 hour) arts-based reparation project to be delivered to 6 young offenders and addressing issues surrounding gang culture in the Tower Hamlets ward of East London. Tower Hamlets has a recognised problem with gang culture (http://aashaproject.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/youth-gang-phenomenon-in-lbth-aka.pdf) as the area is home to a diverse population - mixing cultures, ages and religions. Upon being offered this opportunity and recognising the potential for the ethnographic nature of the project a third partner, London-based anthropologist Pete Sach, was approached by the facilitators and agreed to consult on the programme. The facilitators then developed an interactive programme that looked to locate and recognise the self within a greater, group culture.
Further readings:
Gang culture in Tower Hamlets (http://aashaproject.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/youth-gang-phenomenon-in-lbth-aka.pdf)
The project aimed to look at the individual in the crowd. Recognising each of us as an individual, affected by our environment and relationships. The programme looked to contextualise the human need to exist within groups, concentrating on the positive fulfilment of our self-image/social needs that these group-spaces can provide. Allowing the participants to utilise each other (and the facilitators) to explore and analyse their preconceptions of 'gang'/group relationships within a small, control group. The 6 project participants were male and primarily from Bangladeshi backgrounds. These commonalities were thin and the early group-generated focus of the sessions concentrated on the individuals geographical placement. The group's pre-judgment of each other was based on the participants' post-code. An issue the sessions tackled by looking at the development of post-code 'tags' - street signs used to claim territory by gangs within their respective areas. The group was asked to produce tags representing their place and its indifference to the other post-codes in the Tower Hamlets area. From this starting point the sessions were developed in collaboration with the participants, the facilitators recognising the need to provide an interactive rather than institutional space. The sessions went on to explore and creatively assess the effects of urban-planning, architecture, fashion and music on young peoples lives. The final sessions focused on language and questioned the use of slang as a tool to integrate group members and exclude outsiders from communications. The project was concluded with a public event organised in collaboration with a visual art exhibition within the Whitechapel area of East London. A participant-designed workshop was facilitated as a space for collaboration and centred around the creation of a giant inflatable 'room-sculpture' within the ware-house exhibition space. The young people also exhibited images from their participatory-photography, street-portraiture project (example above). During the event the participants worked together to explain and facilitate their ideas to the visiting public. This final outcome empowered the participants to demonstrate a developed sense of consideration while interacting within a social context. |
