Street level photovoice
STREET LEVEL PHOTOVOICE is a participatory and public art project involving 4 classes of students, 2 from the Istituto Corinaldesi Padovano and 2 from the Liceo Statale Perticari.
The project is coordinated by CRI Comitato di Senigallia Odv (the Senigallia branch of the Italian Red Cross) in collaboration with fosforo: (Associazione Culturale NEXT) as Partner.
STREET LEVEL PHOTOVOICE was created in response to the Facciamo pArte call for proposals, and is funded by the Regione Marche – Youth Policies and by the Department for Youth Policies and Universal Civil Service.
The project’s title is a reference to the famous public art project by Manglano-Ovalle, held in ’93 in the city of Chicago as part of the innovative festival Culture in Action, in which young people from African-American communities were given video cameras to tell their own point of view.
“Street-level photovoice” gives the participating young people the chance to use the language of photography to communicate issues that matter to the group, using the Photovoice technique. The relationship between young people and the community is central: through the powerful use of images, the project becomes the voice of a creative and projective reflection on their role, their potential and their unspoken individual and collective thoughts.
The photographs produced by the young people will be shown publicly through a temporary installation in the city of Senigallia and will make up an original artist’s book of social and cultural value.
Phase 1
Photography workshop
Specialised staff from CRI Senigallia gave the young participants a series of lessons, in-depth sessions and exercises on the basic principles of photographic images. The students worked directly with the cameras and digital editors on their own smartphones, as well as using professional cameras. This first phase helped them acquire the preparatory skills both to develop a proactive and creative approach to photography (objective 1) and for the photovoice phase.
Phase 2
Social media workshop
Associazione Culturale NEXT offered the same students and young people a series of tailored meetings in schools to foster knowledge and mindful use of digital platforms and new media. These sessions aimed both to free young users from a possibly risky and addictive use of the web (objective 2) and to build a social media communication plan for the whole project, sharing the “Street-level photovoice” journey on the web as it unfolded through a series of spontaneous contributions such as snapshots and first-hand reflections.
Phase 3
Photovoice
Photovoice is a methodology inspired by Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed , through which students can represent, using photography, some critical aspects and issues of their communities, their lives and their needs. This method is part of the broader framework of action research, a model with a dual function: participatory and investigative. Photovoice fosters a high degree of participation, cooperation and inquiry between participants and their educators and trainers, building an approach based on equality. In this perspective, the shared construction of meaning and reflection aims to create proposals for action in the local context. In this activity (aimed at objectives 3 and 4) the young people worked in groups using smartphones and digital cameras and jointly chose the themes to investigate.
Phase 4
Installation of the public artwork
The final outcome of the photovoice is a participatory public artwork (objective 4). It was installed and exhibited in a highly symbolic place in the city, the lavatoio del Coppo, an old, disused but well-restored public wash house located next to the Liceo Perticari and the headquarters of the Senigallia Local Committee of the CRI. The site’s strong associations with themes of work, gender, power and society make it a particularly fitting venue. The exhibition, opened with an official event to which the public was invited, will be on display for a limited time.
Project book
At the same time, the final outcome of the work by the students of the participating upper secondary schools will remain on display as a collective work on two digital platforms: https://www.artistikamente.com/, the art database of the Marche region developed and managed by Ambito Territoriale Sociale n.8 (see the attached declaration of public utility of this project), and https://www.fosforoscienza.it/, the website of Associazione Culturale NEXT in Senigallia.
An “artist’s book” was produced in two versions: print and digital. The project ended with a conference in which the young protagonists of “Street-level photovoice” presented the outcomes, the artwork, their impressions and thoughts to their classmates and teachers – actively involving them.