Art & Age Video Research

Back in the West Country for a bit, and great to fall into old networks of arts projects very easily! 

I've been doing some video documentation / research for the Art and Age consultation, led by dance artist Rebecca Seymour - a series of four workshops with different groups of the 50+ age-group in and around Salisbury. (Including Playhouse volunteers, hospital staff and volunteers, local people from a community centre on the edge of the city, open public and people attending the Alzheimer's Society Memory Cafe). 

Participants have had the chance to try out dance, singing, poetry and card-making, with the aim of finding out what kind of arts activities, where, when and with what support, people might be interested in longer term. The video material forms a major part of the material gathered - complementing verbal and written feedback from participants, observations by artists leading the sessions and by project partners in  attendance. It will also be used by researchers from Winchester University, by the project manager reporting back to Wiltshire County Council on the findings of the consultation, and for funding and advocacy to take the project forwards. 

I've used a mixed approach of 

• Observational filming to show the range of the sessions and how the artists/artforms adapt to the different settings, contexts, size and ability of group - and the unexpected elements of the day! 
• A couple of interviews with artists giving insight to the way the sessions have evolved and what they see as the potential for further work on the basis of what just happened.  
• Interviews, vox pops and conversation with participants.

As usual my aim is to minimise the impact of the camera by keeping technology to a minimum, improvising along with the group to catch spontaneous moments as they happen and endeavouring to keep recording comfortable and friendly with no prompts or rehearsal - just allowing people to share what they have to say.

The editing for this piece of work has also been minimal so as to keep an unbiased record of everything said and present as much of the context as possible. Consequently I produced two versions of the material on DVD - full length consultation for internal use and a short 'highlights' version to use externally/in advocacy displays.