The mobile film exchange, Swap Shots, offered a new way for care experienced young people in Shetland to creatively engage with each other during lockdown restrictions in the coronavirus pandemic. Project participants made 6-second films over a three week period, shared and chatted about them on WhatsApp, and then came together in ‘walkabouts’ to project them onto buildings in Lerwick, Shetland’s main town, experimenting with scale, surface and context by using a portable projector.
Text: Roxane Permar, UHI Shetland, University of the Highlands and Islands, Scotland, UK
Cover photo: Figure 1. Projectile. Hjaltland Housing Association. Text is excerpt from writing by a member of the #SHETLANDCREW. Lerwick, Shetland. 2021. Photo copyright: #SHETLANDCREW and Home and Belonging.
Info
Swap Shots Mobile Film Exchange took place in Shetland during Autumn 2020 as part of the Home and Belonging project, a 3-year arts-based research project led by the Centre for Island Creativity (UHI Shetland ) and Who Cares? Scotland in collaboration with the #SHETLANDCREW, care experienced young people in Shetland. Roxane Permar, a member of the core team for Home and Belonging, led Swap Shots; the other core team members included Dr Siún Carden, the project’s Principal Investigator (UHI Shetland) and Sian Wild, advocacy and engagement worker at Who Cares? Scotland, a Scottish membership organisation for care experienced people.
Swap Shots aimed to engage care experienced young people in a visual arts-based activity which would develop visual language and filmmaking skills in relation to their home, and locale. It provided a way to gently introduce a public dimension to personal work while encouring ongoing exploration of issues around ideas of home and belonging.
The films revealed a strong expression of individual identity through personal glimpses into people’s everyday lives, such as riding a bus or making a hot drink, to moments of deep reflection, joy or peaceful contemplation. Shetland formed a consistently vivid backdrop with its varied weather, landscape, seascape and built environment.
In their own time participants used their mobile phones to create films which could be shared easily, then discussed on Zoom or in WhatsApp chat. They came together in walkabouts to use a portable digital projector to experiment with projections outdoors. Health and safety issues were addressed by providing ‘high-viz’ clothing and head torches for walkabouts.
The project promoted exploration and expression of identity and facilitated greater understanding of place. Through the larger project, Home and Belonging (2019-2022), of which Swap Shots was a part, care experienced young people developed a stronger sense of what it means to be ‘at home’ in private, public and community spaces through active participation and leadership in community-building and creative exploration. Home and Belonging offered a transformational experience which has continued to impact participants’ lives and those of other care experienced young people.
Two walkabouts not only enabled the group to test their work in the public sphere but also to use projected light as a way to build on the ‘lighthouse’ theme embedded within Home and Belonging. Equally important, walkabouts formed a way for the group to get together while also complying with the requirement to meet outdoors during the coronavirus pandemic continuing into autumn 2020 and winter 2021. New ideas emerged as momentum increased over time; some participants experimented with conveying particular emotions and worked to develop their filmmaking skills. Engagement, experimentation and collective learning deepened during walkabouts as participants took turns directing the projector, constantly identifing new places to project, testing different surfaces and considering the meaning of images in relation to the sites where they were projected.
Experimentation expanded to include projections of participants’ words created through their writing activities with Jen Hadfield. These evolved into Projectiles, a series of public pro-jections of extracts from the young people’s writings that had been carefully selected through Zoom discussions. These texts were projected onto Lerwick buildings during the Festivals of Care in 2021 and 2022.
The #SHETLANDCREW “loved being a part of the Home and Belonging project” of which Swap Shots was a part. The project supported them to be able to grow in confidence and be-come close as a group. Sharing deeply personal parts of themselves, as in the Projectiles, with strangers and peers, was an eye opening but scary experience. The public dissemination en-abled them to make a connection with others, and help share their vision and perspectives publicly (Carden et al., 2022).
The project is flexible, and can be adapted for virtual or real-life situations, short or longer workshops. It enables successful development of new creative skills, promotes collaborative working, and enhances confidence. The working process contributes to building increased trust, and is effective whether group members are new to each other or already well known. The films can be disseminated in various ways. A compilation film was made of all participants’ films and exhibited in the final Home and Belonging exhibition at the Shetland Museum and Archives in 2022.
References
Carden, S., Permar, R., & Wild, S., (Eds.) (2022). Home and Belonging. Exhibition catalogue. [Available online: https://pureadmin.uhi.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/30785853Home_and_Belonging_Catalogue.pdf]