Hull based photographer Rich Wiles built his reputation among the debris of the Palestinian cities of Hebron and Bethlehem . His gritty black and white images captured a people trying to live ordinary lives under extraordinary circumstances. Here, he explains how this experience helped him unlock creativity and humanity in a group of Hull students.
Since October 2004 I?ve been working on a Creative Partnerships photography project with pupils at Kingswood High School in Hull. Together with Dr Helen Cagney-Watts, Director of Creative Partnerships Hull and Loz Wilson, Kingswood Deputy Head and art teacher, we?ve been using photography to help the students see their local estates and city in a different way, a way that places their community and themselves in a global context helping to develop feelings of citizenship and humanity.
As part of preparatory research ahead of the project, the students visited galleries, exhibitions and theatres to explore issues of conflict and dislocation. They saw a play about the plight of asylum seekers and experienced John Keane?s oil paintings of the Gulf War conflict. The students showed enthusiasm, maturity and a refreshing willingness to learn more about some quite complex issues.
Armed with disposable cameras, the students and I walked around Hull city centre, and also the huge Bransholme Housing Estate surrounding the school. We looked for indicators of the social health of the community: things like graffiti, broken down buildings, etc and explored ways to respond to these indicators through photography. We explored issues of freedom, security and conflict; this was very much a two-way process as they let me into their realities of growing up on or around Bransholme, one of Western Europe?s largest council estates. As the students began to better understand their subjects and become more creatively focused, so their work developed. Photography gave them a voice and helped them produce a striking and powerful body of work.
Involvement in this Creative Partnerships project has given me time to fully devote myself to my creativity. It has helped me to understand my own work through others? eyes whilst also researching and developing my ideas. Furthermore, it highlights, on many levels, what I believe to be the importance of socially conscious art. This is evident in the personal and artistic development shown by students and through the developing realisations that their opinions are important. They now understand that through the arts they can express themselves creatively, and that they CAN make themselves heard.