Young people from Crosscare Youth Services worked with artists John Conway and Aoife Giles during lockdown, exploring and experimenting with art processes using digital platforms. Workshops took place over ZOOM.
A photography project with artist Aoife Giles explored the needs and motivations of a group of young women as the lockdown began to be lifted. Having worked closely together to learn photography using their camera phones, the members of the group each carried out a questionnaire. Based loosely on the Proust Questionnaire often used by magazines to discover the intimate rituals and thoughts of celebrities, it was used by the participants to reflect and illuminate their own thoughts in their own words. These responses then acted as prompts for the other group members to create artworks about. The questionnaires were distributed so that you would not know who had received yours. The various series of artworks created combined newly revealed information from the questionnaires with the intimate knowledge that comes from years of friendship. As a counterpoint to the many difficulties faced by young people during this crisis, the process created beautiful, thoughtful and emboldening gifts that are unique to the creator and the recipient.
Visual Artist John Conway worked with young people on an exploratory digital art project which took place over a series of ZOOM calls. The project experiemented with ways to collaboratively use film to create artwork during and after lock down, using social distancing. The project featured a mix of poetry writing, photography, filming, acting and singing. It resulted in a collection of short film clips which were then assembled into one larger composite work.
Both projects were supported by Crosscare Youth Services, many thanks to all the young people that got involved and to the Youth Development Officers, Rachel, Emma and Jemma.
The projects were funded by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs.
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