Writing Workshops

Through our first term we had writing workshops that were run by Helen Harris. These workshops were to help us create our artist statements for both of our projects. After these workshops we would work on our statements slowly throughout the year, fine tuning and perfecting them as we went. A lot of this was practice for the submission to source magazine as they required a 120 word statement to go along with the 8 images that I submitted.

The project that I submitted for Source was 'Beyond Glass', a project about zoos and animals in captivity. Below is the statement for this project:

In zoos we have grown accustomed to viewing wild animals in captivity, with the restricted living enclosures and the bored, repeated behaviour. Over time, conditions in many of these places have improved through the necessity and interests of conservation practices. However, in their newly constructed and larger ‘natural’ worlds, the animal’s lives are still entirely controlled by humans. Their enclosed and glass worlds may provide protection from poaching, hunting and extinction, but safety comes at a cost. In the surface that separates the animal and the human, fleeting suggestions of their original distant habitats merge with the urban or artificial, reflecting back to us, the space and freedom that was once theirs.

I knew from the start that this was going to be the project I was going to submit, so my other project 'The Urban Wild' did not need to fit this 120 word description. I struggled a lot with writing about this project because it is simple and quite. I also did not want to give too much away. I finalise on this for the introduction to my book and to the project:

More people now live within urban spaces, rather than the natural environment, worldwide. The rapid urbanisation of cities has resulted in the need for greener spaces that allow people a space to relax. These are quiet places that create a safe haven for both people and wildlife alike.

However pleasant and invigorating these spaces may be, they are a human interpretation of what natural should be. They are confined and controlled yet wild creatures are able to roam freely.

This project set out to disprove this concept, that despite how we perceive them, these spaces are a haven of life and wild at heart.