Hi everyone,
I am glaringly aware that this is the first official post for YPP, so I will do my best to fill you in on our progress so far whilst hopefully providing you with enough suspended phrases and cliff hangers to have you coming back for more. It’s a risky business organising workshops you know, and we are on the front line…
We are planning our sessions for the first week of June and are lucky enough to be able to use the work of Hetain Patel as a spring board, a catalyst if you will, from which we can base the content. We already have three fantastic artists on board who have collaborated with YPP to build some diverse and equally brilliant responses to his work which centres itself on cultural diversities and the idea of difference among society at large. Patel’s work transcends numerous mediums with relentless poignancy as he explores his Indian heritage and the ways in which he has experienced what he calls ‘an ideal of India.’ It is of course highly biographical since, as Patel perfectly proposes;
‘If the western influence of my birthplace is embedded in my way of thinking and the physical mannerisms of my body, is it possible to retrain these ways of understanding the world with an Indian code?’
Click on the image above to access Hetain Patel’s website.
Patel is also very aware of creating a relationship between the art work and audience, something which we hope the workshops will illuminate through the idea of an individual cultural identity within a larger societal framework. The sessions are for children aged 10-16, each one engaging and explorative in their own right. The multiplicity of Hetain’s works, moving through film, performance and photography enables us to explore cultural identity and it’s boarders without limits and across the three workshops groups will have the opportunity to explore and celebrate their wonderfully diverse environment, through performance, spoken word, sound art, sculpture, photography and anything else they can get their hands on!
There is however, much to be done before the fun begins and I hope to blog our progress regularly (no pressure) to keep you all up to date with what’s going on. Equally, it will be a lasting record for us to refer back to for next time so we can streamline our approach and develop new ways to present ideas and encourage young people to respond to art that is perhaps more relevant to them than they first realise. During and after the workshops, we hope to also create a video blog which will include footage of the sessions taking place and responses from the young people in the style of mini-interviews. we can also use this as a record but more importantly, it will be something that those who attended can freely access which documents their experience and brings their final piece (whatever that may be!) home.
I hope this has given you an idea of what we hope to achieve and blogs to follow will tell you how we’re going to do it! You can follow our progress using the Young People’s Panel tab, under which you will find fabulous posts and photos by any member of the YPP who fancies a little spout about our progress. There will also be links to Hetain’s work and YARDyouth in general and any other juicy bits of information that we think deserves to be shared.
Thanks very much for supporting YARD and until next time, check out Patel’s exhibition at NAE here: http://www.thenewartexchange.org.uk/HetainPatel.php
Holly Stanton
YPP
