This blog will be a space for me to reflect on my research as well as document who I am talking to, what I am reading, and who I am making images of - whether that be people or places. I will be engaging with a myriad of methods to inform myself and my practice.
In April 2021, I was awarded a Developing your Creative Practice (DYCP) grant to research the impact of environmentalism on people of colour, a subject that is new to me but is something that I have been wishing to investigate in my practice. As a Black woman living in a polluted city, I know that I and other communities of colour will be disproportionately affected by climate change and pollution.
I will spend the next six months researching and engaging with this topic and seeing how nature and environmentalism can be engaging people from communities of colour. I want to find people in my local community of Brixton, South London to see how they think and feel about climate change.
As a Visual Artist whose primary medium is analogue photography, I believe that I must take responsibility for finding more sustainable ways in my practice. Again, this will help me renew and engage with methods that can be utilised to make my practice more creative as well as cost-saving whilst trying to minimalise my impact on the environment.
I will be using my experience with project managing Whispering for help to network with communities in Brixton and beyond. I have found a plethora of resources on social media and it has been great to see people of colour working to decolonise nature and environmentalism. I will be going to practical workshops and will find ways to make environmentalism engaging and relevant to people of colour.
I suspect I will make mistakes and will find the prospect daunting at times but I am ready to begin a new chapter and to find a way to communicate the importance of climate change and environmentalism, this subject is beyond urgent for me and for people from my community.
