Kingsmead Eyes

This collection of work is the result of my long-term collaboration with the Kingsmead Community School in Hackney, as Photographer-in-Residence.

The Kingsmead Estate, where most of the school children live, is one of the most economically deprived communities in the UK. Many of its residents are recent immigrants or asylum seekers, giving the estate a great degree of cultural diversity. It has long had a negative reputation, however this has improved in recent years and regeneration initiatives have encouraged a stronger sense of community.

Together with photographer Crispin Hughes, I conducted a series of workshops with Kingsmead’s Year Five students in 2009 and 2011. Once the children were motivated to use their cameras creatively, it was exciting to see the photographs they came back with. The immediacy and closeness of their images was refreshingly different from anything that might have been captured by a conventional documentary photographer.

Using portraits as my building blocks, I also made a series of composite images that would reflect the richness of East London’s cultural diversity. At a time when recent immigrants were facing significant hostility in the UK, this felt particularly important.

The two video pieces combine my portraiture with the words and images of the children in multiple ways. Kingsmead Eyes was the result of the workshops conducted in 2009, and lead to an exhibition of the work at the V&A Museum of Childhood. Kingsmead Eyes Speak came out of our workshops in 2011 and culminated in the creation of the Kingsmead Eyes Speak website.