Coram's Young Parents group is working with PAN INTERCULTURAL ARTS on the Young Rights project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund!
Coram has been supporting children and families since 1739, and the young parent's group meets once a week.Over five months we have been looking at the issues facing young mothers, how they are seen and how they see themselves.
WHAT IS UNFAIR?
We discussed what we perceive as unfair in our lives and we decided that we wanted to challenge the prejudice surrounding young mums... This is is the journey we took in order to get to the Bloomsbury Festival 2012...follow us...
Getting started....
We first discussed what skills members of the group had, what skills we would like to develop and areas that we were interested in exploring and campaigning about.
Stuff we are good at:
Budgeting, art, calligraphy, tattos, music, social networks, henna tattoos ....
Skills we would like to work on:
- communication and story telling (useful for interviews)
- editing and filming
- graphics and using photoshop
- making presentations
- interviewing skills
- photography
- visual arts especially making large murals or sculptures as a team
- blogging and using social networks
- music
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| the Young Parents group discussing the project |
What would we like to raise awareness about and campaign?
To start of we thought about what was not fair in our lives:
- People look in the buggies to see the race of the child and judge us. People disrespecting mixed race children, people stare at our children.
- The immigration law has changed, it takes longer for my husband to come to this country to join me
- People criticise me about my mothering and there are prejudices against young mums in society
- Waiting too long to get a council property is not fair
- People think you just got a child to have a council flat and sit on benefits
- I think that to be a good mother is not a matter of age
- The authorities do not respect us
- People disrespect you if you don't wear a headscarf; thinking you are not a good Muslim
- It is hard to find work
- People don"t help us with our buggies, people stare at you when you're a young mum and they don't make space for you and your buggy
If it is not fair- you should do something!
Respect and disrespect were topics that we were concerned about and one thing that we decided to investigate was the stereotypes that young parents face.
Respect and disrespect were topics that we were concerned about and one thing that we decided to investigate was the stereotypes that young parents face.
Next steps...
- investigating stereotypes through the "buggy expedition"
- thinking about how to display our message through art
- learning more about blogging, photography and the history of young rights
THE BUGGY EXPEDITION!
We went to King's Cross Station and Rachel volunteered to go down the stairs with her buggy...no one helped her on the way down... but eventually a lady helped her on the way up...as we expected only few people help young mums carrying the buggies!
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| We caught lots of eyes watching us going around with all our buggies that remebered us of the feeling of being constantly watched! |
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SELF PORTRAIT : WHO DO YOU THINK I AM?
The buggy expedition and discussions about stereotypes and disrespect made us want to put together their own self-portraits, so that they could give viewers a clue about who they were, and challenge their expectations.
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We studied how people represent themselves using photographic portraits and then we experimented between us...
We wanted to give the viewer a partial vision of us and challenge their first impression...Who Do You Think I Am?
Have a look here at the final event pictures to know which ones we chose! |
