'Starting with The People': New Strides for 'Whose Culture' project
‘Whose Culture’ is a data-mapping project co-created by Rising and young people of colour based in St. Pauls, Lawrence Hill, Whitchurch Park and Southmead. ‘Whose Culture’ seeks to map the cultural engagement of young people in Bristol, start a conversation and interrogate what we mean when we say, ‘culture’. After six successful autumn workshops, and a brilliant ‘Whose Culture Celebration’ in December, things have been plowing full steam ahead for the Whose Culture crew in 2019.
At the start of February, we invited some of the participants who came to our autumn workshops, to come to Spike Island for a day of getting to know each other and exploring what the next steps for ‘Whose Culture’ might be. We caught up with Creative Producer, Roseanna Dias, who is leading on Rising’s Whose Culture project, to find about more about what’s been happening this past month and the questions they have been asking.
“We got together to ask two main questions, says Roseanna, “How do we creatively map the cultural engagement of young people in a much bigger way than we have started to do through the project – thinking about the use of creative technology and what role that could play? and the second was, “What would you want a creative talent development programme to look like?”.
The Creative Technology:
The question that the group seemed to grapple with the most was – how can you use creative technology to map the cultural engagement of young people of colour in the city in an intuitive and user-friendly way? The discussions were complex yet fruitful – unpicking the role and purpose of creative technology and whether it could be accessible and inclusive – especially around ethnic minority issues. They looked at different inclusive examples and case studies for inspiration. Tom Metcalfe, a critical friend of the Whose Culture project and who runs a creative design studio in Bristol, shared the idea of employing the methodology behind ‘human-centred design’.
Human centred design bases tech-design in human experiences to suit the needs of the users. It is a design and management framework that develops solutions to problems by putting the needs and circumstances of the intended users before specs of the tech. The ethics around human centred design aligns with Rising’s core values of co-creation, people-led projects and weaving participation into the design of a product.
Here’s a brilliant video that explains ‘human-centred design’:
This felt like a step in the right direction in identifying the right approach to create some interactive data-mapping tech and made the project feel more manageable for the team. Instead of fixating on the creative tech, it felt more valuable to start with the people and their needs.
This led beautifully into the second part of the session – deciphering what the group of would want from a 12 week talent development programme. As Roseanna explains:
“At Rising, we’re all about talent development, it’s really important to us that we’re able to support the young people we’ve met through our Whose Culture project so far in further developing their creative ambitions and leading the creative lives that they deserve and want. We started to put together a proposal for a 12 week training programme, that we’re in the process of designing and fundraising for, and we really wanted to get these young people’s ideas about how that should be run and how it can best suit them”.
“We want to programme their needs into the proposal from the very beginning because we have our ideas but that’s what’s different about creating a talent development programme for YP of colour who are not necessarily tapped into creative and cultural networks in an institutional sense…how do we enable them to also operate in the institutional, cultural realms – how can that programme truly address their needs? That’s true inclusion, isn’t it?”
As well as working with this group to explore how to meaningfully map the cultural engagement of young people of colour in the city, we want to be able to help this group realise their creative ambitions. We would explore this through a talent development programme – where we could establish a cohort that would be supported through Rising’s wider eco-system. In order to start looking at how we would best do this, we asked the team what they need.
The team worked together to share what they felt they need from a talent development programme. It was great for identifying the individual and collective support the group needs and sharing the cultural and creative experience they have with each other.
To close the session, we invited Lily Green, founder of No Bindings – a hybrid-book publishing enterprise, to share her experience as a young woman of colour working within the creative technology industry. Her experiences really resonated with the group and left them feeling motivated and inspired.
Here’s the feedback we received:
“Your work will change the future (this isn’t an overstatement)”
“I learned details of photographic practice from Sham; I learned about creative technology; I learned to continue to value my practice; I learned the importance of collecting user information”
“I think it was amazing! Such a great experience and amazing conversations. Has a lot of great opportunities.”
“Great facilitative technique to help develop a really good idea.”
“I feel more confident in my decisions ahead of this year”
“I’ve never been proud of Bristol until today. Because now I see there is stuff going on, and maybe I can have a creative career here. People say you have to go to London, but I don’t want to – this is my home, my life is here. I want to stay here. I feel like I could do that now.”
‘Whose Culture’ is making great strides in further understanding how young people engage with the cultural sector and what they need from the creative sector. We are closer to realising how we would start to map their cultural engagement on a much bigger scale and the ethics behind taking a human-centred approach. All in all, it was a very emotional and productive day. We received some absolutely amazing feedback from the team and we’re looking forward to moving forward with this group of intelligent, enthusiastic and talented group of young people.
Shout out to Shamil Ahmed for these amazing photos.