Volunteer Response & What's Next

Okay I have moved home now - meaning it's time to get a move on with this project!

The response to my voluntary project has been amazing - I had 35 people volunteer, send me photos for me to use, answer the questions & give me lyrics and quotes to draw inspiration off.

The responses were so interesting -

I originally wanted to look at two different areas and try to blend them as I got the most responses off alternative people and pole dancers. However, the pole dancers gave me the bare minimum when it came to answering the questions which was a bit frustrating as it really doesn't give me a lot to go off, where alternative people wrote me entire essays about how the community helps and uplifts them. I did manage to get them to send me quite a photos with I think I would still like to use, maybe if I end up going in a more feminist direction.

I had a very disproportionate amount of women apply - there are 31 women & 4 men. I think solely because of the amount of women I will basing this project around them and what they have sent me.

However it is very interesting that virtually no men applied? Were they just not interested? Did the project not make sense? Did they not want to send photos of themselves? Or talk about themselves? The men that have applied are men I am friendly with and my boyfriend. I appreciate their effort & thank them for helping my project. See if you can pick them out in the volunteer posts!

The majority of people felt that communities help make up our identity to a point, but we as individuals enrich and give back to the communities. I think this is a really interesting concept - we all exist as a collective body under a certain umbrella, however we are still completely individual. I'd really like to show this through my work but I'm quite sure how to tackle it yet. Pretty much everyone belonged to at least one community, however most people averaged out at around 3 communities.

A lot of the alternative people spoke among the same themes - that the community came from the music, the community enriches their sense of fashion & helps them to find other people that look the same and listen to the same, finding people like us helps us to further our music tastes, gigs are very important to us, that we as individuals are what make up the scenes, a family member or close friend introduced them to the music and later the scene as a whole OR they found it through social media - tumblr was mentioned a few times. A lot of them felt that they were able to express themselves safely in these communities, even if they couldn't anywhere else for religious/family/not wanting to be judged outside of it or other reasons.

So, what's next?

Well, to begin with I am going to experiment with whatever materials I bought home with me. I'm gonna use the photos the girls sent me, and it will be a good opportunity to work on my portrait skills. I also want to look into backgrounds & integrating the lyrics into the art.

Stay tuned!