My external facing project for 3.2 has been a slow and, on many levels, a frustrating exercise. I have found difficulty putting into words what I wanted from this external work and found it very difficult to find external parties willing to share a project with me. I did some collaborative work in level 2 and also in a limited way, in 3.1 as part of a Keeping Up Momentum session run by Photography student Helen Rosemier along with Fine Arts tutor Hayley Lock. Based on my experiences, I fully expected this external facing project in 3.2 to be quite straghtforward to setup. However, I have found real difficulty setting a scene to describe what I wanted and started to doubt myself. Maybe my choice of topic based around loss, mouring and the image wasn’t appealing or was too emotionally charged and I was naturally limiting potential partners? Maybe it just that students at this level and beond are all busy and time at a premium? Maybe my ask of potential partners was too narrow and didn’t allow that artist any space for self-expression? In this period, I reached out to some artists whose work interested me and approached some course leaders at various universities where I thought the courses sounded interesting but received a series of rejections. I received a couple of positive responses but these came to nothing. I then made initial contact with some students after I placed a forum post asking if anyone interested in my work. Some were interested enough to get in touch with me but, beyond this initial contact, nothing came of those contacts. The silence is frustrating. If I had more time, I might be tempted to persist in hope that I could fulfil my initial ideas but, as the external element of project work contains aspects completely outwith my control and very little in life comes with absolute guarantees, I have to move on and adapt and change the shape of my approach in attempt to move project forwards within the timescale of this year’s study. It a reminder than my practice has fluid elements which have to shift to fit in with real life.

In past month, I decided to replan my project, to change my approach and adjust my expectations. I would mark down my previous attempt to experience and as false starts or, maybe, if I could breathe life into any of these relationships, as slow starts. I could persist with current approach but instead of such a narrow set of requirements which resulted perhaps in a narrow set of potential partners, I have broadened my approach and loosened what I expect from a partner working with me on a collaboration and so have broadened my potential pool of partners. My initial idea was to look for students interested in sound and together we could explore sound and echo and memory alongside the image. I now have a few different partners and directions I can take this external project. One interested in poetry, another with folk tales and photography and another links photography with writing and biography as therapeutic intervention. If I wanted to continue with my narrower approach, then I have no doubt that it could have worked, I just think it would have taken longer and might not have been delivered within timescales of this unit.

I find collaborations an exciting thing with nervousness wondering how other person might respond to my thoughts and work and how I will respond to theirs and wondering what will come out of the other side.

I took a series of images when up in the Hebrides this month and with one of my partners in mind. I have ideas of lightness and darkness in my images and of the image perhaps being a gateway to another place. I have ideas on these whether I want to edit them on the computer or manually with physical prints and a scalpel but first I wanted to make time to share my work so far and see what partner makes of it and also to see her work.

I will continue to note my thoughts and observations and to show some of my work here.