Girls Have Stamina Europe, January 2022
Foreign countries, multiple languages and cultural differences. Unit one I commenced the planning & research stage of my public work. I have discovered mapping out the Girls Have Stamina workshop in an international setting takes more than time…
My MA is supporting further investigations into my current work which celebrates rural girls, Girls Have Stamina. Unit one has been the initial planning stages of Girls Have Stamina ‘GHS‘ Europe, an international photographic project working with a diverse range of regional girls across Europe and the UK. In 2020 this banner making and analogue photography workshop took me on a 7000km solo round trip across four different states in Australia. Throughout the journey I worked with over 200 amazing rural girls where I introduced them to the magic of analogue portraiture and slowing the portrait process down. This time around, I will be focusing on participants in the UK and abroad. Rural girls are so fierce, fabulous and unique. I am passionate about using my time at Chelsea to further showcase the essence and diversity of rural girls and what they have to say.
The most challenging aspect of getting a project like this off the ground is the planning. Finding locations and participants is something that I predict to start off slowly as I am building a European and UK network and then I can imagine will gain momentum naturally as I begin hosting the workshops. The communication involved to secure a singe workshop date is incredible, that is exactly why the GHS Europe video and information sheet must be engaging and inspiring to the audience. One advantage I have in the planning for GHS 2022 is that I have created a tailored video to call upon a European audience using footage from my GHS Australia road trip. I have collaborated with a German photographer, Caroline Entrop and French gallerist Beatrice Masi to produce a GHS info sheet that is in English, French and German.
Using my relatively small social media presence I put a call out to anyone with connections for me in regional parts of Europe and the UK. It’s incredible to experience the help of people I hardly know, many people eager to point me in the right direction or to connect me with their friend who is a principle of remote school in Sweden. Currently I have 8 leads in 6 different countries. On the board are Ireland, England, France, Sweden, Germany and Israel.
