Working with Reading Girls School

An update on how activities at Reading Girls School (RGS) are progressing as the summer term finishes.

As this years project is based around youth aspiration and their future, the Whitley researchers were keen to get more children involved in shaping the project and RGS were more than happy to participate.

After an initial meeting with staff Kate Thomson and Debbie Jewell surrounding logistics, 20 girls were invited to meet with us to discuss the project and how they could get involved. we understood as a group that it was important to gain the trust and confidence of the girls and therefore met with them twice before the summer term ended to build up the connection.

On the first occasion, we split into groups to get to know the girls individually and learn their opinions and thoughts on both their local area and photography- very insightful!

We then met with them a week later where 16 of the girls signed up to the project and were keen to get involved, especially after seeing the video of the Home Build at JMA and being introduced to cameras and being taught how they work.

Looking forward, we have set the girls an activity to look at over summer to get them to think about taking photos and what they would like to take photos of in their local community. The task is to focus on different perspectives and how your eye travels across the photo when looking at it, to understand how your eyes are drawn into a photograph. We will then meet with them in the Autumn term to complete the photography project taking them out into the community to take their own photos, resulting hopefully in a photo exhibition later in the year.