Posts tagged: Salford Youth Council

Back in May 2022, Socially Engaged Photographer in Residence Gwen Riley Jones wrote the following blog, reflecting on her meetings and conversations with members of Salford Youth Council. Gwen met with Salford Youth Council throughout 2022, connecting with the young people, using the Art Collection as a catalyst for conversations and activities, and working on several projects with the Youth Council. You can find more details about Gwen’s work throughout her residency here.

At the culmination of her residency, Gwen’s work with the Salford Youth Council has been captured in our latest exhibition on campus. ‘Some Days I Feel Triangle’ continues in the New Adelphi Exhibition Gallery until April 28th 2023. We are sharing this blog ‘from the vaults’ with you now because it is from the discussions with members of Salford Youth Council captured here that the exhibition draws its name, and many of these early ideas about how art can be a tool for expression and wellbeing underpin Gwen’s work with the Youth Council.

For all the details on Some Days I Feel Triangle at the New Adelphi Exhibition Gallery, click here.

I love the chats that we have at Youth Council, the group are so intelligent, honest and open. I am always blown away by the insights they share and how much I relate to their explanations of the world. The group have respectful, insightful conversations and operate as a whole group in a way that some adult professionals unable to do successfully. I would like to figure out what their secret is, how do they do it – older adults have so much to learn from young people.

In this conversation we were talking about the purpose of art. As usual, some members of the group chatted while others noted down thoughts on the conversation roll. Here are some highlights:

• Music creates an emotion and creates ART 
• To evoke a thought/an emotional response from someone 
• To explore emotions, to show pain 
• To show different points of view in life 

• To express yourself 
• Art can be a safe space for people to express themselves 
• Art is a way for someone to expand and communicate their visions physically and emotionally 

• To make a safe space to relax in and a place where the artist can escape 

• To get different ideas out into the world 

• To explore 

• To explore hypothetical scenarios (what if?) 

Harley said: ‘the most important reason to explore and self-express emotions through art is it’s an easy way to bring ourselves to confront those emotions especially when dealing with negative emotions, like sadness and depression’. Amber agrees.  

I asked, ‘is it easy?’

‘It is comparatively easy – you can confront them and come to terms with them, Harley said. 

Alex shared ‘I can never cry about stuff that’s going on with me, but if I watch a movie then I can cry. It’s similar to that.’ 

Amber, Ollie and Harley: ‘I can’t cry’… 

…but I find when I get something down in an artistic form, whether that be words or drawings, it helps me more easily to organise my thoughts and understand what I’m feeling.  

[I’ve only cried at one movie – INSIDE OUT (Pixar).] 

Harley: ‘Emotions are abstract things. It might be hard to put into words.  

So it might be easier to put the emotion in to a picture or something more metaphysical… 

> sounds 

> colours  

> shapes >>> I’ve genuinely said to someone I feel very triangle today’

Δ 

Amber and Alex: ‘YES, I always say I feel beige’

Ollie: ‘How do I just understand I’m feeling very triangle today? 

When you said it, I just got it.  

I understand why I got beige, but not triangle.’ 

We asked Gwen to refelct on this blog ‘from the vaults’ in spring of 2023, after her exhibition with Salford Youth Council opened. Here are her thoughts looking back almost a year on:

This conversation resonated with me throughout my time with the Youth Council. I made this digital collage (above) while I was thinking about and processing what they said . The conversation made me think about this artwork Some Days No.3, 2002 by Wang Ningde, which I had been discussing with another group of young people. We discussed that it wasn’t clear how the subject of the image felt – happy, sad, indifferent, dreamy – everyone saw something different.

Feelings and emotions can look, feel, and are experienced differently by everyone. They can be hard to describe, hard to put in to words, and there is no right or wrong, you feel how you feel. Art can help us explore and confront our emotions, and find new ways of expressing them. Feelings and emotions pass, some days you feel one thing, some days you feel another. This is how we came to the title, Some Days I Feel Triangle. How do you feel today?

More more information on Some Days I Feel Triangle, click here.

In the Spring of 2022, Socially Engaged Photographer in Residence wrote the following blog post, detailing her first few meetings with Salford Youth Council. Now, a year later, our latest exhibition ‘Some Days I Feel Triangle‘ showcases the brilliant collaborative work Gwen and the Youth Council have done over the past 12 months. We’re resharing this blog today to look back at the early beginnings of Gwen’s work with the Salford Youth Council ahead of the exhibition launch next week!

Some Days I Feel Traingle opens on 1st February until the 28th of April 2023 in our New Adelphi Exhibition Gallery.

Join us for the preview! Come down to the New Adelphi Exhibition Gallery from 5:30 to 7:30pm on the 31st of January to celebrate the exhibition launch. All are welcome, refreshments will be provided, and there will be an opportunity to make your own badges to take away with you!

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Gwen gets to know members of Salford Youth Council. Their conversation begins by discussing ‘What is NOT art?’

Getting to know each other – the importance of listening

In November I started attending meetings of Salford Youth Council (SYC), a youth voice group for anyone aged 11-21 who lives, is educated, or works in Salford. The group meet on a weekly basis, to plan events, work on campaigns, and promote positive stories of young people in Salford. SYC are the home of the Young Mayor and Member of Youth Parliament for Salford. 

When I first joined the group I began by listening, and joining in conversation when appropriate. I was there to get to know the group, its members and to start to understand how the groups works. 

SYC were working on a range of projects, including how to tackle hate crime, child obesity and sexual harassment in schools. They began work on a photo project for Holocaust Memorial Day, they had to take images and write a caption to the prompt – ‘One day…’. The group came up with some brilliant images and captions. I joined in to review the images each week and then the group would go out and take more images. Some people knew how they wanted to caption their images, but sometimes the whole group would collaborate to produce a caption that everyone agreed on. One member of the group is a wordsmith and wrote incredibly poetic captions for other people’s images.  

The images were shared at an event as part of Holocaust Memorial Day remembrance in Salford. You can view the images being read by member of the group, and Salford Young Mayor, Rosie https://twitter.com/salfordyouth1/status/1486807661211537411 

Questioning is so important – what is NOT art?

In January I started working directly with members of the group. In the first session we had Amber, Alex, Chinaleigh and Ollie. As a place to start from I asked them ‘What is NOT art?’ which prompted a passionate and wide-ranging discussion. I recorded the conversation and have written up what they said. The group also had a roll of paper to write their responses or draw on if they preferred to contribute that way.  

Chinaleigh said ‘everything in the world could be art in its own way’ 

Ollie said ‘nothing is art – literally nothing. Nothing is not art, but nothing is also art.’ 

Alex said ‘absence of anything is art, if someone can find some kind of meaning to it or feels something then it’s probably art.’ 

We agreed that anything can be art – so I took them back to the original question – what is not art? 

‘I was going to say things that you can’t feel or see, something that doesn’t make you feel something’ 

‘You can put a filing cabinet in an empty room and someone will find a message in it.’ 

‘Is destruction art?’ – ‘I think the general consensus is yeah’ 

Amber said ‘my favourite artist uses the pain he has gone through in life to create his art. I think that’s really cool’. 

I asked can the messages in the making of the art be different to the message the audience gets from the art? 

‘Everyone can bring their own meanings’ 

Chinaleigh said ‘so like a poppy, people could say it’s for rememberace and stuff for the soldiers, but it could also be red for blood’. 

One the walls of the room we were sat in were some medical drawings, so I asked is medicine art? 

‘It can be. Science is a pretty artistic thing. Science is art – you have to draw everything out like lungs and things’ 

‘But when you think about it, everything is art, cos art is such a varied thing’. 

What makes good art or bad art? 

‘That is really subjective’ (x2) 

So, thinking about the University of Salford Art Collection, I asked them, if you were in charge how would you decide which art is good art and which art is bad art? 

‘If you want to reach as many people as possible, the people deciding should be a group with totally different interests and stuff’ 

‘You need a variety of people deciding, unless there is a theme’. 

Creating through conversation

While we were talking, Chinaleigh, who is a cadet and had come straight from training, she was dressed in a green camouflage uniform, drew this brilliant graphic image of the word ‘art’. I love it and have made it into a sticker for her and to share with the groups.  

Gwen gets to know members of Salford Youth Council. Their conversation begins by discussing ‘What is NOT art?’

Getting to know each other – the importance of listening

In November I started attending meetings of Salford Youth Council (SYC), a youth voice group for anyone aged 11-21 who lives, is educated, or works in Salford. The group meet on a weekly basis, to plan events, work on campaigns, and promote positive stories of young people in Salford. SYC are the home of the Young Mayor and Member of Youth Parliament for Salford. 

When I first joined the group I began by listening, and joining in conversation when appropriate. I was there to get to know the group, its members and to start to understand how the groups works. 

SYC were working on a range of projects, including how to tackle hate crime, child obesity and sexual harassment in schools. They began work on a photo project for Holocaust Memorial Day, they had to take images and write a caption to the prompt – ‘One day…’. The group came up with some brilliant images and captions. I joined in to review the images each week and then the group would go out and take more images. Some people knew how they wanted to caption their images, but sometimes the whole group would collaborate to produce a caption that everyone agreed on. One member of the group is a wordsmith and wrote incredibly poetic captions for other people’s images.  

The images were shared at an event as part of Holocaust Memorial Day remembrance in Salford. You can view the images being read by member of the group, and Salford Young Mayor, Rosie https://twitter.com/salfordyouth1/status/1486807661211537411 

Questioning is so important – what is NOT art?

In January I started working directly with members of the group. In the first session we had Amber, Alex, Chinaleigh and Ollie. As a place to start from I asked them ‘What is NOT art?’ which prompted a passionate and wide-ranging discussion. I recorded the conversation and have written up what they said. The group also had a roll of paper to write their responses or draw on if they preferred to contribute that way.  

Chinaleigh said ‘everything in the world could be art in its own way’ 

Ollie said ‘nothing is art – literally nothing. Nothing is not art, but nothing is also art.’ 

Alex said ‘absence of anything is art, if someone can find some kind of meaning to it or feels something then it’s probably art.’ 

We agreed that anything can be art – so I took them back to the original question – what is not art? 

‘I was going to say things that you can’t feel or see, something that doesn’t make you feel something’ 

‘You can put a filing cabinet in an empty room and someone will find a message in it.’ 

‘Is destruction art?’ – ‘I think the general consensus is yeah’ 

Amber said ‘my favourite artist uses the pain he has gone through in life to create his art. I think that’s really cool’. 

I asked can the messages in the making of the art be different to the message the audience gets from the art? 

‘Everyone can bring their own meanings’ 

Chinaleigh said ‘so like a poppy, people could say it’s for rememberace and stuff for the soldiers, but it could also be red for blood’. 

One the walls of the room we were sat in were some medical drawings, so I asked is medicine art? 

‘It can be. Science is a pretty artistic thing. Science is art – you have to draw everything out like lungs and things’ 

‘But when you think about it, everything is art, cos art is such a varied thing’. 

What makes good art or bad art? 

‘That is really subjective’ (x2) 

So, thinking about the University of Salford Art Collection, I asked them, if you were in charge how would you decide which art is good art and which art is bad art? 

‘If you want to reach as many people as possible, the people deciding should be a group with totally different interests and stuff’ 

‘You need a variety of people deciding, unless there is a theme’. 

Creating through conversation

While we were talking, Chinaleigh, who is a cadet and had come straight from training, she was dressed in a green camouflage uniform, drew this brilliant graphic image of the word ‘art’. I love it and have made it into a sticker for her and to share with the groups.