This case study is part of our project evaluation for Phase 2.
During the first summer of the pandemic in 2020, MarketPlace supported Wisbech photographers Jenna Bristow and Steve Hubbard of Click Therapy CIC to create a collection of images that tell a story of a town coping with Covid19. The project developed into an exploration into the connection between the medium of photography to support people’s wellbeing and mental health.
Read the full Surviving Lockdown case study here.
Read the full Phase 2 evaluation report here.
An excerpt from the case study:
During the first summer of the pandemic in 2020, Wisbech photographers Jenna Bristow and Steve Hubbard of Click Therapy CIC created a collection of images that tell a story of a town coping with Covid19. As photographers interested in using digital cameras to support people’s wellbeing and mental health, they invited local residents to contribute three words that summed up their life experiences during lockdown as a portrait and record of Wisbech in that time. The Creative Conversations in Lockdown commission created a book of resident feelings and stories left over a dedicated phone and text service called Lockdown Easedown. They were capturing a universal moment in time this project was revisited for further development.
As the pandemic continued, a further investment was made to continue to evolve this project idea and document the impact of the latest lockdown on residents. The power of sharing and telling stories that resonated from the first book, ‘Lockdown Easedown’, was highlighted as a development opportunity to be embedded from the beginning of this second commission. Partnering with writer Bel Greenwood, lunchtime online workshops developed the creative writing skills and contributions of Wisbech residents, the Click Therapy artists and community organisers to reflect upon their experiences.
The participants wanted to share their stories more widely, they lent themselves to being performed but the participants didn’t want to do that themselves, so a connection with the local theatre group was made. The vulnerable nature of some of the stories being shared could have left participants increasingly vulnerable by sharing them directly, alongside developing new skills to adapt and perform their work. Drawing upon the skills and interests of community producer Jodie Hicks, she reformed her theatre troupe to bring the experiences of selected stories to life and launch the second book, ‘Surviving Lockdown’.
“I’ve been in a theatre group with my friends Chris and Glenn for a couple of years. So we haven’t actually done anything for a long time, and then I started working for MarketPlace. Colin, Creative Agent, spoke about my interests, and I said my primary interest is theatre and stuff like that. Colin, just kind of, came up to me and said, ‘I have an idea I’ve been working on with Click Therapy that would lend itself quite well to kind of theatrical reading. And would you, or know anyone, [who would] be up for it?’ And I kind of thought, well, it seemed quite ideal for us and to see them as kind of monologues.” – Jodie Hicks, Alternate Orbit Theatre
