The partnership
When Sarah and Ingrid first met online on their first ever Zoom call at the start of the pandemic, they never dreamed that their City Hall funded project would go on to win an international award. Not knowing each other and unsure how to adapt their project to the new circumstances, they put their heads together and started planning. Two and a half years later, they met in person for the first time at the British Council ELTons awards ceremony and unexpectedly won the award for Local Innovation.
Sarah Sheldon, an ESOL specialist from Learning Unlimited (LU), a London-based social enterprise specialising in adult and family learning, and Ingrid Guyon, a participatory photography expert from Fotosynthesis, a leader in participatory visual media, collaborated to design and deliver this exciting project.
The project was funded alongside three others by the Mayor’s ESOL Plus Arts Programme. The programme encouraged cross-sectoral collaboration between English language (ESOL) training providers and the arts, culture and heritage sector. Through this collaboration, the programme aimed to increase both the integration of arts, culture and heritage in English language provision, and the engagement of people with English language needs into arts, culture and heritage activities and spaces in London.
City Hall awarded £100,000 grant funding to four innovative projects delivered in partnership between formal and informal ESOL providers and practitioners, organisations or institutions in the arts, culture and heritage sector. The programme ran between 2020 and 2021, and partners worked together on projects that creatively met the needs of Londoners who face barriers to accessing or progressing in formal ESOL provision. These projects were designed and delivered by ESOL professionals and creative or heritage practitioners, and supported by volunteers.
The Picture This! Project
Picture This! was a project using participatory photography to teach English to refugees and migrants living in London. The original plan had been to deliver face-to-face participatory photography workshops with supporting ESOL classes culminating in pop-up exhibitions in south London in spring 2021. However, due to the pandemic, the project went online and became something completely different – something far richer, more meaningful and with more scope for growth.
Migrants and refugees from a total of 22 countries and living in 13 London boroughs took part in the online workshops. Individually and collectively they created over sixty stories exploring their surroundings, lives, emotions and identities through taking and sharing photos. Through the process they developed their speaking, listening, reading and writing skills and created some beautiful texts, including poetry.
The experience
It was Sarah’s first experience with participatory photography and its beneficial impact on language learning went above and beyond what she had expected.
Sarah: “I have always understood the importance of images in language teaching, but I had never used images actually created by the participants themselves as part of the learning experience. The process of taking and sharing photos was far more powerful than I ever expected. It allowed participants to say what they wanted to say through the universal language of images and then use this as a stepping stone to creating words. And the creativity! It was mind blowing. Both with the images and the words. The poetic language that came out was extraordinary and unexpected. Two participants went on to enter poetry competitions and one participant has even gone on to recently self-publish her autobiography.
Participatory photography is great for working with mixed groups as I do – varied language and literacy levels, ages, educational backgrounds, cultures and life experiences. Everyone gets involved, everyone has something to say and can say it. And everyone learns from each other. Personally, I learnt so much from the participants plus I haven’t stopped taking photos and writing since!”
Having the works created then exhibited online and published in a book was the icing on the cake and a feeling of real accomplishment for all.”
Ingrid was not as surprised by the success of the project:
Ingrid: “When LU approached Fotosynthesis to use photography to teach English it made complete sense to me for many reasons. We had already used it for storytelling in primary schools in London with great success. For decades participatory photography has been used as a research and storytelling tool to provide a space for people who are not used to telling stories. For me, language learning is about expressing yourself and as soon as you show a photograph to someone you start telling a story without even thinking about it.
Most people who have mobile phones take photos without thinking every day. It is part of who we are in 2023. What matters is the process, not the quality of the photo. There are no good or bad answers or pictures. The participants decide what they take, what they say, and they keep and own the narrative.
Photography is not just an artform, it is a fantastic tool to learn in an inspiring way. It is not about learning grammar, it’s about unlocking the fear of making mistakes which normally stops people expressing themselves, and from that, grammar improves.”
The Toolkit & Hub
The online exhibition, book and a teacher’s toolkit are all free to download and view online. The exhibition also includes audio and texts in different languages to celebrate the diversity of the Londoners taking part in the project.
If you are an education, arts or community organisation and you would like to explore running an ESOL-arts, culture or heritage programme like Picture This!, visit the ESOL Plus Arts Hub for toolkits and more.