Things we are currently working on moving forward…

Black Hair Workshops, creativity at the fore

Hair takes centre stage in many of our findings. Above are illustrative images and screen grabs of creative outputs that involve a focus on hair produced by young people on our programmes. Top row: detail of scrapbook entries from three different groups of secondary school students on one of our on-campus intervention programmes. Middle row: screen grabs from a 6.5-minute film produced by a young person that showcased interviews about Black history from Black students and scholars in Exeter. Bottom row: first image is a screen grab from a 7-minute film created by a group of 6 Black secondary school students (including script writing, filming, acting and cast interviews); middle image is of a scrapbook page from a group of 5 secondary school students who interviewed school peers at their respective schools and Jegnoch on one of our intervention programmes that then featured in a collective poem with a video of their process (third image).

Creative workshops let us safely engage in critical social dialogue. Above, collage artworks on canvas produced in collaborations between ~50 secondary school students across two schools and artist Jedidah Chick and exhibited as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science (Row 1, https://festivalofsocialscience.com/events/we-are-we-belong/). The collage nature of the pieces can be seen in the close-up in Row 2. Workshops ran over two 3-hour sessions at each school (4 sessions total) and participants at both schools were unanimous in their positive reflections, even those who started off unsure of whether they were interested in taking part, reiterated how impactful the workshop was for them (Row 3).