Assignment 5 : People and Place on assignment

The subject for my final assignment is my choice as long as the subject  is one from this course. 

Hilsea lido
For  a while I toyed with the idea of basing my assignment on the Hilsea Lido, a fresh water lido at Hilsea in Portsmouth. It was opened on 24 July 1935; closed to the public during World War 2 but reopened afterwards. In 1974 the Lido was used as the set for Bernie’s Holiday Camp scene in the film ‘Tommy’ but in 2006 Portsmouth City Council abandoned plans for refurbishing the pool. However, a residents’ campaign led to the establishment of a management trust and registered charity. In 2010 the trust  acquired the lido on a 99 year lease from Portsmouth City Council and the pool reopened in July 2014. It  remains a community project with the community being  encouraged to get involved. 

So why the Lido? It has a very loyal team of volunteers who work incredibly hard (in all weathers) to help maintain and improve the site, plan and prepare for the future, provide operational support and keep the project on track. And I had in mind to follow the volunteers over a period of weeks to capture their work and enjoyment from volunteering. 

The brief would be to take some good quality images that would be used to recruit volunteers through the HLLP Facebook page. I know the HLLP Chair  and I popped down to the Lido to talk over the idea. She was OK with the project and liked my offer of having some of  images from the assignment that they could use on their website. But further discussion made me have second thoughts. This was primarily due to the timescale that I would need to work within for this assignment. It became apparent that the various tasks that the volunteers undertake are not programmed as such but very dependent on what donations of money or materials or offers of practical help come in over time. It looked as if I would need more than a couple of months to capture a good range of activities. Also some offers of help come from organisations where their 'workforce' may not be willing to have their photo taken.

I still think the idea is a good one but I would need a much longer timescale than is feasible for this assignment. So HLLP is on the back burner for now...

HotWalls
So moving on and looking for a local 'commission' where I meet the timescale for this last part of my course and have a good opportunity for images, I have decided on the HotWalls area of old Portsmouth, inspired by the current ARTches project designed to transform this area of the city. Work starts on the project to construct 13 artist studios in the HotWalls arches this autumn. The idea has been very controversial with public consultation and reactionpro and against being covered in the local press. I've only ever seen plans and an artist impressions of what the area might look like.

My idea is a brief to come up with images to both reassure the local residents and attract interest from potential 'renters' of studio space. The images I have in mind will allow me to draw on different parts of this course to create 8-12 final good quality images working to this brief.

I've now carried a desktop search of how to draw up creative briefs for photography assignments and my brief for this assignment  will draw on what I've learnt from this research.