I hadn’t met the group yet, so needed to get to know the out-of-school group, and them to meet me and find out about the project and what the group wanted to do. We started with some games based around getting to know each other and asking questions.
Initially the challenge was to work with everyone who wanted to take part, which initially was everyone (around forty young people). I asked people to form a circle and asked people to step if ‘there eyes were brown’, ‘they were wearing trousers’, and so on. Very quickly they got the hang of it and easily came up with their own questions, and even started to qualify their questions, responding to what the group did.
It was already 4:40 and some of the group were beginning to go (as an after-school club, parents come to pick up whenever convenient). We decided to break up the group – Joe had already started making drawings of Shenley with some of the group, so the half of the group I was left with was far nearer the number I planned to run activities with.
We started a map of the centre on wallpaper. The group started small, but soon, led by a couple of the group, a map started to materialise. Meanwhile in small groups, children took turns to take our cameras into the centre and photo what they saw.
They needed little encouragement and really enjoyed taking photos. They were also competent photographers and needed no support within the centre to find what they wanted and take their photos.
All went well and was a good introduction to the group.
