Masculinities: Liberation through Photography: Creative responses from our community partners

When the Barbican closed its doors in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 lockdown, Creative Learning reorganised its programming for the Barbican Art Gallery’s exhibition Masculinities: Liberation through Photography into an online offer. Where we would normally invite the community groups and charities we collaborate with for a specially organised Community View at the Barbican, we teamed up with the Digital Marketing team to create an Online Community View. This allowed us to continue to serve and connect with some of those most hard-hit by the COVID-19 restrictions. The visitors to the online resource were from over 50 different charitable organisations and community groups, ranging from disability and elders groups to support groups for people who have experienced homelessness.

Launched in May 2020, the Online Community View included interpretations of the exhibition and its artworks from three of our Barbican Young Creatives, and a series of cross-arts creative activities from six artists, including one designed by a member of our Creative Learning Community Collaborator, Headway East London. Over the summer, the Creative Learning team led a series of online workshops (and eventually one in-person workshop) based off the Online Community View activities. Below shows some of the outstanding work that these community group participants created during these workshops which were the result of important moments of connection when we couldn’t meet in person.

We hope you enjoy viewing these works which bring forth some of the urgent and meaningful topics that Masculinities: Liberation through Photography brought to the Barbican during 2020.

Billy Mann is a member of Creative Learning’s Community Collaborator Headway East London, which supports people with brain injuries.

Billy wanted to simplify the process of mono-printing so anyone could do it: ‘The method I’ve developed uses wax crayons instead of ink, masking tape and a ballpoint pen, and you can use any old paper or card.’

He’s dubbed the new technique 'Cut-Price Portraits' because there’s no need to go to art shops for the materials – they can be found cheaply and almost everywhere.

Participants grabbed some crayons and got inspired by the photographs in Masculinities to make their own 'cut-price portrait', sparking conversations between participants about the topic of masculinity and what it means along the way.

Creative Learning Community Ambassadors

Creative Learning’s Community Ambassadors were some of the first to have a go at Billy’s Cut-Price Portraits.

Creative Learning, Art Gallery and Headway East London Staff

Billy Mann ran a workshop specifically for Barbican, Guildhall and Headway East London staff.

Headway East London

Billy ran his Cut-Price Portraits workshop online for other members of Headway East London.

Accumulate Arts Charity

On Thursday 1 October, the Barbican hosted its first Communities in Residence, a new series created in response to the Covid-19 outbreak, utilising our underused spaces to offer community partners venues for their groups to meet safely and take part in creative activities. Billy Mann ran his Cut-Price Portraits workshop for 11 members of Accumulate, an arts charity that works with those who current are, or previously have, experienced homelessness.

This was the first workshop to take place at the Barbican Centre since March 2020.

Daniel is a photographic artist whose work explores how we can use photography to process our experiences. His photographic activity for the Online Community View prompted participants to consider what masculinity means to us as individuals through a mixture of objects, reflection and creative writing.

In this exercise participants photographed or drew an object of meaning that represents an element of ‘masculinity’ in their life, with some including text to explain why the image resonates so much with them.

Age UK , City of London

Age UK participants took part in an online workshop exploring what masculinity means to them through Daniel Regan’s activity.

Barking and Dagenham College

In June, Creative Learning ran an afternoon workshop with Barking and Dagenham College photography students, discussing the Masculinities exhibition, before taking part in Daniel Regan’s creative activity. The students produced really considered and personal responses on what masculinity means to them.

Creative Learning Community Ambassadors

Some of Creative Learning’s Community Ambassadors also created some really impactful responses to Daniel Regan’s creative exercise .

The Chair by Sarah

We all know the one… where HE sits,

Almost every house hold has one, a chair with the best view of the tv, perhaps sun faded with age and corners slumped from where he has been sitting for so long.

A chair fit for a king; an assumed throne… But why? Why is it his chair? Why has he got the best? Is He more worthy than she or even me? Are we just ok with it because it has come to be accepted as his? Why is it even HIS and not ours? Is it because he thinks he is 'the man of the house' and therefore is the rightful owner of the throne?

Velvet hat with flower and silk ties by Claudia

I wear these together sometimes. I like their softness, to have a tie but to wear it loosely letting it drop below my collarbone rather than a chocking symbol of taught masculinity, to mix it with my velvet droopy hat and flower is for me to empower myself integrating my yin and yang, male and female as I am.

Headway East London

In August, Creative Learning ran an online workshop with Headway East London members where participants created responses to Daniel Regan’s activity.

Barbican Young Poet, Annie Hayter, created a writing activity for the Online Community View that explored the different ways in which you can use images as a starting point to do some free-writing.

Free-writing is when you write whatever comes into your mind, not taking your pen off the page, a bit like a stream of consciousness. Through this, participants created powerful, immediate responses to the images in the Masculinities exhibition, revealing themselves and their relationship to masculinity.

Headway East London

In August, Annie Hayter ran an online workshop with Headway East London members, based off her Online Community View activity exploring masculinity through writing. Below is a video of Headway East London members reciting the works they created.

Transcript

Alan


Muscles

it starts with the abs
the ladies like them fab
work on the pecs
so they are at top spec

all this takes some work
at the gym or just out the back
press ups and situps are just fine
but to be great just watch mine

Some guys think that boxing is good
but not worth spilling the blood
exercise often and feel swell
let the ladies feel them as well

Clothes

he was always considered cool
when he was at school
when he got older
his clothes were a bit bolder
he was considered out of date
which put him in a right state
now he is recognised as being dashing
as the look has come back into fashion

Dave

Image 3

Grandpa where are you going
I did not know you could fly
I’m going to see your grandma
At her house up in the sky
Hug her for me grandpa
Tell her she is missed
And that every night her photograph
I walk past and it gets kissed
I must lay down now
I think it’s time to rest
I’m going to close my eyes now
I’m going to try and sleep
There’s some place I’ve got to be
I love you dearly
Please close the door
When you see a butterfly always think of me

Stuart

‘On a tube platform circa ‘91’ -

‘ I was sometimes beautiful, or so I thought. But no, just the light, or the angle of standing.’

David

Our own chaos

It’s a million different stories
Each particular to them and their families
But also so many common features
Memory management making them rambly
Plus the physical-sensory hardships
Maybe seen, but big hurdles to get past
All the things that are clear to observers,
Many more, for their lives, are more masked.
The day centres run by Headway and the like
Places to they can group to rebuild order,
To climb back from things extra-internal
And get back in the normality border
So many things for which focus and application
Are the only ways people resurface
But you might see what months can achieve
And that the application is worth this.

Dave

Image 4

I don’t know if I can do this
I’m really not quite sure
That big angry world that is waiting outside my door
One small step for a woman
One giant leap into mankind
Trying to start a new future
Who knows what I will find
The time I spent waiting, always on my own
Now the time feels right
My beard I’ve finally grown
Out through the door
World, let’s see what you’ve got
I’m standing proud and shouting loud
Because this girl with a beard looks so freaking hot

Yoki

Awakening, the lost road

Life was dark
Pitch black not a gleam of light.
The heart cold and still
No, no he said, “wake up”.
As I opened my eyes slowly, he said “thank god” your awake.
i said “Yes, I’m awake” now but I don’t see the point of waking up.
All I know is waking up from this restless sleep, meant that I must feel.
I must wake up to feel my heavy heart beating in my chest.
he said to me with tears in his eyes “You are not weak because your heart is heavy, My beautiful child”
I have been woken up from the sounds and from this bad dream and said to him I am wide awake now. Ready to face the world…

Smile

I will give you a second to look at me.

I can tell you what you saw in that second. You saw the wheelchair not me. I came second and after you judging me that I’m broken or look down on me ... you ask “what is your name? ...

I smile and say “Hi” I’m Yoki .... in that split second my inner thoughts are saying Get the fuck out of here right now.my inner thoughts said “You don’t belong here”. I smile and ignore the thoughts in my head. Secs turn to minutes.... that’s when I just want to shout and say to you I’m not broken but instead I keep smiling because if I don’t smile I will break down in tears and show my vulnerability and Show you how angry and heartbroken I am. But I won’t....

I will keep smiling till my face hurts and show you that I’m more than the wheelchair and what it means to be a brain injury survivor, depression, anxiety &fear survivor.

You can’t fix what is not broken. But you can make it easy to live with the pieces.

Creative Learning Community Ambassadors

Using Annie Hayter’s prompts, powerful written responses to the Masculinities images were created by some of Creative Learning’s Community Ambassadors.

Facial Hair by Claudia
I identify as a female, but and I have some facial hair which is not acceptable by mainstream society. I feel that my few blond hairs on my chin and upper lip are treated very unfairly and that they could never be perfect, at least not in most people’s eyes. If I was a man people would judge these little hairs as not masculine enough, but as a female these same few hairs are judged as diminishing of my femininity. Poor little hairs deemed to be either not enough or too much but never perfect as they are.

I Was Dancing When They Came by Marissa
I was dancing when they came.

Yeah, dancing, sweating straight through a new fit I had just bought. I was digging it real deep, ha! you know how it is. It was fifty bucks, my whole check for the week but I didn’t mind, my rent was paid. I just got my law degree from Stanford. God, how those White boys looked at me walking down to get my degree in cap and gown - it made me laugh, you know! No one coulda told me nothing back then. Nobody. Especially Nancy, that night she was mad at me for something or other, I don’t remember, but
it wasn’t a big deal though she felt that way.

Matter of fact, I remember thinking about it, it was because we saw one of my old gals, don’t remember her name cause I didn’t care much for her but it didn’t matter to Nancy, she got over it though, we had fun that night before they came. At Stanford I became a Black Panther, and before you ask, yeah it was hot, dangerous you’d say now, to be a BP back then, they were on our neck heavy, shooting us, lynching some. Them police dogs were the worst, you see. But it was seen as a Duty back then, MLK only been dead in his grave for five years, we were still on fire. Young, hot as the sun radiating.

We were dancing, holding each other, getting real close to saying we loved each other for the first time when they came through guns blazin’. They shot her first, I felt the silky blood on my right hand, the one that rested on her waist. It struck her in her Uterus we found out later, shot me right above the kidney. I was lucky, I didn’t even know I was shot until she was getting fixed up. We were so worried about having babies that year but God done blessed us, we had five kids you know!

There were about ten of us in total they arrested, ten excluding me, they didn’t arrest me seeing as I was holding my bleeding girl on the floor in tears. They probably saw I was shot too but didn’t say nothing. I woulda killed them that night if they had tried me. The ambulance that came didn’t let us on when they found out who we were. We had to get a ride from some strangers, some young man who saw what happened and called it abhorrent. Yeah, we saved her that night, that man became my friend. His name was Luke Grennington, a British scientist who had been studying near-by, him and his Black parisian friend Yanni Benet. Yanni was a good guy you know. Gave me a shirt after mine had filled with Nancy’s blood. Yanni had a blouse he had just gotten for his girl from Macy’s and gave it to mine. Us, all three, stopped her bleeding out together. Yeah they were good men.

The Take Over

Read a collection of poems written during a live version of the 'Writing the Image' workshop, led by Annie Hayter, for a group called The Take Over. The Take Over is a summer school based in Dagenham, where young people build skills as poets and producers.

His Wings by Shannon Pengelly

Out the window view
Its scenic and natural
All as god had planned
All as she had made it
A distraction from the world next to me
Not the best form
Yet a beautiful thing to remember
He is leaving
They said he’s going on holiday
Somewhere nice
Somewhere better
I wish I could be with him
I know I won’t hear from him
He always forgets to send letters
He’s wearing wings
My parents say that soon they will be real
And he will fly
I hope he flies back to me
I hope he fly back to the view that I see
After all
It is a distraction

expression by Shannon Pengelly

My hair is a form of expression
I change it because I'm bored
Sad, lonely, happy
Any reason really
I used to hate my hair
Compared it to others too much
Kept it long to fit in
Also because I didn’t think it would frame my face well
Once I cut it I didn’t want to stop I wanted it to be shorter
So instead I started dying
All the colours of the rainbow
Expression is what I use my hair for
I cut it again and dyed more
I'm finally comfortable
With how it looks
Short but vibrant
My hair is no longer just a form of expression
It’s me.

A piece of clothing that makes you feel like yourself by Grace Penton

A free blue dress
Torn slightly at the front
With broken buttons
Yet,
Comfort wraps me
No matter how broken
That dress may be
Flowers dance on the skirt
Wavering between sun and shade
But
At my own fault
The dress is already
Stained:
Raspberry juice
And Bicycle Oil
I’m not good with dainty things
Delicacy is not my forté
But with my short stubby hair
And blue stained dress
I feel free,
As the dress itself when given to me
Salvaged from the scrap heap

What would the beard say? by Grace Penton

The wind whips through me
Brushing my dainty curls
As I sit
Complementing this yellow t shirt
You stare,
Although I don’t know why
As I ordain the skin
With a rich dark brown
-
The wind brushes my bald scalp
Caressing it
As if it was a child
Hair dropping onto shoulders
Into crooks of clothes
Haunting the body
For days
And weeks
And months to come
With an itch
An itch of the mind too
A feeling of freedom
With nowhere to tread
I have no need for those
Expectations
You have of me
My hair can come or go
And I will still be here
Rustling in the wind

Windows by Grace Penton

Spiders crawl through my window
They swing down
Lowering themselves onto my bed
Creeping into my comfort
They scuttle
In through my ears
Into my dreams
As I feebly
Bat them away
If I shut my window
The temperatures soar
And I swelter
But if I keep them open
The spiders
Creep their way
Back in
Should I befriend them?
The spiders, the dreams,
Or should I squash them
With a book
To brutally smother my fears
I simply want to sleep
Comfortably again
When the heat subsides
And the spiders
Go back to hide
And I can open my windows
Without fear

Your worst hair cut by Grace Penton

Like Shakespeare
Had just been resurrected
And started walking around
London;
Hair gloriously swaying in the breeze
Going to recite some poetry
Yet it’s 2019
And Shakespeare didn’t realize
He was being photographed
And his hairstyle will be
Posted on the internet
Forever,
The terror!
Never turn around,
Shakespeare,
As the back is way worse than the front
Act normal,
Although you don’t know
What the normal of this era is
Anymore,
People remember you for your plays
Hopefully they won’t remember you
For your haircut too

Carlos’ Vogue-Chi workshop combines the power and politics of voguing with the mindfulness of Tai Chi that’s physically accessible to all ages. Carlos created a resource for self-guided Vogue-Chi-ing on the Community View webpage that brought together ways to warm up, some Vogue-Chi exercises and a soundtrack. Carlos then ran a live Zoom workshop with two of our community group partners’ members which got people moving, connecting and generally feeling fabulous!

Age UK and Opening Doors London

Back in June, members from Age UK, a charity for older people, and Opening Doors London, a charity for over-50s from the LGBT+ community, came together with Carlos and Creative Learning on Zoom for a workshop on what was the hottest day of the year so far, in more ways than one!

Artists featured are from the following Community groups

Headway East London

Headway East London are a local charity supporting people who have been affected by Brain Injury.
The charity’s vision is to build a society where people with brain injury are valued, respected and able to fulfil their potential to lead full, active lives.

Headway East London are the Barbican’s first Community Collaborator. Read more about our work with them here.

Website / Studio / Twitter / Instagram

Accumulate

The Accumulate charity is ‘An Art School for the Homeless’. They provide creative workshops to young, homeless people who are living in hostels or temporary accommodation in London to support their wellbeing, learning and creative development.
Accumulate are one of the Barbican’s Communities in Residence, running creative workshops in our Fountain Room.

Website / Twitter / Instagram

Age UK City of London

Age UK City of London is the charity for older people who live, work, study or volunteer in the square mile. Their focus is on enhancing wellbeing and building social connections so that people can enjoy growing older in the City.
Age UK City of London are also one the Barbican’s Communities in Residence, running their coffee mornings and IT clinics in our spaces.

Website

Opening Doors, London

Opening Doors London (ODL) is the biggest charity providing information and support services specifically for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans (LGBT+) people over 50 in the UK.
They are a free membership organisation providing regular social opportunities across London to help develop networks and communities for LGBT+ people, aged over 50.

Website / Twitter / Instagram

The Takeover

The Take Over is a new summer school based in Dagenham, where young people build skills as poets and producers.

Barking and Dagenham College

A college based in Barking & Dagenham offering professional and technical training.
Vision: To be a truly great college delivering inspirational learning and excellence through career focused education
Mission: To unleash potential, creating better futures for our learners, businesses and communities

Website / Twitter / Instagram

Our Community View Artists

Here’s more information about the artists who created the original activities for our Online Community View, that the groups responded to here.

Masculinity & Me By Daniel Regan
Daniel Regan is a photographic artist whose work focuses on complex emotional experiences, often using his own lived experience of mental health difficulties as the stimulus. He’s interested in how we use photography as a way to process life’s experiences and can find a deeper understanding of who we are through photographs.
Website / Instagram / Twitter

Writing the Image By Annie Hayter
Annie Hayter is a Barbican Young Poet. She won BBC Proms Young Poet in 2011, and was runner-up for Times Young Poet 2012. She’s performed at the Southbank Centre, Barbican, and on Radio 3. She is published in MAGMA and TimeOut.
Twitter

Cut Price Portraits By Billy Mann
Billy Mann has been a Headway member since 2013, when he had a stroke. He’s one of about 40 artists regularly creating work at the charity’s art studios Submit to Love in Hackney.
Website / Studio / Twitter / Instagram

Vogue Chi By Carlos Maria Romero a.k.a. Atabey Mamasita
Carlos Maria Romero a.k.a. Atabey Mamasita, is a London-based Colombian multidisciplinary artist and performer with a background in dance and live art working in the fields of performing and visual arts, pedagogy and occasionally curating. Carlos’ work focuses on developing technologies of resistance, joy and community-building, using tools from democratic forms of dance, political activism and the immaterial cultural heritage of disenfranchised sectors of society. Carlos is the third member of SPIT! (Sodomites, Inverts, Perverts Together!) who have been writing a series of queer manifestos responding to contemporary pressing issues of sexual and gender oppression since 2017.

Website / Facebook

About Barbican Guildhall Creative Learning
Our Barbican Guildhall Creative Learning programme supports people of all ages and backgrounds to discover their creative voice and access the arts for free. Every year we work alongside 150 partners providing more than 22,000 people with creative skills for life through a range of innovative programmes.

With thanks
_{We are very grateful for the generosity of the supporters that make the Barbican Guildhall Creative Learning programme possible, including: The 29th May 1961 Charitable Trust; Arts Council England; Austin & Hope Pilkington Trust; John S Cohen Foundation; Edge Foundation; Esmée Fairbairn Foundation; SHM Foundation; UBS; Wellcome.
We are also grateful for the support of the Barbican Patrons, contributors to the Barbican Fund, and all who donate when purchasing a ticket and visiting the centre.}