project archive: PUBLIC DREAMS

Public Dreams.

A photography project with school children aged 10-14 years old, conceived as part of the London wide 'LWT (London Weekend Television) Talent Challenge'. Supported by a number of bodies including LWT, Coke Cola UK, Riverside Studios. Project duration: 8 weeks, contact time: each working group half day per week.

where&when: Hammersmith, West London. 1997.
medium: Analog Photography


I thought I'd start at the beginning so to speak. The first major project I did with school children from 3 schools, aged between 10-14 years. The project adopted a theme related to Bridges following the general LWT Challenge title - Singing Bridges.

Close to each of the schools was Hammersmith bridge, the site of the first suspension bridge to span the river Thames. Designed by William Tierney Clark and built in 1827 at the cost of 80,000GBP it was replaced by the current bridge in 1887, designed by civil engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette and capable of coping with the ever increasing weight of traffic. The footways either side of the bridge are only about the width of two persons, so the act of crossing this bridge is in many ways an intimate experience.

For the project I asked the pupils to consider what it was to cross a bridge, what happens when we cross a bridge, is it a symbol of connecting or separating, what does this bridge mean to them. Perhaps the hardest part was for these children to think and see beyond a structure so fimiliar having grown up with it always near.

Working generally in small groups they considered emotional and physical responces to actions and aspects of the bridge and through a process of reportage, enactment and construction developed visual and conceptual ideas and methods.

The final work, Black&white photographic prints were exhibited both in the Riverside Studios and at London Weekend Television.