Lisa Oldroyd On Culture Shifts
Lisa Oldroyd is a local photography student currently exploring community based photographic practice in the region. We caught up with Lisa to discuss her take on the current Culture Shifts program, and how her own practice relates to it.
With the Culture Shifts project well underway, we see up to eleven photographers nationally and internationally working in collaboration with volunteers over seven parts of Merseyside. These involve a wide range of community groups coming together to create art through photography, and to form a narrative of their own experiences that is relevant to them.
Culture Shifts is a perfect example of how communities and the arts can come together to create a successful creative collaboration. These types of projects are becoming more important, as we see funding being cut overall for arts and culture. Over the past five years, there has been a narrowing of audience and participation when it comes to the arts industry in the UK. We are becoming increasingly more disconnected from the arts in this country. Everyone should have access to the arts and gain cultural experiences. Sometimes this is not just visiting gallery, but taking part and creating the art. Culture Shifts is a prime example of this, putting the socially engaged arts back on the high priorities for galleries.
Whilst studying BA Photography at the University of Central Lancashire, I have taken a special interest in socially engaged practices, focusing not only on my photographic work in this area but also my written research, each very much informing the other. I completed my dissertation on the importance of socially engaged practice and effects the practice has on our everyday consumption of culture, and the social economics groups affected by the participation and audience of arts in the UK. I will be starting my MA in Photography in September 2017 and within this I will be expanding upon my research in this important area. I am currently working on several photographic community engagement projects in my local area with 55+ luncheon groups and mental illness support groups, as well as closely following the progress of the Culture Shifts program and shadowing artist with the on-site training. Collectively the practice and research based experience will inform and develop my future practice.
Each of the Culture Shifts projects will be exhibited within the group’s local community; taking the groups from start to finish on the projects, all ending on a large show at the Open Eye Gallery in Autumn 2017 and I am looking forward to seeing the results of this socially engaged photographic programme.
