This month, Open Eye Gallery’s Creative Producer for schools and young people, Anna Wijnhoven, spoke with socially engaged photographer Les Monaghan about his project Aspiration10, which is an eye opener to the social impact of the reshaping of this generation. The result is a ten year socially engaged project that delves into the dreams and aspirations of children and their caregivers in Doncaster.
Anna: Hello Les, welcome to our interview! Would you like to start by introducing yourself and telling us a little bit about your project, and where your inspiration comes from?
Les: I’m Les Monaghan and my project is called Aspiration10. The ten comes from the fact that it’s ten years on from the original project that I did called Aspirations Doncaster. It had that name because at that time, in the 2014 Cameron versus Milliband general election, there was a way of talking about young people in particular and the future in terms of aspirations, especially around voting for a party whose identity supposedly fitted with you and would help you achieve all of your goals. I was uncomfortable with that kind of language and I was uncomfortable with all of the big shapers of our lives. Particularly because, to be blunt, I didn’t think the education system and schools were fit for purpose, and we were already four years into austerity by this point.
In 2014, when I started the project, we were more or less four years into the national curriculum, which was Michael Gove’s way of saying what every child needed to be taught (and what they didn’t). I wanted people to be made aware that there was something shaping the lives of children directly, including my own children. This project was not originally meant to be work that was meant to inform people how they should vote, but I did want that in people’s minds.
In this project, I have photographed two people sitting side by side. A young person with an older person are sat in a place that shaped the younger person’s aspirations. I always ask the same question of ‘what do you want to be in the future?’. I don’t say job or anything like that. Almost always though, the answer is a job. Sometimes the person who is sat next to them has shaped their aspirations, so it could be that they’ve got a shared interest such as swimming, football or danicng. Written under the feet of the young person is what they want to be, and under the feet of the older person is what they wanted to be when they were the age of the young person.
The idea was to get a flavour of what Doncaster was in 2014, what it is now in 2024 and what it might be in the future. Equally, this project is a survey of the state of this place. The Aspirations format was originally a response to being commissioned to do a placed based documentary in Bolton, Greater Manchester in 2009/10.
I was just tired of walking around photographing things that look drab, supposedly indicating “decline” or they look newly done indicating “the future”, or some people looking miserable and it’s like none of these things actually say what a place is like. It doesn’t say what’s in people’s heads and minds and hearts or whatever, but hopefully through this method you’re getting a glimpse of people’s interior lives.
I’m aware that that word under the images I have created could be a throw away, get me out of here statement. Or it could be, as we found with Aspirations Doncaster, something massively profound. In the current exhibition, there are some films downstairs about Anita. She changed her life after having two photo sessions because of the question ‘what did you want to be?’. In the three months between having two photo sittings where we had been photographing her and her two daughters, she reflected and began to completely change her own life. She summed up the factors that meant she hadn’t become an actor, or an archaeologist, in the films so eloquently. In 1980s Doncaster the options she was offered were housewife, nurse or receptionist.
The exhibition, as it stands now, has a very deliberate timeline around the bottom, running from 2014 to 2024 to say what has and hasn’t changed. They [the children] are the future. The future is out there, and the timeline is an indictment of all of us, asking, what have you put in place? For example, the timeline talks about the four chances that we’ve had in ten years to elect governments that may have put children or young people first. For children, the future kind of died in 2015.That’s when they stopped talking about aspirations. The governments since then haven’t chosen to put young people first.
As for my other influences, I have been inspired by the work of Allan Sekula, Jim Goldberg and John Kippin, because words matter and the context matters. That person in the image has privileged us with their time, given us an insight into their world and we should respect that.
Anna: When I went to visit the exhibition at The Point I felt particularly moved because I was reflecting on what it was like growing up in a working class family and dreaming of a career that seemed really inaccessible to me, for a lot of the reasons that are reflected in your exhibition. Do you think that the challenges that face the children photographed in your project are directly influencing the way they think and feel about their own futures?
Les: I was speaking to some 16, 17 year olds just now, just before this interview at a college with level two students and we were engaged in this idea of not just what they want, but also what is possible, and I think a lot of that comes from experience. If I think back to their ages, I would barely have listened to me today. I don’t think at that age you can always recognise all the structural factors that are affecting you – at least I didn’t.
My dad is 78 now and he has drifted through his life because he hasn’t rocked the boat. He just obeyed orders and does what he was supposed to do and he’s not ever got into a position where he’s just thought, this is not enough. But, all of us have only ever had the classroom we’re taught in. If you haven’t had the privilege of experiencing a classroom that a privately educated person of your age will have experienced with only ten other students and a teaching assistant where you get to do lots of extra outside activities, you don’t know any different. You’re stuck in a classroom of thirty with six disruptive students and others who need support for various reasons just to be able to understand what is being taught. So, you’ve only got what you’ve got and you’ve only got where you’re coming from and you’re just trying to get through it all.
I did a lot more direct work with schools in 2014. Two head teachers I worked with said they were creating workers. We’re creating workers who will want jobs in Doncaster, not citizens, not even just young people.
In 2014, the funders of the project insisted I work in a number of places of high deprivation in Doncaster. They overlap almost entirely with the ex pit villages.I found it really striking last time, in 2014, that of the 200 men in the project, dads mainly or sometimes granddads, you’d ask them what they wanted to be and they wouldn’t say “miner”. I think it was only three that said miner, because of course they didn’t want to be miners. In the 1960s, 70s or 80s, football was just as huge as now in people’s lives, and you wanted to be George Best or something, you know?
I’ve done lots of work in some of these villages or with people from the villages, and to hear the young people pick a job for life in those villages, you could sense the pressure that has been put on them to avoid what happened to their dads, granddads and uncles.
Every single miner around here was put out of work, and when that happened, nobody went “oh, okay, I’m going to use this as a positive opportunity to retrain”, you know, no one did that. Everyone just got smashed to bits round here. It was actually a surprise to hear young people from places like Bentley, Stainforth and Hatfield say they want to go into the police as a job, especially with their shared history. But to hear that young people are picking a job for life and that schools are just churning out people who are workers, even at 11. You can’t see the bigger picture, and why should you? It would overwhelm me, I think, at those young people’s ages.
I think the other factors that perhaps add to this is the lack of opportunities. I’ve just come from that college. We stood there looking out and we were literally talking about what we could photograph around us. I was reflecting on 30 years ago (when I was at that college) and why I didn’t go straight into photography, it’s because it was, and is so bleak. Back then it was post-industrial. Now, maybe there’s some stuff on these post-industrial sites, but the faces, the weather, the landscape which is scarred and smashed up and it’s bleak and you just think there are less opportunities here. You’re growing up here where it’s often just warehouses and car parks.
So yeah, I think it does shape what they think. I think some of them have beautiful dreams of what they could be and there’s definitely trends, which is lovely. Football is massive, both girls and boys. It’s fantastic. So, I namecheck that in the timeline. The Lionesses winning meant there was a peak of girls who wanted to be footballers. One Born Every Minute that used to be on Channel Four inspired a lot of young girls to be midwives. The fact that we’ve got a wildlife park that’s nationally recognised has inspired young zoologists. I think schools’ careers talks are a bit more open and I think the internet’s obviously having a gigantic effect. We can presume a bit, but that first initial work in 2014 was looked at by The Sociological Review and they were interested in those trends.
What bothers me most is the reluctance in many of the young people to say a brilliant, magical thing. They seem to feel that they have to say something practical or achievable. And what is achievable here is different than in many other places.
Anna: Your work has a strong focus on austerity and the current cost of living crisis as being factors that contribute to the future of these children. Do you think this creates a sense of uncertainty for the future, or do you find that children have a sense of resilience around these things?
Les: From their perspective you don’t know any different because you’re only able to experience what you’re able to experience, aren’t you? We shield young people as much as we possibly can, so you make something out of Christmas and birthdays, they don’t know that you’re scouring the internet and Facebook for free activities.
Both my kids went to a primary school where they introduced resilience to them in year one and I think that’s great. So they’re kind of recognizing that, but I think it’s that ability to dream that we are taking away from them. I think the thing that’s horrible about austerity is the things you lose before you know about them.
I think all my projects are usually directly related to austerity. That’s the world we live in. It’s absolutely frustrating that only when it affects mortgage rates, does it then become a cost of living crisis. Five years before that, I was making work about people in destitution because in 2016 we had 1.25 million people living in destitution and now I think we’re at 5 million.
A good two thirds of the country is well-off enough to be all right about directly having to survive day to day. So, austerity is maybe not affecting them necessarily. Yet I don’t understand how people don’t see it as part of their lives and how they vote and how they do things day to day, and which charities they might support or what job they might choose or any of that.
I think for young people, a lot of pressure is put on them to have to think about the state of the world as well as protecting this lovely, fragile dream that they might have. I think they’re super resilient, but I also think that without a doubt, I’ve never seen so much anxiety ever, even today, in that classroom that I was just in, there was someone who couldn’t sit and face me. There were people who had to leave. It’s a very intense part of your life and you feel everything. So yeah, I think austerity is in everything. It’s ruining the lives of everybody I work with around here.
Anna: One thing that I really enjoyed about your exhibition was your ability to capture a story through a single word, it was very powerful and very well executed. Can you tell us a bit about your thought process that enabled you to get to this point, and why you chose to work in this way? And can you also tell us a bit about any ethical dilemmas or thoughts you may have had throughout?
Les: So, I suppose, it goes back to this sort of origin story. I had been commissioned to work for six months in Breightmet in Bolton, which is a very big estate. It’s one of the most deprived parts of Bolton, and this commission was to document that area. I had to do some workshops with young people which were also meant to reflect what it was like to live and grow up there.
The spark came from the workshops where I was working with primary age kids. I’d invented this idea that they needed to create a passport for themselves that included information about what they cared about, and dreamt about, what their favourite things were etc.
One girl in particular, when we created her passport photo, she wanted to be a boxer and had got the idea from her dad. I knew that I wanted to photograph these young people with their parents, carers, or whoever looks after them at home to see what influenced them at home, and that’s how the aspiration idea sparked. When we finally did the Aspirations portrait with her, her dad came and his quote was to be a boxer. That’s what he wanted to be when he was nine, like her. But he had medical advice that meant he couldn’t box. And it was this idea of this frustrated life distilled into just one word, but also the fact that they were both the same, separated by a generation yet sat side by side in a picture.
It came from the idea of how can I get a dream into a picture? How can I get the future into the picture when the present is what it is? And, it’s how to escape that sort of documentary trap of falling back on our cliches and overused ideas. That’s how we ended up with Aspirations looking like it looks.
The absolute key bit, though is, it’s not my vision, is it? It’s theirs. To me, this is facilitation. I’m letting her tell you what her dream is, whether or not she makes it you can’t deny that it’s her dream. We should be able to allow that little flower to bloom.
There’s one thing that I haven’t mentioned yet about the look of the project. We have to physically look up to every single one of those young people. Even the youngest girl who was like two and a half. I sit on the floor to take every image.
Thinking about the ethical element, a lot of the people I have worked with in past projects can’t be photographed. There’s only 1 in 10 people who want to be photographed and are prepared to be in a gallery. So, we’re only hearing from a select few voices. So I suppose it’s about hearing from those who I can’t picture. So, that was a bit of a dilemma for me, which I’ve had a few times. When facilitating projects like this, I question whether handing over the camera is useful. We might put too much pressure on people to capture how they feel, so it’s a question of how far the photographer should go to control the images. It’s about compromise isn’t it? This is one of our massive dilemmas in participatory and socially engaged work.
Anna: If you were to describe your practice to somebody, would you say that you’re a documentary photographer? How would you describe it?
Les: I consider myself a socially engaged practitioner. The labels of ‘collaborative’, ‘community’ or ‘participatory photographer’ could all be applied to me, but participants are at the heart of my work and my intent to make the work public. Socially engaged practice is more than caring, it’s about having an awareness of the interconnectedness of our actions and the work that we make. It should have an effect on the world.
Anna: What is one thing that you hope that the viewers will learn, or take away with them from your work?
Les: So we spoke slightly ahead of time and about this in the earlier answers. I want people to obviously think, I want them to take a little bit of reflection time and step out of their situation and to weigh it all up. You know, that’s why the timeline shows the last ten years. I’m anticipating the next question, we can do it again in 2034 and then 2044, but what are we looking for when we look back? It can’t just be nostalgia, looking at haircuts and fashion. We should be trying to learn and act.
For the last ten years we have not thought about what we are doing for young people, what we are offering and each time there are moments to think about the future it seems to be dismissed. When the so-called Brexit election was happening in 2019, I knocked on doors all around here to ask what mattered to people, and why Brexit was more important to them than their children’s or grandchildren’s future.
There was a choice between thinking about whether your child’s school could be fully funded and you could have free education for the rest of your life, or to get Brexit done, and as a nation we chose to get Brexit done.
I don’t understand how we don’t think more seriously about the future. I just want to give people a nudge. Keeping us distracted and separated from each other is how we’ve gotten into this state. So maybe it’s about saying, look, you’re part of this.
Anna: Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today. It’s been really lovely, and I’ve really enjoyed getting to know more about the project. The last question I have for you is, how do you envision how the aspirations of children will evolve by 2034 for Aspirations20?
Les: This is the thing now, by calling this one Aspirations10, I’ve clearly signed up to the next one!
I have thought about it, but not much because I wouldn’t have thought that we would have had five chances to do something different about the future in the ten years that passed.
I truly don’t know, though, because a lot of my projects are about desires, wishes and aspirations obviously. But if you ask people, what do you want? What do you want the world to be like? People, especially young people, only want three things, which is inequality to be ended, wars to end, and they want the planet to be looked after. Nobody can argue with those. So why isn’t that how we run the world? Because it isn’t a childish view. We must look after the planet because we will not have all this in ten years.
Over the years of working with people in destitution, I couldn’t ask them any questions about the future because they were just surviving in the now. And my worry is that we’ll all get to that state. For example, if I went to Lebanon or Gaza or Ukraine and asked them what they wanted for the future, they would just say peace straight away. They’re not gonna say anything else, are they?
It’s hard to imagine something better. We could start by getting rid of most of our MPs, but the tricky thing is the electorate has already been told we’ve only got this choice and it’s these guys. So, a lot of us don’t vote. I think I should end on something positive, but I can’t think of anything. I’m sorry.
Anna: That’s okay. That’s how you feel and that is valid. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk about your project with me. I really appreciate it and have loved getting to hear more about the work you have done in Doncaster.
The power of Monaghan’s project reminds us of the power that photography holds, particularly socially engaged photography, to humanise statistics into relatable and emotional narratives of real lived experience. By involving the people of Doncaster in the creative process of this project, Monaghan has created a shared space where diverse voices can be heard, important conversations can be sparked and shared learning and critical thinking can transform communities into active agents of change.
However, regardless of the realities of life as a young person facing today’s cost of living crisis, there are glimmers of hope. Monaghan’s work is filled to the brim with heartwarming reflections of adults, and the responses of children sharing their dreams, with limitless imaginations, unburdened by reality. Their aspirations reflect a pure and unfiltered hope for the future, filled with dreams of becoming space explorers, artists, midwives, or even dinosaurs. The words of the children and adults featured in Monaghan’s Aspiration10 project remind us of the beauty of curiosity and give us the courage to envision a brighter, bigger world. Monaghan’s project is a gentle reminder to reconnect with our own ambitions and to foster a world where those dreams, regardless of how big or small, can become true.
Text: Anna Wijnhoven
Images: Les Monaghan
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