Guest Blog by a participant

- 1 -

It was a cold autumn morning in 2009 when I was introduced to the person who shall be known as my photography teacher, I was in Ashington. As I entered the building, I saw dull faces everywhere, until I walked upstairs into the big room where I was introduced to Nicola Maxwell who, along with Helix Arts, would introduce me to the world of photography and give me a lot to laugh about. I hated going to STQ (the base of the Northumberland Intensive Surveillance and Supervision Programme -ISSP), but I knew that once a week I would be able to get out with the cameras and snap some pictures of rural Northumberland. I didn’t realise then that at the end of this project I would curate and install my own exhibition at Woodhorn. As the weeks went by, our group learnt more about photography and techniques to show others how to accomplish tasks. This could sometimes be tiring as the other young people did not always feel they wanted to be involved. This was overcome with the young people getting out in the car with Staff from ISSP and Nicola. Even though the winter was coming, and at points nobody could be bothered, everybody kept high spirits.

I can remember the first picture I snapped on a proper SLR camera, it was of the Powerstation at Lynemouth from a hill on the beach a few hundred metres away.  This at first didn't seem interesting until I had actually realised "yeah, I've just used a proper camera ha... I want one now".

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After everything I had achieved with the photography project in Northumberland I kept in touch with Helix Arts to let them know how things were going. In the summer of 2010, a while after I had finished my initial photography project, Juliana Mensah from Helix asked me to be the photographer for an event as part of a young people’s project in Byker. I did this with a graphic designer by the name of Tommy Anderson; who I’d met in previous workshops with Helix. By this time I had enrolled onto a college course in Newcastle doing photography. I used Juliana’s offer as an opportunity to gain some experience in documenting events before I entered college.

I had arrived on the day with my camera, and started shooting pictures of the event.  I didn't capture any young people's faces whilst shooting, as this was part of the brief I'd been given.  It was challenging to do but I managed to capture some strong images.  I was praised by staff at ISSP Byker for my work with Nicola in Northumberland.  After the shoot had taken place I talked to people at the event to see what contacts I could make and to tell them about future projects.  It was still daylight when I made my way home, onto the metro I went.  When I got home I immediately started editing pictures for Juliana and I gave them to her the following week.

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It had been a while since I had last been in touch with Helix and I wasn’t sure if they would still want to keep in touch with me. But as I’d met Nicola for a few mentoring sessions at the Helix office during the Northumberland project in 2009, I figured I could still keep in touch – so I did.

In Spring 2012 Helix offered me a great personal development opportunity, the chance to build a portfolio, gain more knowledge and document events. I also got the chance to work with Nicola again. I said yes as this was a great thing, I didn’t have a proper portfolio, so along with Helix, Nicola helped me build on my portfolio. I was given a budget to manage and a great sum was taken from this to print my portfolio and buy the essentials I needed for this. We looked at my older images of Northumberland as well as looking at my newer work to see which I could fit in to the portfolio. The mentoring sessions with Nicola also involved other support like: successfully helping me apply for a degree course which began in September 2012. I plan to keep in touch with Helix in the future as they’ve always been there for me when it’s come to things like this.