To start it would just be great to hear what brought you to the project and maybe how it impacted your own work over the time you spent with the people of Grange Farm?

After a chance meeting with Rachel the owner of My Yard, we talked about my previous work with young people and her mission with surplus food and empowerment of the grange farm family. I agreed it would be great to be a part of their summer workshops and it all spiralled from there naturally. 

My work has always been joyful, free and rebellious with a child-like approach so I think working with young people is a very natural collaboration. It was important to show the young people how this way of working belongs to everybody, you have to embrace the chaos and be spontaneous. Using whatever is around you and available as your playground. There is no right or wrong way, an emphasis is on self expression. What is yours is unique to you, own it, it is enough. 

I would love to help facilitate more projects like this with my work as I've noticed a positive impact but it has to happen naturally and when it is appropriate.

A big part of the project is spending time outdoors and nurturing a relationship with nature. How could viewing the project be helpful to those who want to have a better relationship with the outdoors?

I think now it's so easy to get lost in technology. If you take in mind that this project was made in the pandemic, I think that reconnection to people and nature was essential for everyone but young people especially. To have everyone together playing and getting lost in adventure and just connecting outside of a screen. This was helped and encouraged by all the brilliant work Rachel does with My Yard, lots of amazing activities started to happen on the estate and beyond for the young people. 

I came to your old Museum of Youth Culture pop-up and ended up buying the book Paradise Street: The Lost Art Of Playing Outside in your shop. It was incredible to be reminded how kids used to play 50 years ago on the streets. It epitomises that natural response to creativity, using what's around you to its maximum, to create and play in your own inventive dream worlds. I feel there is a connection with both books, for the young people to capture that feeling again themselves in 2021 I think is special and maybe the art of play is not so lost after all.

I like how it was really important to work with materials that were tangible and perishable (face paints, food, fancy dress). I saw it as representing the wider project as something bringing joy with an acceptance that it was temporary… Was it important to work with materials like these or was it just what was available?

There was an emphasis on using what is accessible and available, our guest workshops were constructed to demonstrate this. I think that is one of the most daunting things about the creative arts, what you need and what is expected of you to succeed. I don’t think it has to be that way, an original voice can be created from limitation and by being true to your own vision and tools. It’s important the new generation are not held back by outdated mindsets.  

It was important for you that the young people took their own photos and there was no exploitation of someone looking in, capturing and then leaving. When we give this power to the subject how does it elevate the story we get as a result?

Yeah, that's right. I think the project then becomes about Grange Farm and the people first and foremost. That way everything is portrayed exactly how it should be with no preconceptions or hidden motivations from an outside eye. I think it’s important to remember people get seduced by imagery and the rest is forgotten. It’s time we challenge this in a more considered way. Why do we empower a name when we can empower a community? 

A natural sense of joy is captured consistently throughout the book from the young people despite their ‘hardship’, I think you only get that when it comes from a pure place, the kids themselves. Everyone is comfortable with each other and living their lives together naturally. An encouragement to tell their own story. 

It’s really great to see the way there is no limit to what the kids choose to capture, we see them in portraits, creating outfits, capturing each other setting up images and pictures of the homes. It allows us to properly see the perspective of the young people… was this something that was encouraged early on or came from time with cameras?

We put on multiple guest workshops focused on beauty, prop making, styling and photography to demonstrate and simplify the process and mystery behind how you can approach the creative arts. I think once those workshops happened the young people then took over completely, with all the structure going out the window and fun carefree creative expression happening between everyone as they pleased. A feeling of joy is portrayed and it’s a beautiful thing to be immortalised in their book before the final development of the estate and separation of the grange farm family.