The exhibition is a result of research carried out by different departments across London Met.
Date: 15 October 2021
From 18 to 30 October, students, staff and the public can attend an exhibition representing the Covid-19 lockdown experiences of Black, Asian and/or other minoritised LGBTQIA+ communities through photographs.
The exhibition is part of the wider research project LamQ+: Understanding Lambeth’s LGBTQI+ communities in times of Coronavirus: a mixed-methods study, consisting of three research approaches: survey, Photovoice workshops and focus group.
The research team was led by Professor Louise Ryan, Director of the Global Diversities and Inequalities Research Centre, Donna Jones, Head of Social Work, Dr Karyofyllis Zervoulis, Senior Lecturer in Social Psychology, with research assistants Cinar Aydogan and Anna Jakobczak.
‘Photovoice’ is an empowering Participatory Action Research approach and through a series of workshops, facilitated by Donna Jones and professional photographer, Em Fitzgerald, co-researchers explored issues important to them producing original knowledge through their photographs and narratives.
The ‘voices’ of these communities are often under-represented in research studies, and as co-researchers on this project, they have had their voices brought to the forefront of a major research study.
One of the important purposes of Photovoice workshops as a research methodology is to challenge traditional research approaches by acknowledging and minimising the power dynamics inherent in the researcher/research participant relationship. An important part of each workshop was to reiterate this aim and to encourage on-going discussion.
Co-researchers were assured that Photovoice was not about the production of professional quality photographs, that there were no ‘right; or ‘wrong’ photographs, that every voice was an important and equal part of the process and the end product - the exhibition.
One Co-researcher on the Photovoice Workshops said: “Since being part of this research group over the last three weeks, it has been super empowering. It was a space for me that I found quite therapeutic, as well as just being really great to meet people who have very similar but also very different backgrounds. So for me, this is a queer space that I've never actually been exposed to.”
