Nothing about us without us
When I got the idea to host an exhibition of student work I could have just selected the images myself. But I decided that no I would ask a bunch of my amazing photography friends to help me curate the work.
But then I started thinking about it and realized that we would pick stuff that was relevant to our view which can be more technical and emotive but it would be selected with an adults filter.
Youth Curators
So that is when I realized my mistake. I need your eyes on the images first. I need a group of young curators to pick images that are relevant to your world, because this is your exhibition.
You will start with curating the Instagram feed and then when we have the whole collection of images ready to go I will have you create a shortlist of each challenge. You will do this as groups of 4-6. The group of you will get to curate one challenge.
Which means that you will decide together which images get to go up online in our Instagram feed and then one of you will be assigned as the group super organized and reliable administrator who will put the images up with the comments that you made about the image as a group. I will also be teaching you how to provide compassionate, constructive, critiques of images.
If this sounds like you and you would like to be a Click Happy curator. Then sign up below.
You will be taught:
- Social media management
- Public Relations skills
- What judges look for in images
- How to critique with compassion
Youth Mentors
See one, do one, teach one. The best way to learn. I know that I became a much better photographer when I started teaching photography. By struggling to find the words to help you understand I deepened my own understanding of photography. And you don't need to be a salty old photographer to be a teacher. You just need to know a little bit more that the person you are teaching.
Did you know that in Hunter-Gatherer tribes there are no teachers? The kids learn very complex bush survival skills and trades, but they don't learn it in schools from teachers. Nope the 5-year-olds watch the 7-year-olds who are learning from the 10-year-olds who are watching the 14-year-olds who are learning from 17-year-olds. And they are learning through play. My dream of this 5-day course is that it is more like that. That you are all able to teach each other even though we are online. We are going to be setting up an online forum to go with the course and I am looking for mentors who have wrapped their head around manual settings and are willing to support the other kids in learning it. That way no one is left behind. Are you someone who would be willing to help? You can be a curator and not a mentor, and you can be a mentor and not a curator. Or you could be both. Just indicate your preference below.