I'd like to invite you to a launch event in June to see what I've been working on for the past two years. The exhibition will feature work from Whitehawk residents Lisa Pettitt, Sharon Scaife and myself.

Along with anthropologist Dr Simon Newitt and Grant Phillips, we spent the day with two of the participants looking through their ethnographic collections. Between them, they’ve spent the last 8 months taking photographs and documenting aspects of their lives for this project.

I had the pleasure of speaking at Daniel Regans Social Works Arts and Health get together a few months ago. I shared some stories about some of the projects that have been keeping me busy over the past few years, but my main focus was on this project. Luckily, Katharine Lazenby was on hand to document the day, so I thought I’d share some of what she said, mainly because I find it very useful to hear what other people think this project is about. I think she sums it up very well.

“Upstate Girls” has taken many forms over the years—hundreds of hours of video and audio, an archive of local vocabulary, collaborations with the local historical society, a nonprofit arts camp, even a museum.