Lockdown Luton: Listening to the Voices of Young Lutonians

Building on Draw me a Home an exhibition from Idit Elia Nathan at the Departure Lounge gallery in Luton, I have begun the process of taking Nathan's concept out to young people in Luton to ask them to share their experiences of home during lockdown. I started this pilot project at Marjorie's Education with young people from the town's migrant community.

The session started by looking at cultural interpretations of the home, followed by some prompts Nathan had used for her exhibition. Students were then asked to add their own prompts to the bank and address questions that concerned their lived experiences. I then introduced a selection of wonderful lockdown portraits from @JJWALLERPHOTOS, as he documented lockdown in his Brighton community. His images served as a further visual prompt.

We moved then to writing and students were asked to write a short response outlining their experiences. We peer reviewed the texts. For homework, students were asked to re-visit some of the prompts we looked at and to consider any additional information they would like to include in their work. We will continue with the writing process in the next class.

This work was funded by ⁦@departureluton.