Telephonic Youth: arts engagement with research strand (2021-24)

John Hansard Gallery Case Study
Photo: Telephonic Trio
Overview

Project: Telephonic Youth: arts engagement with research strand is a collaboration between Eve Colpus, Associate Professor, History Department, and Lynne Dick, Head of Engagement and Learning at John Hansard Gallery, University of Southampton. The collaboration has developed learning around arts-led community engagement in research. Partnership activities ran from May 2021 to May 2022, with outcomes in 2023 and evaluation in 2024.

Number and ages of participants: 74 participants, including 39 children aged 4-12 and 3 aged 14-15.

Location: John Hansard Gallery, University of Southampton.

Two main activities: 1) 5 Space to Create! Workshops ran between May and November 2021; 2) Telephonic Trio project (10 workshops ran October 2021-April 2022), culminating in two exhibitions launched in April and May 2022.

Artists and team: Workshops were run by two regional artists supported by John Hansard Gallery Engagement and Gallery Assistant teams.

Project summary

Telephonic Youth: arts engagement with research strand is a collaboration between an academic research project, based in the History Department and John Hansard Gallery at the University of Southampton, to develop learning around arts-led community engagement in research. The larger research project is ‘Children and young people’s telephone use and telephone cultures in Britain, c. 1984-1999’, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), led by the historian Eve Colpus. Using archival research, interviews, and digital methods for memory-capture, this research traces the relationship between young people’s telephone use and youth agency before the wide accessibility of mobile phones. 

Eve Colpus and Lynne Dick, Head of Engagement and Learning at John Hansard Gallery, worked in partnership to co-run timelines of early research and arts engagement with families and young people.  Outcomes included intergenerational engagement with the research and two community exhibitions of artworks produced by young people, shown in Southampton. The project has culminated in significant shared learning between Eve and Lynne around the collaborative approach to concurrent arts-led community engagement and academic research.

Timeline of collaboration

  • 2019-2020: Initial conversations between Eve and Lynne and research funding bid submitted
  • May 2021: Research began
  • May-November 2021: Space to Create! Family friendly workshops
  • October 2021-May 2022: Telephonic Trio workshop series
  • April 2022-May 2022: Community exhibitions launched at John Hansard Gallery and K6 Gallery
  • 2023: Telephonic Trio completed Bronze Arts Award
  • 2023—2024: Evaluation
  • 2024: Sharing of practice at 3 University of Southampton researcher training events
Project Description

Co-creation methodology

One of the key aspects of the collaboration lay in how arts and creative engagement processes could be embedded more thoughtfully into early phases of academic research. Initial conversations focused on exploring how arts engagement could lead to participation in a research agenda as part of practice focused on play, discovery and conversation.  Eve and Lynne shared awareness from the start that there were no pre-determined outcomes, but rather value in learning through risk-taking. The goal was to achieve a creative and discursive space in relation to the research undertaken by Eve and her team, and enable creative responses.

Key considerations:

  • Pooling expertise and exchange of knowledge (arts, engagement and research practice/processes)
  • Co-authorship and collaboration
  • Intersection between arts and research practice (art not just as a final illustration of pre-determined research)
  • How the research project aligns coherently with the gallery exhibition programme
  • Generosity and creation of an equal partnership
  • Building a wider team to bridge knowledge
  • An agreed set of values around engagement and learning, and building audiences
  • Accessibility to the project themes and the gallery
  • Flexibility – especially during the Covid 19 pandemic and lockdown policies in England
  • Good communication and time to meet regularly and adapt the project
Space to Create – Family Friendly Workshops

Local to Southampton, Joey Walters’ practice explores binary codes and visual forms of communication.  Joey was commissioned to lead 5 workshops at the gallery from May to November 2021, and worked with 71 participants, including 39 children.   The aims were to build new knowledge, confidence, skills and a space for enjoyment while making a connection between creating and the wider research concepts. 

An experienced JHG Workshop Assistant, Cat Tarrant, supported these sessions and was a key part of the Telephonic Youth team.  Activities ranged from creating Cyanotypes, soundscapes inspired by ring tones, taking old phone handsets apart, communal drawings and exploring binary code phrases.  The workshops generated a relaxed workshop atmosphere that inspired cross-generational conversations and reflection, and adults took part in research and shared memories on the Digital Map on the Telephonic Youth website.

One participant said: These activities have made me think about the history behind the telephone – what a different time we’re in now compared to previous generations and yet we still struggle with basic communication and connection.

Telephonic Trio (14-18)

Aimed to:

  • Enable young people to reflect on their experiences as phone users, creating a visual interpretation of data and sources from the early research.
  • Create space for young people to co-produce their own creative responses to the materials in creative media of their choosing, co-curating 2 exhibitions.
  • Support participants in making links between their practice and the wider research themes.

Outreach

The initial ambition included engaging young people who would be referred by local youth groups and provision, and through planned conversations with Southampton City Council children’s services, working outside of the school system.  The impact of the Covid pandemic and lockdowns led to delays and made it hard to reach young people through the usual channels, and 3 young people opted to take part.

Engagement and co-production

Russell Squires (Artist) and Cat Tarrant (Workshop Assistant) met the group fortnightly between October 2021 and May 2022, responding to heritage prompts and resources provided by Eve. With support from Russell, the group chose a range of activities, including:

  • Still life photography – taking inspiration from Todd McLellan’s Things Come Apart series to photograph parts of disassembled landline telephones, and they also drew on the traditions of vanitas still life artworks
  • Off-site photography of telephone boxes around the city, which included work in between sessions
  • Zine-making
  • Rap and writing
  • Playing with light and colour

The young artists took the lead in deciding the name of their group, Telephonic Trio, and the title of their main exhibition, Dial up.  They spent 2 additional sessions in the gallery exhibition space co-curating content, deciding on the layout and co-authoring the wall text.  

Exhibitions

Dial up, ran at John Hansard Gallery 6 April-7 May 2022 and reached 1357 visitors.

Responding to the phone as an object, image and communication device, Dial up explored its importance and effects on young people, both good and bad.

One visitor left feedback that it had made them think more about how young people ‘perceive telephones as a means of connection’. Another reflected, from the vantage point of their own teenage years in the late 1990s, they ‘think (or suspect) that telephone communication is now much less planned’.

Photo: Reece Straw

Thinking inside the box was on display at K6 Gallery (two former telephone boxes in Southampton) 6 May-25 September 2022.

It explored the heritage of the telephone kiosk as space for young people’s expression. The Telephonic Trio displayed their photographs alongside excerpts from interviews completed on another strand of the larger research project. This exhibition offered Eve and Lynne the opportunity to reflect on responses to arts engagement beyond the setting in which it had taken place.

Photo: Nosa Malcolm

Evaluation

There were regular check-ins with the artists, amongst the whole Telephonic Youth team, and with key partners, such as K6 Gallery.  This meant that the project could adapt and flex as new content was generated.

Reflective exercises were particularly important in the engagement with the Telephonic Trio, to facilitate them tracking their own progress over a long-term project. The Trio were asked each session how they felt, with a choice of starting point and whether they felt they had moved or not during the project.

  • Smaller circle = not so happy or confident about…
  • Outer circle – feeling really good or confident about….

In addition, they gathered comments, materials and reflections which they put into their Bronze Arts Award portfolios.

One of the Telephonic Trio said:  It was nice to meet a professional artist and be taught new skills in the gallery.  I feel like these new skills will always be with me.  I expected to have to take part in drawing tasks, which I’m not confident in, but we actually used a variety of media forms… I have learnt that art comes in many forms. I can express what’s on my mind through my art and create my own aesthetic.

(Outcomes wheel questions designed by Lynne Dick)

The Workshop Assistant said:  I’m very grateful to have been involved in the project from start to finish, attending every workshop, working with a professional artist and getting to know 3 amazing young people. This is the first time I’ve worked with a research project in this kind of role so it has been beneficial….Having the young people curating their exhibition in the gallery was brilliant. They’d grown in confidence throughout the project and for it to culminate in them deciding where their artwork should go was an empowering moment for them as young people.

Learning points and challenges

Learning points:

  1. Effective collaborations are based on consistent professional behaviours, and having the capacity to flex when challenges arise.
  2. Aligning goals means building in capacity to develop the professional collaboration. Investing in co-authoring and co-creating productive processes achieves knowledge exchange and richer project outcomes.
  3. There is value in building a wider cross-skilled, project team who add capacity, bring in different expertise and help to develop and embed the project.
  4. Engaging a smaller group of young people enabled quick decision-making and agility and developed leadership skills and confidence.
  5. Co-creative methods build trust and stimulate longer-term professional collaborations and relationships.
  6. Supporting young people’s skills development through careful planning, project delivery and aftercare, which helped to pace the project, made space for them to consider their whole experience and complete their Bronze Arts Award.

Key challenges:

  1. The concurrent timelines of research and arts engagement was exciting but posed challenges in having relatable and relevant heritage resources readily available to artists and the group.
  2. The Covid 19 pandemic disrupted outreach and we missed out on building/engaging with key partnerships, for example with Children’s Services and attracting more young people.
  3. As the project shifted and aspects of engagement needed to be updated, we had to allow more time to ensure the project stayed within the research ethics framework, and gain University approvals for amendments.  
  4. Aligning expectations about how long it might take to collaborate and invest in the co-creative model of engagement and pull together the arts and academic research.
  5. Challenges around working with a small group could make you question validity of the engagement, and also how to maintain a momentum within individual sessions. Drawing on wider resources, including the Workshop Assistant can be key.
Project funders

‘Children and young people’s telephone use and telephone cultures in Britain c. 1984-1999’ is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC): Grant number AH/V008943/1. (University of Southampton University Ethics and Research Governance Online numbers: 56966 and 67005.) John Hansard Gallery provided generous In-kind support, including staff time and gallery resources. K6 Gallery provided sponsorship for Thinking inside the box.

Links to further information

Telephonic Youth

The Telephonic Trio Dial Up

Six months of Telephonic Youth – Space to Create!

Community art exhibition foregrounds new youth voices in research

Legacy

This collaboration has achieved a deeper level of appreciation and understanding for both John Hansard Gallery and researchers on ‘Children and young people’s telephone use and telephone cultures in Britain, c. 1984-1999’, about co-creative research practice. We have shared lessons from our collaboration within university networks and panel discussions including with early career researchers, Centre for Higher Education Practice (CHEP) and with senior researchers within Research with Innovation Services. The project has created a space for honest exchange around how researchers can forefront the value of arts engagement work in wider research, and the working practices of professionalism, respect and trust from which collaborations between the academic research and GLAM sectors can mutually benefit.