Ourside Youth Mental Health 2021
Back in April I was approached by Bev & Bridie from Ourside Youth Club, to see if I could bring anything photography wise to their current project the young folks were working on. Of course I jumped at the opportunity to be involved.
The project was called Dress to Express and was about youth mental health. The young people were given a t-shirt in the 3rd lockdown and were asked to draw designs on them, the theme being mental health during the pandemic.
To take the project to the next level we discussed how we could use photography to portray how the young people were feeling during lockdown, Covid restrictions & the easing of restrictions.
The young people were fantastic, they came up with some brilliant ideas of how they could pose to tell the story of how hard it has been for all of them. Being disconnected from their friends and their routine completely disrupted, depression, sadness and even death that is a lot for a young person to deal with.
From the photos we made a short video montage along with a photobook for them to keep forever, maybe even show their children when they ask about the pandemic.
I'm super proud of all of them and their contributions to the project and I hope they decide to take the project further, to raise awareness because expressing how we are feeling certainly helps us to deal with it.
WELL DONE THE YOUNG FOLKS OF OURSIDE ❤