Post 1

Had a meeting with Jo yesterday about EPQ progress and she suggested that I could try keeping a blog, as I'm not having much luck with a sketchbook/journal. So, here's some ideas so far:

• I've sent this letter to Barnardos with the hope of being able to talk to someone there about child abuse, sexual exploitation and child carers.
• I've drafted a survey which I'm hoping to send out around college, so that I can figure out which area I want to focus on, ie, the one that people seem to have the least knowledge of. These questions need to be refined still though, and I think (Jo suggested) that I should show them to a psycology teacher/ student, because they know how to make questions un-biased. (Maybe I should post this on internet?)
• I need to do some drawings/design work regarding what I'm actually going to make.

Last week I had an awesome idea! I read a line on the Barnardo's website, from a young(ish) boy who was sexually exploited; 'I was just a shell.' Prior to this, I'd been wondering who on earth I was going to get to model whatever I made. I was wondering this because a lot of the adverts produced by Barnardos are quite shocking and hard-hitting, (like this, and this), and I'm pretty sure I don't know anyone who's going to let me use their child for it! So this is basically my idea: a child sized manequin (maybe with a  hole or two?) dressed with a floaty, winged outfit (based on a phoenix, although it could also be really ethereal) 'rising from the ashes' of deprivation, poverty and abuse, which would be represented by objects (eg. broken spirits bottles, needles, cigarettes etc.)  scattered around its feet. This would represent the childs potential to become something more, but it would be chained by the ankles to the floor, showing how they cannot escape. I have literally just had a thought that I could leave some kind of wire cutters or an axe on the floor nearby, just out of reach of the sculpture, but within reach of the viewer; they are the people who can help. Obviously this would be quite a large scale installation type sculpture.

The second element of the idea came again, from researching previous child abuse campaigns. I found that video/tv ads are much more common than I realised, and also that the commentaries are generally scripted and read by an actor/tress, instead of being an actual story, they are an amalgamation of several accounts. This made me think of how I could script a young person talking about their 'experiences', which could become part of the presentation. The presentation would also involve me having to make a speech (incidentally I have to do some non-literary writing for english, which would kill two birds with one stone), and having to answer questions. Jo thought I could maybe hire an empty shop on the high street to make it very public, since I said it would mean a lot if this project could really help to raise awareness and get some support going on the issue I decide to focus on.