In 2017 I was invited by Claire Venus to film the Voice of the Child artist residency, a programme run with Action for Children across Central Northumberland Children’s Centres, in Ashington, Newbiggin, Lynemouth, Bedlington, Choppington, Pegswood and Morpeth. The aim was to find creative ways to explore, record and understand how young children express themselves, working through creative activity to support speech and language development.

Filming the Voice of the Child Artist Residency

Artists including Judith Davies, whose practice includes delivering participatory art projects, worked with children across ceramics, textiles, audio and creative writing. One strand of the project saw a set of teepees made using eco-dyeing techniques, vegetables, fruit and plants used to create colour on fabric, which became imaginary play spaces used by the centres every week. Sessions were co-created with Action for Children staff and built around child-led play rather than a fixed activity plan.

My job was to document sessions as they happened, staying out of the way enough that children and staff could keep working naturally. With children this young, most only a year or two old, that meant filming with real patience, since very little of what mattered happened on cue. A child settling into a session, reaching for material, watching another child work, these were the moments worth holding onto, even when they didn’t look like much on the surface.

A Programme, Not a Single Session

The Voice of the Child artist residency ran across multiple centres and multiple years, and by 2018 over 1,600 children and young people had taken part. It was funded and supported by Central Northumberland Children’s Centres, Museums Northumberland, Arts Council England and Northumberland County Council, and left behind a genuine legacy, interactive artworks now used in the centres, a set of teepees still in weekly use, and a caravan converted for noise-making play at Ashington Children’s Centre.

If you’d like to see more of my work filming artists and creative residencies, you can explore my Artists & Culture work.