Below is a reflection on Create and Change 2023, led by Beth Kapila and Guleraana Mir. You can find out more about Create and Change 2024 here
By Guleraana Mir
Beth (Kapila, director) and I (Guleraana Mir, writer) delivered the Create Change sessions this autumn, allowing participants to spend one morning a week at Dolphin Womens’ Centre (DWC) connecting with each other, and exploring their creativity. The sessions have been designed to build on participants’ existing skills, as well as teach new ones, focusing on the theme of storytelling. Specifically through the lens of telling their own stories; creative expression to facilitate their own narratives.
We chose this theme because it reflects a central storyline of I Am The Ghost of Qandeel Baloch, a play that Beth and I are developing together. Qandeel Baloch was a Pakistani celebrity, a character a woman created for herself in an attempt to live the life she dreamed of; an attempt to regain some control in a society where women don’t always have much autonomy. However, this self that Qandeel curated was continuously picked at, criticised, and undermined. She had created a persona that threatened the status quo, and this was upsetting to those who seek to uphold it. The reality is that a woman like Qandeel would never have been able to live life without ruffling a few feathers, but at least she had the power of authenticity; even if that was through creating an alter-ego.
In a world where most of us are powerless, but especially women, how do we begin to control our own narratives? What are the stories we tell about ourselves, and to ourselves?
We used these questions to guide the sessions at DWC. This term we began by exploring how the women present themselves to each other through different creative approaches and drama games. This exploration of self was then widened out to the local area. Participants used images and collage to create representations from moments in their life, which we then added to a large map of Ward End and surrounding areas, building a picture of the local community. In order to work towards exploring the basics of storytelling we engaged in discussions around what the group enjoys watching, reading, listening to etc. and reflected on why we tell stories, and what all stories have in common.
One participant expressed that stories have a purpose whether it was intended by the creator, or not. This insightful comment led to a discussion that sometimes the intention behind our creations is not received in the way we were expecting. The notion that our art will always be interpreted in ways we can not control set the tone for the rest of the creative activity, and was an idea that we kept returning to. I believe it allowed the group to create and share more freely, knowing that we can not be responsible for what other people take from our work, or turn it into.
Given the demographic of the group, and that a range of languages are spoken, it felt appropriate in the early stages to cover all forms of storytelling. So we spent one morning in Ward End Park with cameras. The group walked and took photos of “a moment” – capturing images that might tell a story. These photographs were intriguing, inspiring and effortless. The following week we used the printed photographs as the basis for an activity that likened stories to journeys. Participants had the option to use words, or not, but the aim was to create a journey through the park using the photographs. From these journeys, we moved onto creating characters, once again starting from the personal to inform the creative activities.
Over a number of weeks we created two characters and populated their worlds with backstory, anecdotes and a deep understanding of who they are, their motivations and aspirations. Beth and I noted that despite having created complex (and complicated) characters, the group had chosen to hold them at a distance from themselves. Meaning that for a group of women of mostly South Asian heritage, the characters they were interested in did not look, or sound like them. Our discussion on representation was eye-opening. The group expressed a need for escapism in stories, and that they were keen to connect to their characters’ experiences, as opposed to their personal & cultural history. They demonstrated that there is a fine balance between imagination and truth, and an interesting perspective on representation and realism that is missing from the mainstream arts industry discourse around diversity.
Our final few weeks were dominated by discussion and words, but the group managed to create two fully formed characters, deciding how they would meet and what their journey together might look like. We even managed to script two key moments in our imagined play, exploring different approaches to writing dialogue.
This play may never get written, or performed, but for the women attending our sessions it represented something that was wholly theirs, something that defied expectations in so many ways. Both in terms of the world we created, the characters we put through the wringer and the discussions that peppered the process. As facilitators, we were blessed with so many nuggets of creativity and reflection from the participants which have prompted a deeper analysis of human behaviour and highlighted our intrinsic need to communicate, create, analyse, and derive meaning. All of this feeds into the core dilemma of how best to represent Qandeel Baloch that I outlined earlier.
Beth and I wanted to offer the women of Ward End the opportunity to engage in creative activities with the understanding that as adults there are very few spaces where we are invited to just ‘play’ without the pressure to create a perfect product at the end. As professional artists we appreciate these spaces, and often crave them ourselves. The group embraced this ethos wholeheartedly, surprising us at every turn, leaving us with this final thought:
The interconnected nature of creating work alongside the people it is intended for is human, intellectual, philosophical and most of all, humbling.
It’s a case of who’s teaching who?
We are currently on the look out for our next Create and Change artist. Details here.
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