Using portraits in Autograph’s archive collection as a starting point, this two-part workshop invites students to explore how histories are collected, shared and created through photography.
Taking place within the context of your school, the first workshop will be centred around transforming the classroom into a pop-up exhibition using portraits from Autograph’s Exhibition in a Box and Archive Learning Resource. Students will write and discuss their intuitive responses to the portraits, listening to and interpreting the images. Students will work together to find thematic, historical and conceptual links between the portraits and will take ownership in curating their own mini-exhibition. Their discussions will be the basis of justifying their creative decision-making in curating the portraits.
After the introductory session, Autograph will leave the display up in the classroom, inviting you to engage with the photographs independently with your students through a series of prompts.
The second workshop will take at Autograph 2 - 6 weeks later. Moving beyond discussing and analysing photographs, this session invites students to think about their own identities through a series of practical activities. They will explore self-representation through self-portraiture, still life and writing. Students will consider the choices they make when asked to self-represent and self-express through these three forms. Students will work collaboratively, using the portraits from Workshop 1 as a jumping board, to think about how their self-representations could be articulated as part a wider expression of their local community and its history.
This workshops will ask:
How do we read portraits and what do they tell us about the sitter?
How do you curate an exhibition and what choices might a curator make to link images thematically together?
What does it mean to articulate oneself through portraiture and how would you choose to portray yourself?
A free teaching resource of 19th century photographs portraying people of African, Caribbean and South Asian descent during the Victorian era in Britain.
Find out moreA free teaching resource of diverse photography produced in Britain since 1945, fostering a deeper understanding of the complex intersections of race, culture and individual identity.
Find out moreEsme Allman is a poet, theatremaker and facilitator from South London. Her work explores History, the Archive, Imagined Worlds, and Desire within black femininity. Esme has been an artist on several Creative Curriculum projects as part of the Barbican Centre, the Unicorn Theatre and the Primary Shakespeare Company.
Each project has explored how theatre, poetry and performance are embedded in the curriculum at Key Stage 1, 2 and 3 levels and how creativity enriches the learning experience for pupils.
She is a theatre director and her upcoming production Statues by Azan Ahmed, will run at the Bush Theatre in Autumn 2024. She directed To The People by John Dinneen and Alex Urwin (April 2022) and was the assistant director on Cinderella (Brixton House, 2023), Alice in Wonderland (RADA Vanburgh Theatre, 2023) and Run It Back (Hackney Showroom 2018).
She has facilitated creative workshops with the Arvon Foundation, Sydenham Arts, Kings Theatre, Fevered Sleep and the Robert Bosch Foundation in Berlin. Esme's work has been commissioned by the Barbican Centre, Roundhouse, English Heritage, the ICA, BBC Radio 3, and BBC Radio 6.
Everyone is welcome at Autograph. Planning a visit? Have a look at our Visit Us page to find out more about getting to the gallery, accessibility and more.
Autograph is a place to see things differently. Since 1988, we have championed photography that explores issues of race, identity, representation, human rights and social justice, sharing how photographs reflect lived experiences and shape our understanding of ourselves and others.
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