This is not simply about getting young people in Gaza to take photos but enabling them to apply multiple layers of meaning to those photographs and thereby their surroundings.

New Routes is a photostory project that will explore the lives of young people across the Gaza Strip. This project will collaborate with young people and enable them to create stories of their everyday routes and endeavors.  In other contexts this type of approach has helped highlight undocumented issues, break stereotypes, and reveal new routes forward.

Through a series of workshops young people will generate their own themes, learn composition skills, and write narratives to accompany their photographs.  The project aims to work with six diverse groups each containing between ten and fifteen young people.  Results from the different workshops will be put together in an exhibition in Gaza and the UK. 

I designed this project in response to a ‘knowledge transfer’ initiative launched by a group of Palestinians living in Southampton and civil society groups in Gaza. The creative process is punctuated with the exhibition and in subsequent dialogue generated by the photostories.  

A brilliant team of volunteers has already spent many hours advising, creating, and designing material for use in publicity and workshops.  The necessary permissions to access Gaza have been granted and we will arrive in June.  All that is now required are the funds for equipment and materials.