About my practice
I am a creative practitioner, curator-producer and educator, specialising over the past 12 years on socially engaged approaches to practice. I make work in this way as I am interested in work which explores ethics of care and how collective creative experiences can promote positive social change. Regardless of which creative hat I am wearing, I employ participatory and collaborative methods of making with local communities, to ensure multiple voices are represented within the work.
I work mostly in photography but am interested in the expanded notions of what the medium can be, often playing with alternative processes, such as lumen printing, cyanotypes or photo-collage. Often photography is the starting point as I find the medium particularly accessible for others to engage in. Depending on how the collaborative process of making develops, however, works may develop into textiles, installations, text works, moving image or publications.
Often my work takes place outside of the gallery context, working on short and long term residency across a range of settings from health and social care to youth, justice, social housing, learning and environmental settings. Commissions have included projects with organisations such as Allotment Society UK, NHS England, Centre Point, CCA Glasgow, AA2A residency, Open Eye Gallery, Museum of Liverpool, Age UK and Manchester Histories.
For example I helped establish and have been working in collaboration with the Many Hands Craft Collective (an over60s group based at Victoria Square, Northwards Housing Association building) for the past seven years. Together we have explored arts and craft as an activist tool for the creative agency of older communities. Between 2016-2018 the group also collaborated with me on a Masters by Research project exploring the role of photography as a socially engaged arts practice resulting in a exhibition at Manchester Craft and Design centre and later a photographic publication launched at the Bound Book Fair in 2020.
I am currently developing more sustainable and regenerative approaches to my photographic arts practice, motivated not only by the climate emergency we find ourselves within, but also since becoming a mother and being hyper aware of what we are leaving behind for the next generation. To support this transition, I have undertaken both the Redeye Photography Network’s Climate Aware Course and Permaculture and Participatory Design Accredited Course but am actively looking to develop this area of my work further.
I am also studying a part time PHD at the University of Salford, exploring the potential of socially engaged approaches to engagement between cultural sectors and higher education where I hope to bring all aspects of my practice together.
For a full CV or for more information please feel free to email e.wewiora@gmail.com
You can also find out more about my curatorial and producer work via www.wewioraandbooth.com
