#22: Interview with Emma Connor and The Ilford Experiment

I met a brilliantly useful stakeholder in Emma Connor, a Child Psychotherapist for Your Space Therapies (https://yourspacetherapies.org). She specialises in helping young children who have experienced trauma, she uses a lot of play and creativity in her sessions. We met on another creative project I took part in last year where she took us through some of the tools and techniques that she uses in therapy. I found that her methods were very applicable to people of all ages, they were certainly helpful to me. We had a conversation in which she explained her methods in more depth. Some of her guidance has become guiding principles for my research. She identified that in order to help people heal from trauma there needs to be three key elements present:
– Empathy
– Mutual Joy States
– Offers Of Adventure

This was a revelation to hear these key elements laid out so clearly. It was a massive relief that I didn’t need to involve myself with long therapeutic conversations with participants in order to help them with their mental health. Just as with children, adults need to be able to explore and discover a sense of adventure in an environment of empathy and share that joy with others. These ideas evoked the kind of theatrical and reflective journey that I would like to provide for my participants.

She also explained the concept of Transitional Objects. These are objects that are given particular meaning, they might give the bearer courage or confidence. Children’s teddies often serve this function. I realised that I had been going through this ritual for years with my street button collection. Though it is rooted in psychology, the use of a transitional object is also very theatrical, it has a mythical element (The Golden Bough, The Sword in the Stone, Prometheus and fire). I am sure I will use this idea in my next intervention.

Emma was very warm towards the project and I am hoping she will continue to check in with my progress as it develops.

Ilford Spark Labs Application

Having no income at the moment, I have been keen to explore ways for the project to earn money. At the start of January I came across this callout for community projects to take place in an old Dorothy Perkins on Ilford High Street. Participants would be given a grant of £7000 to set up a community project for six weeks.

It seemed like an amazing opportunity to earn some income whilst also being able to explore, test and develop the project. So I spent a long time writing out the application form, this was a challenge though as I was trying to describe a project that was still developing. At the time of writing it was actually changing from one day to the next. However it was really useful to try and articulate the core values of the project and explain what I am trying to achieve.

Once the application was complete I sent it to a stakeholder who is an expert in funding bids: Pete Target, Director of Operations and Development at CARAS, a community outreach charity (https://caras.org.uk). Pete has been responsible for securing over 2 million pounds in grants over his career.

Pete was very helpful in giving me tips about how to improve the application. However after I had spent some time reflecting, I decided that I would not apply for the residency.

I realised that the project was still evolving, and although I had a good idea of what I wanted to do, the amount of work involved in taking over a shop on the high street would be considerable. I imagined that it would end up dominating the project and it would be likely that I would not get the chance to develop my ideas slowly and test them properly. I think that it would have held the project back from developing at it’s own pace and I would likely have missed opportunities that might make themselves apparent when I wasn’t having to be concerned about things like deadlines and budgets and the demands of funders.

However as an exercise the application was very valuable, I had the chance to imagine how it might work as a community programme in the future. The questions on the application form were very useful in forcing me to articulate the project clearly and effectively, and getting feedback from Pete improved my ability to make funding bids in the future. He is certainly a useful person to hold on to and was keen to help me again in the future.