Cross platform project

This was a cross platform project carried out with UTA in Finland involving the Interactive Digital Media and Journalism depts at Uclan, centred upon the theme of 'impact of recession' and the economy. I emailed John Mills re the project who put me in touch with Andy S and I ended up meeting up with Jake Ryan and Hannah Carolin who were both post-grad students. They were in Rossendale and were working on a story about the economy and market traders. It has recently been published in the press that some of the Rossendale markets are under threat of closure and they wanted to visit some of them, interview the patrons and get a gist of how the locals felt about the potential threat.

There was a slight blip when we arrived in that they had not contacted the managers of the market directly and when the film camera appeared, the traders were obviously curious as to what was going on. I had mentioned that I would probably need to get permission to take photographs, the culmination of which was that the manager was contacted and in turn, he called the press officer from the council. Though she gave permission for the project to go ahead, she also advised that a certain etiquette was needed before undertaking such a project in a public space. I felt happier that we had permission to interview, take photos and film but it was a waste of 45 minutes stood outside a smelly toilet! C’est la vie!

The organisation to participate in the project was a bit up in the air as apparently there were no photographers available and the journalists had in the main, been taking their own photographs as no one knew what was going on. I had been unable to attend the initial meeting but did get a response from John Mills very quickly, so ended up helping out with the story on the markets in Rossendale, though this was mainly due the nearby location of the project. I would be more than happy to work on another project and they have my phone number so I will see what happens tomorrow.

I took some photos of the market, but because of the initial delay and deadline that the journalists had to stick to, I probably only had around 15-20 minutes to get the shots. In the ‘real world’ though, the situation would be very similar and deadlines would have to be kept to, so it wasn’t such a bad experience. I was able to briefly adjust the raw files and convert them to jpegs when I got home, then quickly upload them to Jake and Hannah for the 4pm deadline. They responded by saying that the photos were ‘amazing’ and I know they certainly weren’t that, but it was good to be able to help out and work on such a project. 
 

© Andrea Percival