Project leads: Heike Bartel, Tamsin Parnell

What is participatory photography? How can a photo help in starting the conversation about important mental health issues and also involve the people who are at the heart of these issues? How can photography help – ethically, responsibly and creatively – to change perspectives on mental health and invite new views? How can we encourage young people to explore through photos that show their ‘outside’ world what’s going on ‘inside’ of them?

All of these and many more questions were at the heart of our 2-day workshop at the University of Nottingham’s City as Lab. As a group consisting of young people with lived experience of an eating disorder, Nottingham-based artists, local charities, a facilitator from PhotoVoice organisation and academic scholars we talked, learned, listened, explored taking photos and describing what we captured, discussed ethics, tested ideas and explored Nottingham as the location for all of this.

We learned that particular types of photos (in combination with captions) can be very powerful tools to communicate previously unheard stories about mental health problems like eating disorders. The photos we learned to take are personal and evocative but not triggering or insensitive. Unlike the photos usually used in media reports about eating disorders, our photos avoid stereotypes and do not shock needlessly to grab attention. Instead, they tell stories in ways that are empowering and help others to understand these complex disorders. We have shared our findings with researchers and charities, and our next steps are trying to shape media policies by recommending different ways to report about eating disorders.