UTOPIA.PHOTO

Category: Projects – Humanitarian

  • Grit

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    A positive, non-cognitive, psychological trait based on an individual’s passion for a particular long-term goal, and their powerful motivation to achieve it.

    This “perseverance” is the driving force that allows them to overcome obstacles and challenges.

    Commonly associated concepts within the field of psychology include “hardiness”, “resilience”, “ambition”, “need for achievement” and “conscientiousness”.

    In this context, “grit” is an individual quality that is distinct from “talent” or “ability”.
    In modern psychology, it was William James (1907) who recognised the above-average accomplishments of people with ‘grit’. However, the concept dates back at least as far as Galton, and the ideals of persistence and tenacity have been seen as a virtue since Aristotle.

    How people demonstrate ‘grit’ will vary enormously. For some it is months of preparation, for others an attempt at isolating themselves in preparation, some will use displacement behaviours to prevent other people from disturbing them mentally, a few will concentrate intently or grimmace with pain.

    This project

    This was the first ongoing ‘project’ that I have developed intentionally other than as a course assignment, it aims to build up a collection of 50 images that portray the quality of “grit” in the expressions of a wide range of people and activities. The content of the portfolio will change with time as the selection of images slowly improves.

  • Towpath Portraits

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    A series of portraits representing the users of towpaths and footpaths adjacent to canals, rivers and similar water-courses.

    In the UK, a substantial proportion of drownings each year are of these users – few of whom ever intended being in the water. When someone unexpectedly enters water, they are likely to suffer from ‘cold water shock’ syndrome – a condition which disorients them, disturbs their physiology, provokes gasping, panic, and even cardiac arrest. This makes it substantially harder for them to rescue themselves and explains why many people drown within ONE MINUTE of immersion.

  • Smoking cessation

    Smoking cessation

     

    78,000 people die each year in the UK of smoking-related diseases, let alone globally. Smoking by parents, primarily by the mother, is known to cause prenatal growth problems and infant mortality. The cost to society is considerable. Most countries carry health warnings on tobacco products. Text-based warnings are now considered to be totally ineffective. Those consisting of negative imagery with a caption are known to be 5% effective over the long-term.

    The behavioural insights concept is to replace these negative messages with positive ones about the benefit of a smoke-free lifestyle. A brainstorming session with a group of friends produced the generic message; “Your life will be better without.” These mock-ups illustrate the concept.

    Given the powerful vested interests involved, it seems likely that the route to a trial would need to be through the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health.

  • Road speed tempering

    Road speed tempering

    The peak age range for pedestrian road deaths in the UK is 5-14, with boys out-numbering girls roughly 2:1. There is a charity campaigning for the introduction of 20mph limits in residential areas, known as “20’s Plenty”, and voluntary signage is now available for these roads. We know that motorists respond to caption-based supplementary signs mounted below the 30, 40 and 50 mph statutory ones. Behavioural insights suggest that we might expect a photograph to result in a greater reduction.

    The concept is to mount images showing happy children interacting positively with the motorist. If this was to be developed, I would approach the charity with a view to conducting a trial within a selection of communities that are equipped with SpeedWatch guns, so that the impact can be measured.

    Targeted police campaigns often report that it is local people who make up a significant proportion of the offenders. Therefore, it might be worth soliciting local ‘models’ for the signs? This would have the added value that fewer signs would be the same around an area, or even nationally, and so there’s the likelihood of a reduced degree of over-familiarisation.

  • Street Harassment

    Street Harassment

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    Very large numbers of women report street harassment, ranging from looks and wolf whistles, to aggressive, sexually-focused assault.

    In 2013, a Vancouver student, Pomona Lake, produced an image highlighting victim-blaming around skirt length. Her image was subsequently plagiarised by a German women’s group.

    This mini-project was inspired by Lake’s idea, but the message is targeted differently, written using behavioural insights concepts, and emerged from an informal ‘focus group’ which I arranged. The original idea was to display one image at a time in the same place, replacing it with the next after a week or so, however they could simply be on a scrolling display as I have used here. There are many ways of assessing the potential impact, particularly through street surveys of attitudes to harassment, close to the display both before and after its appearance.

  • Drowning Prevention – Rope Throwing

    One of the most effective ways of rescuing someone from drowning, is for someone nearby to throw the individual a rope. Ropes take two forms, plain ones and those in a throw bag. Throwing the plain rope is an international competitive event in lifesaving championships. In an aquatic environment, using a 17m rope, the record for coiling, throwing accurately, and pulling a casualty 15m to safety, is less than 9 seconds.

    In this series of shots, taken at the RLSS Conference in May 2017, a UK competitor demonstrates aspects of the technique in a workshop for trainers teaching the skill to young people from the age of 8 to 21.

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