Oxford House Exhibition Video Shoot

For the last two days I have been at Oxford House in Bethnal Green working with a group based there. The idea was to shoot some video footage of members of the group talking about their views on the social issues raised by Charles Booth’s survey – but in the modern context. The final version of the video will be shown alongside my original ‘Lifting the Curtain’ image/texts and some economic/social statistical data being prepared by the New Policy Institute.

The downstairs gallery at Oxford House will be the venue for the video presentation:

Along the side walls will be rows of portraits of the people who appear in the video along with a brief quotation extracted from the video. I am not in a position to publish the video footage yet as I plan to complete the work first and only to show it at Oxford House (as this was the premise on which I persuaded the subjects to appear). However, the form of the video will look as in the screen shot below with each of the subjects placed in the same position in the old Chapel in Oxford House.

And the portraits will look something like this:

Raising money for the restoration of the old chapel at Oxford House is one of the key purposes of the exhibition along with celebrating the centenary of the death of Charles Booth. We also plan a display at the exhibition explaining our fundraising aims. This display will be linked to the video presentation as we will explain that the video was shot in the old chapel. A photograph of the ‘set’ will be shown in the exhibition:

We may also show a short looping video alongside the image which will demonstrate the reason for the buckets:

I have more shooting to do to complete the video and am planning to return on a couple of occasions in August. Then it’s down to printing and video editing so the target of November for the exhibition still looks possible. NPI are making good progress on gathering relevant statistical/economic data for the event so this too seems on course… fingers crossed.