As my man Phife Diggy from A Tribe Called Quest once said:

Put one up for the Phifer, it's time to decipher

The ills of the world make the situation brighter

I wish I could sit down with Phife and discuss this right now. I’d respectfully ask him if he still felt this way after the year we’ve had. The ills of the world have been difficult to ignore in 2020 and I’ve personally struggled to navigate this while confronted with the necessity to create.

Thankfully though, the first stage of the ReFramed COVID-19 project is now complete and with images submitted the focus moves on to planning how the work will be published and shared. This also allows for some reflection and quite honestly the process has been tortuous although ultimately very rewarding. The challenges I anticipated at the project’s outset, mainly practical, were quickly superseded by the emotional and philosophical hurdles I encountered as I started to unpack the main themes I hoped to explore in the work.

The COVID crisis has forced us all to confront loss, anger, abrupt and drastic change, loneliness and isolation and any number of anxieties on personal, family, community, national and worldwide levels. That’s a lot!

The horrific onslaught seems almost commonplace now, such that its ongoing impact can be overlooked, but we’re all still wading through all of this stuff with no end in sight. The sheer scale of all the ‘stuff’ has at times been utterly paralysing, making it impossible to see beyond the deluge of each moment to anything approaching an abstract or creative idea. It’s difficult to plan, dream and conceptualise in that state…which is not to say that there aren’t people out there who’ve managed to be incredibly productive and creative during these months, just that I’ve not been one of them!

I’m very grateful for the guidance of Andrew Jackson, one of the ReFramed team, who has been mentoring me through the last couple of months. He’s been able to provide wise counsel and some outside objectivity during moments of doubt and/or sheer panic, grounded in his own experiences as a practitioner and human. The opportunity to bounce ideas off him and pick his brain has been one of the most valuable elements of the bursary award. 

How do you avoid getting trapped in your own head, when you have to go in there to find the work?

Also, how do you separate yourself from the subject, by at least enough, to be able to say something about it that resonates outside of yourself?

Acknowledging and reconciling the many ways in which I am personally and profoundly connected to this work (as a Black person, as a healthcare professional, as a survivor of COVID-19) was one of the first barriers that had to be overcome before I was able to successfully proceed to actually making the pictures and consumed by far the majority of the effort in the completion of this project.

One of the overriding feelings while conceiving this work was a simmering frustration, a feeling that encompassed my own personal circumstances as well as wider considerations. Apart from the direct and immediately devastating impact COVID-19 has had on individuals, families and communities, this year has in many ways highlighted deep inequities that deny so many people true agency in their own lives and render them unable to fully explore their own potential or define their own futures. To some this might sound like a crazy assertion - ‘we live in a free country Justin, everyone has the same opportunities and chances’ - but if you’re of this view I’d urge you to step outside of your own experience for a minute and do some basic research, with an open mind. 

While I don’t have the space, time or inclination to unpack all of that for you here, I would like to present some information that’s relevant to the ReFramed COVID-19 project. This from an Office for National Statistics report on coronavirus-related deaths, from May 2020:

• This provisional analysis has shown that the risk of death involving the coronavirus (COVID-19) among some ethnic groups is significantly higher than that of those of White ethnicity.

• When taking into account age in the analysis, Black males are 4.2 times more likely to die from a COVID-19-related death and Black females are 4.3 times more likely than White ethnicity males and females.

• People of Bangladeshi and Pakistani, Indian, and Mixed ethnicities also had statistically significant raised risk of death involving COVID-19 compared with those of White ethnicity.

• After taking account of age and other socio-demographic characteristics and measures of self-reported health and disability at the 2011 Census, the risk of a COVID-19-related death for males and females of Black ethnicity reduced to 1.9 times more likely than those of White ethnicity.

• Similarly, males in the Bangladeshi and Pakistani ethnic group were 1.8 times more likely to have a COVID-19-related death than White males when age and other socio-demographic characteristics and measures of self-reported health and disability were taken into account; for females, the figure was 1.6 times more likely. 

• These results show that the difference between ethnic groups in COVID-19 mortality is partly a result of socio-economic disadvantage and other circumstances, but a remaining part of the difference has not yet been explained.

Feel free to read the full report, here

The disparity of experience of the pandemic is mirrored in many other areas of modern life and while I’ve highlighted ethnic inequalities above, there are numerous gender/class/postcode-based inequalities to be found everywhere. Every day yet another aggrieved group seems to be crying out for help, for equitable treatment and proper consideration. Today for example, it’s the people of Greater Manchester, but tomorrow it will be something or someone else. 

COVID-19 has dragged all of these issues into the light and unmasked so much that had previously only been covertly plotted and secretly endured. These prevailing concerns and the unease that they foment form the backdrop for the work that I ended up making for ReFramed. To have made something that failed to acknowledge this thread of feeling running through the last 6 months for me would have felt ludicrously dishonest. 

Next time, I’ll go into a bit more detail about the process of actually developing the work with these considerations in mind. Until then it’s only right that we finish with some more ATCQ because, why not…

Let’s make something happen!