Old Market Diaries is a participatory project delivered by IC Visual Lab. Through a series of open workshops we used digital storytelling tools with local residents to record the life of the community as it is now but also as it changes in the future.

Old Market was selected for this project as it’s one of Bristol’s fastest growing communities with residents originating from over forty different countries. Yet, Old Market, with its changing worlds and its connected histories, hasn’t ever had its stories told. Via the interventions of the IC Visual Lab collective of photographers and local participants Old Market Diaries has been working as a catalyst to construct an archive of personal and local histories that enables and enhances greater community cohesion, both within the local community itself but also within greater Bristol as a whole.

︎Digital Storytelling Workshops

A series of open workshops about digital storytelling where local residents share their experience in the area. The Digital Storytelling workshops will offer those skills whilst also using storytelling and narrative to contextualize individual stories within the community.
Below: An example piece entitled The Green Scape by a workshop participant.

︎10 to 10 (Community Shoot and Pop-Up Studio) 

10 to 10: Community Photo-Shoot event aims to bring together and actively engage the local community in a fun activity using photography. The event is designed to encourage locals and the wider Bristol community to explore and document Old Market Quarter, bringing attention to the area by building a live photo archive. The event include a Pop-Up Portrait Studio, Mobile Digitation Studio as well as a visual mapping made by residents and local photographers.

︎In-Common: Screening Show

A closure event about the meaning and fuction of community work inclusing a talk by Jim Mortram, a screening showing the final results from our workshop participants, a selection of multimedia pieces curated by Erica McDonnald and an exhibition of the pop-up portrait studio by Kirsty Mackay.