Over the past few years, I have developed a number of multimedia projects which have tackled a variety of issues, but almost all of which relate to the equalities agenda.
Projects in India – 2020-2025
Women and Development Network (WiDeN) – 2019 – 2021
a) Women micro-entrepreneurs in Delhi – 2019
In 2019, together with my colleague Pauline Dixon, I applied for internal funding under our University’s SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) initiative, to explore the ways in which women living in informal settlements in Delhi were, despite considerable challenges, finding ways in which to earn and living and sometimes even to employ others. Working with my fantastic colleague Priyanshi (one of my former MA graduates), we devised an interview schedule with Priyanshi doing the interviewing and me doing the recording. These are their stories. One film looks at the ways in which women were involved in the installation of toilets in their homes. The second focuses on a project developed by the Azad Foundation to teach women to drive and then provide employment for them as taxi drivers, establishing the first all-women taxi service in Delhi. The third film focuses on individual women entrepreneurs living and working in Savda colony, who had been financially supported by the NGO CURE India, to give them a kickstart to their business.
Safeda colony – the inside toilet initiative
Azad Foundation – women drivers project
Savda colony – CURE India’s supportive employment initiative
b) Women entrepreneurs negotiating Covid-19 – 2021
In 2021, we were intending to return to talk to the women who we had interviewed previously but because of travel restrictions, Priyanshi did the interviews herself and made a short film from the interviews.
The Empower Project – 2021-2024
The Empower Project explored the resilience of and challenges to some of the people who live in informal settlements in Delhi, looking at aspects such as entrepreneurship, women’s safety and health security. The project was funded by a Canadian philanthropic organisation, the Rising Tide Foundation. The project spanned 2021-2024 and included a number of researchers who were involved in different aspects of the project. I was responsible for hearing the voices of women entrepreneurs living in three informal settlements and I worked with local community workers as well as my brilliant colleague and interpreter, Priyanshi Sharma. We made a number of short films from the interviews we conducted which I uploaded into a playlist on You Tube. There are also a couple of films which comprise reflections from a number of the researchers once we had completed the fieldwork. There’s also a film about an international initiative to support women’s safety called ‘Safetipin’ and interviews with women who use public transport (buses and the metro) in Delhi about their experiences. The interviews were conducted during 2023 and in 2024, Priyanshi and I returned to the settlements with the completed films and provided a screening at each venue, together with lunch, to the women who had participated, which was a very gratifying way to say a thank you to them. As well as the women participants, the audience comprised their children, extended family members and neighbours.
Women and the entrepreneurial spirit
Women, hardship and resilience
The adverse affects of the environment on women’s lives
Taking action on the environment: the women of Delhi
My reflections on the work I carried out with the Empower Project
Reflections from the fieldworkers who facilitated the Empower project interviews
The JOY project – 2019-2020
The JOY project was developed by Karen Ross and comprised a series of workshops with older women on the topic of what was joyful in their lives. As well as talking about joyful aspects in their everyday, they also brought in an artefact which was precious to them. Karen then worked with a brilliant local photographer, Juliet Chenery-Robson, who photographed each participant in a setting of their own choosing. Karen then filmed each woman about the things that bring them joy. We then put up an exhibition of their artefacts, their testimonies and their portraits, which was hung in the foyer of the Catalyst Building, Newcastle, UK in March 2020, just as the pandemic was closing everything down. There are two films about the project. One is a series of to-camera films of women talking. The other one is a short film which describes the project and includes photos taken on the first day in which the exhibition was open to the public.
The things that bring joy to our lives
The JOY project (virtual tour)
The Menopause Project – 2021-2023
a) Blood, bone, crone: the menopause experience from the inside out
Most women know very little about what the menopause could have in store for them, how they might be affected in both mind and body, how friends, family, co-workers or medical practitioners might support them, or not. While menopause is part of the life journey of half the world, do cultural norms around menopause affect women’s experiences? A series of creative workshops were organised in the UK (Newcastle) and Uganda (Makerere) in late 2021 and as women shared their symptoms, remedies and, for some participants, their feelings on emerging into the next phase of their life, they (re)created their own menopause journey using collage, paint and paper. The Newcastle workshops were co-facilitated by me and two fab arts therapists, Ceinwen Haydon and Clare Armstrong. Working with the brilliant animator, Sheryl Jenkins, we then produced a short animation from women’s testimonies. The original project and the stage play were supported by Newcastle University and the National Innovation for Ageing.
b) Hear Me Roar
In 2022, to celebrate World Menopause Day (18 October), I commissioned a local singer-songwriter – Bethany Elen – to write a song about menopause (Hear me Roar) which was subsequently sung on the day and made it onto BBC Look North which was nice.
c) Stand By Your Fan
In 2023, I secured internal funding to produce a stage play – Standy by your fan (riffing on Tammy Wynette’s Stand by your man) which drew on women’s experiences from the first project. The play was co-written by me and JoJo Kirtley (Artistic Director and CEO of Workie Ticket theatre company). There was only one performance of the play in April 2023 in Newcastle, which was attended by the women who had participated in the first project, along with audience members from a range of local employers and unions. The play which had a community cast with one professional actor (Lynne Romartinez-Stutt) and enacts a series of vignettes to show how women experience the menopause and the attitudes that different people in their working and personal lives have towards menopause. It takes a humorous approach to a challenging topic and aims to both raise-awareness but also to demonstrate how small changes in attitude and behaviour can have a major impact on women’s lives. The director was Tracy Gillman and the Assistant Producer was Viv Wiggins and members of the community cast were: Anne Murphy, Emma King, Harriet Yudkin, Karen Hendrix, Karen Ross, Liz Atton, Margaret Dobson, Tess Hudson and Viv Wiggins. The play was filmed and has been used multiple times in training.
Multimedia archive
Here are some blasts from the past
- Stories From The Stump – a series of short film-based diary notes that document aspects of the Labour Party’s campaign activities during New Zealand’s 2011 general election.
- Same But Different – a film-based project which comprises a series of film sketches showing aspects of student life and ways in which staff respond to different situations, together with a workbook which includes discussion points and further resources.
- Feminists on Film – a series of short films, collectively titled ‘Radical Women, Radical City’, that tell the stories of women that have contributed to the development of Liverpool.
Karen Ross 