Phase 1 Funding Proposal

This is what we wrote about in the funding application for the first part of the photography project at 'Bankside Hostel'.

There is more information about the project on this website.

The Project
Many people with learning disabilities have spent much of their lives in long stay hospitals before they were moved, in the 1980s and 1990s, to hostels.

Now the hostels are being closed and people are being moved again to ‘supported housing’ in ordinary streets and houses.

In this project, we will work with adults with learning disabilities who live in a hostel that is being closed down.

We will work with them to take photographs of their lives in the hostel.

We hope this will help the people who live in the hostel share their experiences and feelings about living in the hostel.

We will also give them a photo album to help them remember their lives in the hostel when they move.

This project will also be a way for us to learn better ways of working with people with learning disabilities, especially people who don’t speak or sign.

What we plan to do:
1. We will work with people living in the hostel to make a photo record of their life in the hostel for them to keep.

2. We will find out about ways of working with people with learning disabilities so they can be supported to take photographs and share what they think.

3. We will tell and show people with learning disabilities, carers and support staff and people who work in universities about the project.

We will explain how we worked with photographs to help people with learning disabilities think about their lives and share their views.

Research questions
(these are the questions we hope our research project will answer)

1. What do the people with learning disabilities have to ‘say’ about their life in the hostel?
2. How can their feelings and stories about their lives be shared with others and recorded?
3. How much does taking and looking at photographs help people with learning disabilities to say things about what where they want to live and what they want to do with their lives?
4. How easy or difficult is it do to research using photographs in a hostel and how long does this sort of project take?
5. What can hostel staff, other people with learning disabilities, other support staff, researchers and policymakers learn from this project?
6. Is there anything we can do which will help us keep learning from this way of working?