Piece by Piece: New short poetry film created 

“Community!  

I come from friends, family, community.” 

The above words summarise the celebratory poem, which can be watched in full below. Piece by Piece is a Comic Relief-funded partnership project with Newport Mind and Community Youth, supporting families and young people with mental health issues in Newport, especially those from low-income or BAME backgrounds or who are LGBTQ+. The project sees writers and artists partnered to create poems, films and music projects to support those families. Its creative aim is to address trauma and reduce the impact of poor mental health by sharing experiences through creative activities such as spoken word poetry, digital stories, drama, illustration and creative writing.  

Poet clare e.potter and artist Andy O’Rourke led creative writing and light painting workshops with young people and their families accessing Community House provision in Newport. The groups explored ideas around identity, community and friends, all of which help develop feelings of well-being as part of the Piece by Piece project.  

Andy O’Rourke said: 

“Light Painting involves using a variety of torches and ‘light brushes’ to make trails and designs in a long exposure photograph. The young people and adults showed great enthusiasm and everyone had fun experimenting with the effects produced by the lights. Over the session we made portraits, abstract designs and word art animations inspired by their poetry and writing. Everyone was involved in creating the artworks in what proved to be a raucously creative workshop. It was a great laugh and very productive. I took all the images and the audio recordings of their writings made with Clare over the previous weeks and edited them together to create a simple film showcasing their creativity.”  

 

clare e. potter said: 

“It was a pleasure to work with the families at Community House. The project created a lovely dynamic working with the mother and the children together. They all wrote amazing poetry, beautifully illustrated with the light painting.” 

The poetry and audio recording made by the participants were used as inspiration to create a Light Painting Poetry film, as seen below: