Arts and entertainment

Traceurs stage 1 – community participation

The research and development stage of the Traceurs project involved Layla Curtis working with the Working with Men youth group and the participants of a new media course run by Vital Regeneration at Queen’s Park New Media Centre in Westminster.

Professional group Parkour Generations led introductory parkour sessions at Westminster leisure centres for the youth group and the media course participants while Layla experimented with the high specification thermal imaging equipment by recording the young people taking the parkour training.

During the sessions the artist and the young people also experimented with head cameras to try filming from new perspectives and they used the footage to make a short film at the media centre.

The involvement of the young people in the research and development stage of the project was crucial to Layla and the successful development of the project as it allowed her to gain the skills required to use the complex technical filming equipment that she would later go on to use to create the artwork.

The initial filming stage allowed Layla to study in detail which types of parkour movement worked best when being filmed by the thermal imaging camera and also which external conditions might affect the filming – in particular the weather conditions, the time of day and the location.

In addition, the experience she gained from filming the introductory parkour sessions and the experiments with headcams familiarised her with many situations she would later experience in the final shoot, and therefore enabled her to plan the later stages of the project with a wealth of experience and problem-solving skills.

                                                                                                                                      > Next: Traceurs stage 2