Reanimating Data with the Proud Trust

In 2019-2020 the ESRC funded 'Reanimating data: experiments with people, places and archives'. Part of the project involved staging a series of reanimations using data from interviews with young women from Manchester, conducted thirty years previously as part of the Women, Risk and AIDS Project (WRAP 1988-1990). Each reanimation involved a collaboration between young women, educators and researchers and used creative methods to explore the WRAP data and bring it to life in new ways. This item includes documentation and materials from workshops with a LGBT+ young women's group at the Proud Trust as part of the Reanimating Data Project. The workshops took place in Manchester (UK) between November 2019 and March 2020. During a series of workshops led by Ali Ronan, artist and youth worker Hebe Phillips and youth workers at the Proud Trust, a group of young women took part in games and activities exploring and reusing some of the WRAP data that related to lesbian or queer desires, relationships and identities. The group were able to have in-depth discussions about a range of themes relating to the WRAP material including feminism, sex education, sexuality, social change, sexual politics and what it might mean to be a young woman. Over time the group explored creative ways of representing themselves and their own stories. They went on to each create a felt square to express something about themselves, stitched together by Hebe to make a quilt. Additional squares were created by women who attended a celebration event for the Reanimating Data Project at Manchester Cental Library on 7th March 2020. The finished banner is titled: 30 squares for 30 years. Three sessions with the Proud Trust were documented for the project. In session one the group use WRAP data extracts to make data collage poems. In session two they re-use the questions from the interviews to interview each other and themselves. In a third session the group meet with original WRAP researcher Rachel Thomson to reflect on the project and discuss related themes. Included here are: Notes documenting workshops one and two and photographs of the materials created in the workshops. Images of items created in the workshops including an image of the banner: 30 squares for 30 years. Data extracts used in the workshop activities. Anonymised transcript of the discussion between Proud Trust participants and Rachel Thomson. Audio and transcript of a conversation between Hebe and Bethan, a youing person attending the Proud Trust, reflecting on the project at the celebration event.