What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Aim

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - conversations between young people and the older generation, about love, in Plymouth

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is a new community arts project, where conversations between young people and the older generation in Plymouth are recorded (through sound & photographs) to create a multimedia installation in Stonehouse for the Plymouth Art Weekender.

I want to Talk About Love with YOU!

Alongside this, I will be making some unique love tokens & love conversations with YOU (the project backers) to say thank you for getting involved. You can choose from the following:

• a real-life hug & kiss at the exhibition in Plymouth (and some special 'one kiss' tokens to take away) - £5
• a personal love letter / love email (to you, or the person of your choice) - £10
• hand-made, original love-themed postcards (for you to frame or give to someone you love) - £15
• personal electronic love messages, every day for 7 days (your choice of SMS or email) - £25
• a one-to-one Italian lesson on skype, learning chat-up lines / romantic talk / flirting  (learn how to speak the language of love!!) - £30
• signed & framed original Instax photo from the project, with a message of love - £50
• signed & framed old Postcard of Plymouth from the project, with a message of love - £50
• 2 hours Italian lesson on food while cooking & eating a meal together (for you, or the person of your choice) - £100 (picture courtesy from https://www.personalcreations.com/) 

With each of these rewards, you can choose to receive them yourself, or have someone else receive them as a gift (the ultimate act of love!!).

*images above are for illustration - actual rewards may look different!

Why is this project important to me?

I am originally from Italy, and one of the first things I noticed when I moved to Plymouth were older couples holding hands in the streets. I was surprised by the tenderness and care of this gesture.

I  was used to only seeing young couples holding hands in Italy, especially teenagers. Seeing Plymouth adults holding hands outside has been a pleasant surprise for me. 

Since then I have started thinking about what young people and adults thought about love, and then I asked them to help me understanding it.

During the project, I'm going to:

• meet young people & older people from around Plymouth
• train them in basic interview techniques
• set up meetings between the older & younger people
• make recording from their conversations about love
• take portraits of them using an Instax camera
• collect their memories, advice and love momentos
• edit this collection of sounds, photographs, images & objects
• make an installation / display that will be shown  to the public at Sloggett & Son in September 2016

This installation of sound recordings and photographs are being collected through conversations between young people and the older generation, in Plymouth, on the topic of love. Each conversation explores ideas about how we can learn more by talking to each other - through the giving and taking of advice, and what the young can learn from the old and vice versa. 

How will your pledge help me achieve the project?

This crowdfunding campaign is going to help me pay for all the material I need for the installation and all I need to make this project a reality, including:

• instax film
• mp3 players & headphones and batteries
• photo albums
• high-quality copies of old pictures, letters and postcards that I collect from the interviews
• my bus journeys to different areas of the city over the project
• advertising the project (so that people come to see it!!)

Every pound will help to share the project with a wide audience, to communicate the essence of love across generations.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love will be shown at Slogget & Son on Union St, Plymouth - one of the streets in Plymouth most associated with love for different generations in the city. I will invite people into the shop to see the installation and to contribute their own love notes & pictures to the display. The exhibition will be open on 23 / 24 / 25th Spetember 2016, as part of Plymouth Art Weekender & the Union Street Party.

By visiting, you can also claim your £5 reward of a real life kiss & hug (and go away with some special 'one kiss' tokens to redeem with your friends and loved ones). If you can't make it to Plymouth, I can send you the 'one kiss' tokens by post.

IMAGE CREDITS:

- Love Letter image by Marc Majcher (CC-BY)

- Flirt by paultom2014 (CC-BY)

-Cooking image by Personal Creations (CC-BY)

THANKS TO:

I'd like to thank Jake McPherson (for helping me with filming), Hannah Sloggett (Sloggett & Son), Rachel Dobbs (advisor on the project), everyone at Elder Tree and all those who have helped me on all parts of the project so far.

This project successfully funded on 10th September 2016