Some notes inspired by today’s session at The Roundhouse, where three young adults were responding to and asking questions about my poem. The provocation for the poem was “truth”.
A personal response?:

Revisit the text as primary source/starting point. Read it a few times. Meaning changes through repetition. Or does it?

What pictures or sensations or rhythms or songs or feelings occur to you. 

Question every single thing especially if it doesn’t make sense or looks odd  e.g. What does title mean 
Broad questions:

What is a poem – characteristics 

What does a poem do

What is the function of a music video 

What is the function of a film adaptation of a book

What is an adaptation (e.g. Book or comic series to movie), illustration (e.g. Children’s book) and what is representation (e.g. Naturalistic portrait of a real person)

Which are you making? Why?

What brings you pleasure?
Ideas around “representation”:

Distress and mental health: 

Trigger warnings?

Dealing with the depiction of dementia or confused mental state or mental illness

What is “madness”? 1 in 4 in UK

Opinion, cultural ideas about age, sanity, worth, value of a person?

Do people listen to old people? Or young people? Or “mad” people? Women? People of colour? Any marginalised group? When?

Do we think about body size, disabled bodies, heterosexuality, gender, skin colour etc – people who don’t look like us?

Is history neutral?

Is memory neutral?

Point of view.

Working as a team of three, how do you create one thing? Is it one thing?
Questions around truth:

What is truth? 

Who gets to decide what is true?

What does power and weakness have to do with anything?

Can one person change the world? 

Does it matter? 
Ideas around audience, target, focus, reason to make work:

How to keep it relevant to your audience

Who is your audience

Are you asking them to care? What about? 

Why should they care? How do you make them or lead them to care?

Why do you care? Do you care?