WHAT KEEPS YOU WELL?
I was commissioned by Sefton Public Health to explore the views of young people in Sefton about what keeps them well. This was carried out through a collaborative process working with the young people on creating photography to help illustrate their thoughts and views. Here are some of the case studies and the photography that has come from working in a collaborative way.
GABBY
“I have always known I wanted to do something with animals, that’s always what I’ve wanted to do, since I was little.
I always knew.”
KATH
“It’s also getting you out there in the fresh air cos sometimes when I’m at the yard I won’t go on my phone for ages because I need to be doing my jobs so I don’t have time to be going on my phone every two minutes.”
“I’m kind of just in the zone when I’m doing creative things and I go into a sort of zone and I kind of just lock in and do the things that make me happy. I like doing things that make me lock in because it makes all the worries in my head go away. I especially like drawing horror stuff, I love horror.”
SOFIA
“One day when I was only two years old I visited my cousins so my mum was sitting with my aunty and they went ‘Oh look outside’ and I was walking around on one of her horses and that started it all. Cos I’ve always been an animal lover, always have been and always will be. And that just started everything and it was a bit of an obsession really(laughter)
A lot of people when they first start out, they can be quite selfish and they want to do things for them, rather than for the horse but once you get more into it you realise ‘this horse needs me to be like this, for its health’. It’s a big responsibility because a lot of things can go wrong with horses, they have a lot of diseases, they can go downhill. It’s like with dogs but with a bigger animal, it’s a lot harder. But I do think it’s been a big help for me to realise, actually ‘this thing relies on me so I need to go and do it’.
Say if you want to lay in bed all day cos you’re feeling a bit down, horses rely on you so you need to be there for them. And it does get you up and going even if you don’t want to. And once you’re there, you realise ‘Oh no, it wasn’t actually that bad’ it’s just the whole getting there, cos it can become a huge thing if you’re feeling…….……..not great.”
“I’ve only been going fishing since April last year so I’m not been fishing long but with fishing I find it dead peaceful and calming even. You know there’s a lot of people my age and they mightn’t get up at 4 o’clock in the morning to go fishing. So sort of the reason it helps me is that I’m doing something that I like but the reason that I’m doing it is that I’m with lads that I get along with and I enjoy spending time with, you know what I mean. That’s what it’s like in here for me.”
BRANDON
“I also feel like the Internet is like a very big eyeball and it will look at you under a microscope to find any flaws so I’ve just stopped caring about what people think.”
“When it comes to fishing, when I fish and the sky’s coming up, I have a load of photos that I’ve taken just to picture it. Do you know when you’re setting up your rod, you hear the birds tweeting in the sky, you don’t really think. You’re just in………wherever, I don’t know how to word this. You’re just in that space, in that surrounding and you’re just taking it in in a sense and you’re enjoying it as well. A lot of times when I’ve been fishing and I’ve just…….just listened, listening to the silence, it just helps you sort of just, chill. Obviously, there’s a lot of times when you have a lot of ups and downs in life, that helps a lot with life’s ups and downs. With Sean’s place, that’s the big thing that helps me, sort of push myself to push through them downs. I don’t have many downs obviously but I think you know even if I have downs I’ve got the people here and when it comes to the activities here, everyone walks out with a smile on their face.“
