On documenting our work

This is an experiment. We are out in the field several times a week, and while we do often photograph our engagements and as a team are constantly reflecting on the work we do (what went right, what we need to work on, etc.) we rarely write to document our work.

I’m currently reading Mariame Kaba’s book, We Do This ‘Til We Free Us. In the editor’s introduction Tamara K. Nopper talks about how Kaba “detests writing”, but that she is “practicing what she preaches to fellow organizers: document your work and write yourself into the record.”

So here I am, attempting to start that. I’m part of an awesome team of artists whose community work is inspiring. I don’t want their work, their voices, to be lost to history. And our team collaborates with some incredible humans, from our neighborhoods, to the group children’s homes, and inside the detention center. They carry such wisdom, insights, and stories…and one thing we reflect on quite a bit: their humanity in situations that can be incredibly dehumanizing.

I’ve thought about documenting our fieldwork on and off over the past eight years. I’m constantly capturing moments via photo & video, but so often we (the team) have important and insightful conversations with each other or a child will say something and it occurs to me what a massive amount of rich and informative observations and stories are lost in the river (“the river” is the metaphor I use for life to describe the constant movement and volume of it: we’re all standing in the river of life, and if something floats by—an idea, an email, a gem of a moment—and you don’t act on it right then, or mark it somehow for future action, it just continues downstream).

All of this to say that while I’ve always understood the importance of an ongoing and contemplative documentation of our work, it’s not been my priority to pull it out of the river up until now. That’s partly because I’m a slow and far from perfect writer. I can spend 30 minutes agonizing over a sentence. My time is filled with things I love to do, things that I think are helpful to our community, so it can be hard to make space for less immediate tasks, especially the ongoing ones that don’t come easy. And I suffer from not wanting to put something out into the world that won’t stand up to critique. I’m not talking about perfection, but having gone through art school has conditioned me to at least be able to defend everything I put out into the world. Writing is not a space that I’m comfortable in, so I spend a lot of time questioning, or over in another tab looking things up, researching, etc.

Okay, enough of that. No excuses. This is a start and we’ll see how it goes.

-carrie