Faces of Friendship is a partnership between, The Horsebridge, Red Zebra Community Solutions and The Whitstable School, whose Year 10 photography students at the school will take portraits the of people in the befriending project.
The exhibition coincides with National Volunteers Week and celebrates and highlights the stories and work of the befriending community and the talent of the young people.
The portraits in this exhibition will celebrate the diverse face of volunteering as well as building relationships between generations, their experience of the pandemic and the value volunteering brings to our community.
The project will consist of a month of sessions where the befriending community and the Whitstable school photographers (assisted by teachers and support workers) will meet to get to know each other, plan and photograph the portraits at The Horsebridge and use our digital facilities to edit and print the work ready for the exhibition.
Red Zebra Befriending Project
The Red Zebra Befriending Project was set up in May 2020, providing 1132 telephone calls helping to ease the difficulty and isolation caused by lockdown.
They have engaged with over 100 people with the help of 30 volunteers making a weekly call. A partnership with a local pub The Plough in Swalecliffe enabled them to provide the most isolated and lonely in the community with a free hot meal, delivered weekly by volunteers. To date they have delivered over 1,000 dinners.
As we emerge out of lockdown face to face companionship is provided at a monthly coffee morning at a local community centre and a lunch club has been set up at the pub. This provides much needed interaction and friendship.
The Whitstable school Visual Arts department are a consistently successful artsmark awarded team working hard to deliver a diverse and contemporary arts education to local children. The Y10 photographers led by their teacher Mr Walker are proud to be part of such a worth-while community-driven brief that will offer first-hand experience of life as a working artist. They are especially excited that the work they produce will be printed professionally and exhibited in the community.
This project has been made possible with generous funding from the National Lottery Community Fund.