Behind the Scenes of KIAD’s 2001 In-Motion Exhibition

Twenty-five years ago, I was working as a tutor in the Photography Department at the Kent Institute of Art & Design (KIAD), Rochester, Kent. On 8 May 2001, a shuttered school in Hackney Downs, London reopened its doors for the private view of a photographic exhibition. The exhibition showcased the final-year work of students on KIAD’s BA (Hons) Editorial & Advertising Photography course.

It is not nostalgia alone that prompts me to say this was a unique year group of creative people, or that the In-Motion exhibition was a special moment in time. The school itself had long been abandoned when the students chose it as their venue and, in choosing it, the Photography Department made a 100-day commitment to transforming the site in readiness for opening night.

Back then, I was working as the “video guy”, supporting those students who wanted to explore moving image. I was also fairly handy, one way or another, and played my part alongside the photographers on site. Another of my roles was to ensure the whole experience was archived for posterity, so I set about filming the process. The resulting In-Motion Picture is a suite of short films documenting this collective creative adventure.

Late last year, the former Head of the Photography Department, Kevin Liggett, got in touch to say he had a 4K transfer of the films in need of some tender loving care. As of writing, it appears that the only complete copy we have of the full set is on VHS, so the 4K transfer was characterised by glitches, wobbles and breaks. Over recent weeks and months, I’ve been doing what I can to repair the films (not always possible), in order to preserve them more robustly. It was fascinating to return to my own work all these years later and to be returned so instantly to this very creative and productive phase of my life.

The film I’m sharing here is the “Making Of”: a sprint through the 100 days we spent at that school in the run-up to the private view. It communicates nothing of the sitting in traffic, the long days, the frigid cold of long-emptied classrooms, or the grim mounds of pigeon droppings covering the tiles of the old swimming pool. What it captures clearly, however, is what it felt like to be working as a team; what it felt like to be ambitious and determined and clear-eyed about the goal before us.

If you look closely, you might catch a glimpse of my much younger self, as I wrestle with broken windows and with heavy rolls of white plastic—but even the most cursory glance will tell you that this particular group of young people, and the dedicated team of educators around them, accomplished something bold and rather wonderful.