I am proposing a photography project providing care givers opportunities to learn new creative skills, create unique artwork and share their stories with new audiences. I’ll facilitate photography and art workshops with unpaid carers and young carers across England. A smaller selection of participants, about 28 individuals, will collaborate with me to create colourful portraits, or capture their own images of the people they care for at home. There will be local displays throughout the project with a final outdoor display for one month in June 2026. The workshop artwork and portraits & participant’s images will come together to form a new body of work documenting carer’s experiences through socially engaged photography.
The Dover prize will support me with the research & development part of the project with a focus on combining photo prints with relief printing. It will also enable me to facilitate a series of workshops with unpaid carers and young carers to create collaborative artwork.
As part of this project I want to research:
– How carers and domestic healthcare workers have been portrayed in photography & art previously.
How artists have combined relief print and photography, and the relationship between the two.
Discover relief print artists e.g. Phil Morsman at Darlington collection.
How art can create change.
I want to push the boundaries of my practice by:
– Experimenting with combining print relief with photo prints.
Improving my digital medium format photography skills, to reproduce visual artwork and improve my photographic portraits.
– Experiment with incorporating audio into my work, to make work more engaging, give context and appeal to different audiences.
Working with participants on a larger scale
Expanding my professional network of partners
Engage new audiences.
Establish myself as a photographer that creates high quality work with vulnerable & underrepresented people
I plan to facilitate a series of workshops with unpaid carers and young carers in and around Darlington/South County Durham, (working with The Carers Trust and Family Action.) I am keen to facilitate sessions in the North East because I currently have no project partners in the North East. I want to work with people from a variety of backgrounds nationwide and document their experiences.
Participants will:
-Improve their photography skills e.g. composition, basic camera controls, photography principles, street photography, portraiture and knowledge of local and contemporary photographic artists.
- Create unique artwork, displayed locally.
– Learn about local artists.
- Have fun, share their stories and socialise with others.
Local audiences will:
Learn more about unpaid and young carers experiences.
Be reconnected or engage with artwork from local collections.
Experience high quality artwork made in collaboration with local people.
Sam Ivin is a photographic artist who explores social issues and the people connected with them. By documenting their stories and perspectives he hopes to provide a more personal, tangible understanding of them. Ivin’s process often involves hosting photography workshops, where he creates collaborative artwork with project participants. He has been awarded numerous significant photography prizes including the Magnum Photos Graduate Photographers Award, May 2017, The GMC First Prize, Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, March 2017, the Best Graduate Single Image, Runner Up, British Journal of Photography (BJP) Breakthrough Award 2016 and the Winner of Best Single Image, Human Category at Renaissance Photography Prize 2015. Selection of recent exhibitions include:
– School Values Shield permanent collaborative lightpainting artwork, Meath Green Junior School, Feb-March 2024
– Making the Midlands Home, Rugby Art Gallery & Museum, March-April 2024
– Perform & Perform BEEE Creative Commission, Letchworth One Garden Museum, Letchworth, Spring 2024
– Making Solihull Home, The Core Library Solihull 2024, February 2024
– Who Cares? Lost Voices commission, Reflections Project, Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, October-December 2023
– Punjab to the Potteries, New Vic Theatre, August 2023
Do you have a degree in visual or applied arts at undergraduate and/or post-graduate level? Please provide details. (200 words)
-2:1 Documentary Photography, BA (hons)
University of South Wales, Newport, 2011-2014
-Merit, Art Foundation, Bucks New University, 2010-2011
Have you previously received professional grants or awards? Please give details. (200 words)
Selected Awards
Shortlisted for Royal Photographic Society International Photography Exhibition 162, 2019
One of ten winners of Magnum Photos Graduate Photographers Award, May 2017
The GMC First Prize, Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, March 2017
Winner of Best Single Image, Human Category at Renaissance Photography Prize, 2015
Winner of Ideas Tap & Magnum’s 30 Under 30 Competition, 2015 Selected Grants
East Cheshire Cultural Framework Grant, April 2025
Curator Space Artist Bursary, January 2025
WCC Migrant Communities Grant Fund, December 2024
The Association of Photographers (AOP) Bursary, April 2024
Small Covid Grants, Arts Council England, to create Weekly Photography Briefs, 2020
Arts Council England Project Grant, Settling Project 2018-2019
A-n Artist Information Company, Artist Bursary 2018
-2:1 Documentary Photography, BA (hons)
University of South Wales, Newport, 2011-2014
-Merit, Art Foundation, Bucks New University, 2010-2011
Selected Awards
Shortlisted for Royal Photographic Society International Photography Exhibition 162, 2019
One of ten winners of Magnum Photos Graduate Photographers Award, May 2017
The GMC First Prize, Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, March 2017
Winner of Best Single Image, Human Category at Renaissance Photography Prize, 2015
Winner of Ideas Tap & Magnum’s 30 Under 30 Competition, 2015
Selected Grants
East Cheshire Cultural Framework Grant, April 2025
Curator Space Artist Bursary, January 2025
WCC Migrant Communities Grant Fund, December 2024
The Association of Photographers (AOP) Bursary, April 2024
Small Covid Grants, Arts Council England, to create Weekly Photography Briefs, 2020
Arts Council England Project Grant, Settling Project 2018-2019
A-n Artist Information Company, Artist Bursary 2018
-Buckinghamshire Health, Buckinghamshire Libraries and Carers Bucks, March to April 2025.
Facilitated series of in-person and online workshops with young carers and collaborated with young carers to create images for new Buckinghamshire library card.
-Solihull New Communities Participatory Story Collector, Solihull Council, May 2023 to Feb 2024
Collected 12 stories of human migration to the Solihull area through community engagement.
Created a series of decorated family portraits, all stories will be donated to local archive.
Selected Features
-Who Cares? Reflections Covid 19, Lost Voices project, article & video on Cheshire West & Cheshire Council run website, 2023
-Pakistan image included in BBC News feature on images that made photographers carers, with Association of Photographers, 2020
-Lingering Ghosts images used to illustrate article on Immigration at The Correspondent, 2020
-BBC News video feature focussing on three Settling participants. BBC News website, social media & BBC News channel, September 2019
– 6 Lingering Ghosts images used to Illustrate articles in Internazionale February 2019
-All Change (Mosaic Clubhouse work) Featured on It’s Nice That & British Journal of Photography
-Speaker at GRAIN The State of Photography Symposium III 2019, Birmingham City University, October 2019
-Feature on WIRED.COM February 2017
-Cover image & feature in British Journal of Photography migration issue, September 2016
Fabrica, (part of United Colours of Benetton) under-25 photobook project residency & grant, 2015-2016.
Address: 26 Breakspear Gardens, Beare Green, Dorking, Surrey, RH5 4BF, GB
Local Authority: Surrey County Council
Mole Valley District Council
