About Familiar Strangers – Photography Workshop

Familiar Strangers is a collaboration with National Youth Council & National Integration Council. The objectives of Familiar Strangers were:

  1. Increase the level of understanding amongst Singaporeans
  2. Improve sentiments that Singaporeans hold towards low-wage migrant workers

The project is carried out by 6 volunteers and involves a total of 25 youth participants from age 15 to 35 and a total of 80 beneficiaries. The project consists of two parts – Share A Meal and Photography Workshops. Our project at Familiar Strangers was initially intended to reach out to different marginalised communities in Singapore. As much as we wanted to share a larger variety of stories, and create more change through letting them write from their perspectives, we quickly streamlined our campaign strategies to tailor for collecting stories from migrant workers — in a way, focusing our efforts into having a more specific and stronger messaging.

What we set out to do, other than the most obvious task of collecting and sharing stories written by migrant workers, was also to show other youths that they too can embark on a project like this to help create change for groups which they are concerned about. We managed to show how a simple idea of “from being represented to being re-presented” can lead to the fruition of a campaign.

The Highlights

Involving the Migrant Workers

One of the things we learnt before we embarked on our project at Familiar Strangers was to do things that the migrant workers are interested in doing, not solely what we think will be interesting to publicise the campaign. We kept that in mind throughout our planning phase and it was through events like the photography workshop that made us realise the importance of doing so. It is when we do things that the migrant workers truly enjoy doing, do we find ourselves learning the most about their lives. To see them have fun on their day off — that’s one of the best feelings in the world.

We Are All the Same

One of the participants reflected that she was excited to meet the migrant workers but initially felt that there were limited topics that they could talk about. However, once she got a bit warmed up with the migrant works, the innate curiousity took over. It dawned upon her that they are just regular people like us, working for an income, carrying out their own lifestyles. It occurred to her that the initial inertia to talk to them was indeed unnecessary!

The Memories

Reflection #1 – The Challenges

Taking Photographs in the Dark

For the Photography Workshops, whe main challenge we faced was organising the sessions on Friday nights. Though it was a good plan to have most of the migrant workers participate in the workshop since they would have been done with work for that day, it was difficult for them to take photograph outside where it was really dark. But we improvised with what we had by either having them practice in the room where we conduct the lessons or around the building. We’ve also organised two photo walks on Sunday afternoons where we brought them to wherever they wanted to visit and photograph.

Reflection #2 – The Takeaways

Involving More Singaporeans

For the Photography workshops I would like to implement this on a larger scale and get more Singaporeans involved. In hopes of also giving youths like us an opportunity to interact with migrant workers, we decided to have five volunteers join us as mentors for the workshop. Someday, perhaps we can have a photowalk that brings together photography enthusiasts from both sides. Photography, or visual narratives, is definitely a way to transcend the limits of language barrier.