‘Create Jobs’ Shines A Light On The Next Generation Of London’s Visual Artists

Last week, we introduced you to Create Jobs, an employment programme from London-based non-profit A New Direction, and the Creativity Works courses they recently launched. 

Ahead of the October 1 deadline for new sign-ups, we took a look at some of their recent graduates — three photographers, Randy Mankoto, Sabab Khan and Faith Aylward, and three filmmakers Justine Franco-Okedigun, Juliana Ogechi and Skye Mcleod — their work, and how they're using what they learned at Creativity Works to change the face of their industry.

The brief given to the 2019 intake of students asked them to use visual storytelling to illustrate their perception of London from the vantage point of an actual resident. The image that London projects to the wider world is often sanitised and framed in relation to the Royal Family and its tourist attractions. The reality often runs counter to that, something the photographers we've highlighted were able to show using intimate yet powerful imagery.

As part of the Content Production course, each of the filmmakers were asked the question What Do Young Londoners Care About? They were given an iPhone and 90 seconds tell the stories of Generation Z and their lives in the capital. The results were wildly creative, exploring politics, cultural identity, and everyday life.

For Randy Mankoto's response to the brief, he framed the idea of "his London" in the context of his faith. His series of photographs, titled The Pursuit, documented his local community and their church. Mankoto uses images of himself and others in prayer to present London as the home to countless different faiths and religions. Rather than discuss it in vague terms, The Pursuit shows us what that means on a profoundly personal level, introducing us to his community, his church and his own relationship with God.

Growing up in Tower Hamlets, East London, Sabab Khan has seen first-hand the increasingly rapid changes sweeping through London's neighbourhoods. As gentrification sweeps through the capital, communities are pushed further out onto the peripheries. As families are moved out, the communities that remain become divided. Titled The Silence Before It Changes, Khan's work uses the twilight moments between night and day, just before the city springs into life, as a metaphor for the silence when it comes to protecting communities from those often unforgiving changes.

Although she didn't strictly grow up in London, Faith Aylward still has an intimate and formative relationship with capital. In the two-and-a-half years she has lived here, Aylward has grown and changed as a person. A vast, sprawling city like London can't be experienced without travel and it's those ideas of change and travel that she uses to express her life in London. Scenes From My London sees her use posed scenes to recreate some of the pivotal experiences in her life. Stylish and beautifully constructed, Aylward's shots tell the story of a young creative whose time in the city has given them a life-long passion for photography.