Reinventing stories through a revolutionary lens with Michelle Williams Gamaker

Professor Michelle Williams Gamaker is an artist filmmaker whose work explores critical alternatives to Western cinematic storytelling. Her award winning films have featured in the British Film Institute, and she is currently a Wolfson Fellow at the British Academy.

In this episode, Michelle talks about her early process of filmmaking at art school, how she sees her film set as a teaching space, and her co learning project, exploring the relationship between tutors and students.

Instagram: @m.williams.gamaker

Website: http://www.michellewilliamsgamaker.com/

Discover more about UAL Awarding Body qualifications.

Transcript

Matt: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome back to the Teach, Inspire, Create podcast. I'm your host Matt Moseley, Chief Examiner for Art and Design at UAL Awarding Body. Each episode I speak to artists and [00:00:15] creative industry leaders about their experience of teaching and being taught, who or what inspires them and how they explore creativity in their work with the hope of showing you that there are infinite ways to be creative in the arts.

Matt: Today my guest [00:00:30] is Professor Michelle Williams Gamaker. Michelle is an artist filmmaker whose work explores critical alternatives to Western cinematic storytelling. Her award winning films have featured in the British Film Institute, and she is currently a Wolfson Fellow [00:00:45] at the British Academy. In this episode, I'm going to be talking to Michelle about her early process of filmmaking at art school, how she sees her film set as a teaching space, and her co learning project, exploring the relationship between tutors and students.[00:01:00]

Matt: There is a transcript available for this episode. Please click the link in the episode description so you can read as you listen. Hello, Michelle. 

Michelle Williams Gamaker:Hello. 

Matt: Thank you ever so much for joining us on the Teach, Inspire, Create podcast. [00:01:15] It's marvelous to have you with us today.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: Thank you for the invitation. It's really nice to come and reflect with you.

Matt: Brilliant. Well, we usually start by asking our interviewee to wind things back a little while. And we wondered [00:01:30] if there was a sort of early moment where film or art and film became in your consciousness.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: Yeah, it's a very good question. I think I've been very open about this. I had lots of access to the [00:01:45] TV as a child and as a result cinema for me came through television programming.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: So, I actually was a kind of avid or rapacious viewer of anything on screen. There was [00:02:00] really no quality control. I just took what I could. Along wiht just daytime TV, kids shows, came quite interesting cinema from the kind of early to mid 20th century, kind of British studio and [00:02:15] Hollywood films. So that's one of the answers to your question.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: And the other is probably the late 90s and going to art school. I did my foundation at Middlesex University and then I went on to do my BA, my [00:02:30] undergraduate in fine arts at Middlesex too and I basically had this wonderful group of tutors who were kind of experimental filmmakers from late seventies, kind of film co-op, um, generation and [00:02:45] kind of eighties video artists.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: So in my mind I had a template for old school cinema and experimental moving image and performance. So I actually, went [00:03:00] in first as a kind of performance artist, who started performing to camera. And then that act of filming myself got more serious as I went through my education. When I performed, I actually started to make.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: [00:03:15] Physical construction is actually very cheaply made out of cardboard, where I'd almost make viewing frames for people to watch what I was doing. 

Matt: Okay, so you were sort of controlling the experience of viewing. 

Michelle Williams Gamaker: Yes, I'm a control freak. Self confessed. But I [00:03:30] feel like  what I was starting to do was think about what the frame was, and there was a precision in how I wanted viewers to see whatever I was proposing through performance, and it became a light [00:03:45] bulb moment of thinking, oh my God, I'm actually just, I just want a viewfinder and I'm trying to give people a specific inroad into this encounter.

Matt: Very early you were seeing film, not just as something for cinema [00:04:00] and television, but as an art form. So were they sort of like installations, like a Bruce Nauman kind of moving image experience?

Michelle Williams Gamaker: Yeah, absolutely. My examples were people like Guy Sherwin, who worked in 16 mil film and [00:04:15] actually would perform with the projection and Kate Maynard and Michael Curran were cutting films that were either reflective films that took us on part narratives, but [00:04:30] also didn't necessarily need a narrative.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: So they were really experimental in that sense. Often, of course, they ended up screened within the context of gallery. We never thought of the commercial realm. And you know, I am really clear that even though [00:04:45] I work quite narratively now, I never went to film school. So all of that training comes later.

Matt: Can you tell us a little bit about these early films in terms of how they looked or the narrative?

Michelle Williams Gamaker: Very low budget. Effectively [00:05:00] performances to camera but often within the domestic setting and in a way almost elevating the domestic interior into a set. And there was something in the work that had a kind of painterly quality [00:05:15] and a kind of intensity in terms of framing. Often it might be myself quite low to the ground where all the furniture seemed to loom quite large.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: You know, I ended up [00:05:30] working alongside my dogs, you know, using them as co-performers.

Matt: But sort of accessible to make as well, so there was a sort of an element of working with what you had to work with at that time

Michelle Williams Gamaker: Completely, and I think that that's really something that's quite hard [00:05:45] to think about for graduates today because we're in a very image saturated culture and images have to be loud or look really slick or at least that's what the pressure I feel [00:06:00] my students seem to feel.

Matt: What did your kind of practice look like around that as well? Were you, did you use photography to inform things? Did you keep notes? How did you kind of support the progress with the film work?

Michelle Williams Gamaker: Yeah, that's a good question. I think it was [00:06:15] partly still working things out through performance. And photography was absolutely part of that, and sketchbooks, and effectively actually working back then at least without kind of a huge [00:06:30] conceptual rationale for the work, it was very imagistic.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: It was always about realising images, I realized, that was part of it, and it wasn't conceptually very deep at that stage, but I had a kind of ambition [00:06:45] for that.

Matt: Yeah, so there was a sort of strong sense of creating, you know, an aesthetic that effectively you could pause the film at any time and there would be a still image that would function.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. I remember having an argument with a peer who, he'd said, Michelle, you can't[00:07:00] expect every image to be beautiful.it's just not possible.

Matt: I mean you can strive for it.

Michelle: Absolutely. Yeah, I want the frames to have that quality.[00:07:15]

Matt: You mentioned photography and working things out through performance. Dosome of those things still ring true with how you make work today?

Michelle Williams Gamaker: Slightly differently today. I think the imagistic [00:07:30] quality still remains very strong to me, but I scriptwrite now. So I found across my learning journey, I think I had a kind of fear or a resistance to writing in the first instance, because [00:07:45] I'd gone in through such a practical mode of study.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: And I also have dyspraxia. So I found structuring things somewhat complicated, but as I lost my fear and I carried on from MA [00:08:00] to my PhD,  and beyond screenwriting or scriptwriting has sort of enabled a kind of grander thinking about how the images sit within a narrative. And the script then enables a storyboard, and then the [00:08:15] storyboard enables costume and prop design, enables me to think through casting and get to the film set that I'm trying to recreate.

Matt: Do you think that that's potentially a helpful way for maybe young, [00:08:30] aspiring filmmakers listening to this who maybe want to take the leap into making something in moving image but feel concerned about having to have a finished script and having to have, you know, all those elements but actually [00:08:45] you're sort of saying that, you know, your journey, you didn't take that in route necessarily, you were able to just make images.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: Oh, absolutely. I think, you know, I work now at a scale that requires a kind of [00:09:00] blueprint for the production crew that I'm working with. And we need that level of, um, information to be able to achieve things as efficiently as possible. But I would say t's so important to just [00:09:15] shoot and learn through the process of shooting, but that doesn't mean that you need to just shoot without any -

Matt: Yeah, don’t have any wild abandonment.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: Yeah. I think there's a balance to be found between having a kind of good shot list and knowing [00:09:30] What your kind of goal is for the half day or day that you're shooting and knowing where you want to be at a certain point across the day, but you don't need it, absolutely. 

Matt: And in terms of the kind of the things that inform you as a filmmaker, [00:09:45] where your research comes from or has that changed? I mean, do you still, is it still a lot of film and television or have you started to engage with other information? 

Michelle Williams Gamaker: Sure.Yeah. I'll always look towards painting. Yeah. I [00:10:00] still look towards other filmmakers. Cinema remains a strong motivation because a lot of my films, I've been trying to develop something that I call critical affection.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: You have to bear with me. Basically, under this umbrella of a term like critical [00:10:15] affection, I've been developing three forms of filmmaking that I call fictional activism, fictional revenge, and fictional healing. And they're basically my making sense of my cinephile past, like [00:10:30] looking at films that are absolutely treasures on so many levels and yet the race politics or the kind of hierarchy of creative production, the fiction machine comes with really [00:10:45] complex and problematic decisions around the casting of performers of colour or the exclusion of those individuals in favour of white performers who might be in brownface or blackface as it's called. And my work [00:11:00] is to critically and affectionately return to those projects.

Matt: Yeah. 

Michelle Williams Gamaker: And reconstruct them. 

Matt: Yeah.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: So I think my films, they do revisit characters and scenes from films and films that I loved. . 

Matt: That's interesting, yeah.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: And I'm trying really hard to make sense of what I [00:11:15] think actually plays a huge part in forming our own identity. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Michelle Williams Gamaker: The things that we receive at critical points in our viewership as young people, I think they really inform what we might [00:11:30] end up making ourselves.I

Matt: I think that's really empowering as well for people because I think sometimes for students there is a sense that An artist that they admire or work that they look at regularly. It feels like that's almost becomes inaccessible because it's like [00:11:45] they do that. So I need to do something different. I like that. But, but, but what you're sort of talking about is proactive, like retroactively, returning to the things that you love, seeing the problem, deconstructing it, fix the problem, and then put it back together in your own way. 

Michelle Williams Gamaker: Yeah, trying. 

Matt: It's [00:12:00] really interesting. I feel it's very, it's very empowering for students. I think to feel that they can artistically intervene with work in that way.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: I think we should.I mean, we're also at a very saturated point. And I really don't believe that the return is about a [00:12:15] copy. I do think it might have some space for thinking about homage and like really returning to something because you are interested in its stylistic rendering or you might adore a piece of dialogue [00:12:30] that you want to come back to.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: But I feel like we need to make sense of things by returning. And of course, a repetition will always come with something new. This is about a [00:12:45] repetition that will be informed by the fact that we're making it 30 years on.

Matt: So with that in mind, in terms of this idea of retroactively remaking, is there a particular project which you think is a good example of that work?

Michelle Williams Gamaker: Yeah, [00:13:00] maybe we could talk about a recent film I made called Thieves, that showed at South London Gallery in Dundee, contemporary and blue coats. It's what I call my first film in fictional revenge, and it's based on two films, one from [00:13:15] 1924 called The Thief of Baghdad. And of the same name, but from 1940, it's a technicolour version.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: So the ‘24 version was silent and black and white and made by Douglas Fairbanks, and the 1941 [00:13:30] had multiple directors, one of them being Michael Powell, and was a big technicolour Alexander Corder production. In the 1924 version, there's an actress of Chinese American heritage called Anna May Wong, and [00:13:45] in the 1940 technicolour, there was Sabu, who was an Indian born actor who became an American citizen.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: It's this big, lush, like kind of, um, fantasy adventure. And you can [00:14:00] imagine it's very orientalist. It has flying carpets and a big sultan's palace. And a number of the performers in both the ‘24 and the 1940 films were white actors in costume [00:14:15] and prosthetics and brown face. But that, it's a funny thing both films  cast colour too, but it's complicated because often they were in marginalised roles. Right, yeah. [00:14:30] Anna was cast as the Mongol slave, and Sabu was the thief. He actually has a leading role, but I would argue that despite being the lead and also having quite some agency within the [00:14:45] film, 

Matt: Still not portrayed in a particular way.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: Yeah, there's still a complex performance there to read. In this project that I did, Thieves, I rebuilt partially some of the film set because of course [00:15:00] it's a huge production, but in mine I reframed the Sultan's Palace as the site of the film set itself. So I managed to find a film set large enough to house my film set, so it [00:15:15] was a film set within a film set.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: So I'm really interested in this idea of shooting the edge of fiction. So, my feeling is that certain key decisions happen on a film set, and they also happen just off the set. [00:15:30] And in Thieves, my performers spend time finding out from the writer and the director about their creative stake within the film and the kind of premise or the kind of, you could say gimmick in the film is, is [00:15:45] that my Anna May Wong steps out of the 1924 film and she's stuck in her screen image and she's, she's actually in black and white.

Matt: Yeah, she's monochrome, isn't she? It's very clever, yeah. 

Michelle Williams Gamaker: She's monochrome. Andmy Sabu, my recast Sabu, [00:16:00] his journey is to help return Anna to Technicolor. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Michelle Williams Gamaker: I mean, that's the simple premise. It's really about, actually at the heart of it is a question of color.. Not just from the space of the performers, but actually what meaning could come from colouration, like [00:16:15] what it means to make Technicolour film as well.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: I suppose what was important for me about making Thieves was that you could make something that has like a fictional arc, like a journey, but within it, you could also begin to [00:16:30] reveal the structural nature of storytelling and fiction making. So indeed, Anna and Sabu eavesdrop on the set and hear the screenwriter and director effectively [00:16:45] arguing over whether Anna has enough screen time or not.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: Whether she should be on screen or whether we cut her screen time by 50%. In a lot of our careers, we're not privy to decision making. Often the things that [00:17:00] we experience is the moment of the decision being made. And we participate in, that might be the nature of a course that we're on, but some of us  start to get involved in the decision making.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: And I think I'm trying to, as [00:17:15] filmmaker, reveal some of the tricks of what happens within fiction and also some of the kind of political complexity of that.

Matt: Yeah, I think it works incredibly well in terms of presenting the viewer with something familiar in terms [00:17:30] of a film of that kind of a film, of that kind of fictional fantasy type film and that's the vehicle and then through that these important discussions and dialogues are introduced, I think it works really beautifully. It's  really beautifully balanced in that.[00:17:45]

Matt: I was going to ask if it's okay a little bit about the sort of like logistics of putting something like that together because it's incredibly [00:18:00] ambitious and there's so many different moving parts. How does something like that begin?

Michelle Williams Gamaker: Well, this is to put - just to caveat everything - that this was my biggest production to date and it came with a lot of funding support.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: So [00:18:15] it was made possible because a number of people backed the project. But I think there's another conversation around long term collaboration. So that's my DOP, the director of photography, the cinematographer. There were [00:18:30] performers who had worked with me, some since 2010, returning to work with me. So there were a number of people on the set that had worked on these kinds of growing in scale projects. I try [00:18:45] to have paid mentorship options within the film set. So what that means is we managed to secure funding with the Arts Council to fund 20 graduates to work on the set in [00:19:00] paid roles, effectively working in costume, camera, runners, across the board, wherever there was a role set design.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: And these were individuals who had either had fine art degrees or were interested in film. [00:19:15] So it was really very much about saying, I think that if I'm looking at films, the history of film that has complex and problematic questions about representation, how can the [00:19:30] thing that I make address better practice?

Matt: Yeah.

Michelle Williams Gamaker:. And now that's sort of becoming a kind of standard form of practice for me too. I can't always do 20 on set, but you know, I'm, I'm building each project. [00:19:45] We'll have a number of mentees that are paid and, and working alongside me.

Matt: Well, it's brilliant. I mean, that's, if you reach a point in your career where you're sort of lucky enough to be making things that potentially have a space to enable [00:20:00] someone who's at the start of maybe their journey to allow them access, because how important do you think it is for potential artists and filmmakers to have that time on a professional set?

Michelle Williams Gamaker: I think it's important because most of my [00:20:15] learning on set happened either through doing, and I didn't really get much set time, but what I felt I learned was just watching and trying to deconstruct productions, but actually having a bit of time to watch [00:20:30] somebody doing the work of directing or making a film actually gives you a : precedent of, okay, well, they're doing that, but actually I would prefer to do it like this. And [00:20:45] because my way is only one way, but having a kind of tangible, uh, experience on set offers you. I would like to hope it also offers people belief that they can, build and scale up themselves because [00:21:00] I genuinely did start as a one woman band.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: I think at undergraduate level, specifically in lectures. I would listen to the tutors unpack somebody's artistic practice and I just, I never [00:21:15] knew…

Matt:  it's hard to visualize it when it's just theoretical like that, isn't it? It's when you can see it in action. 

Michelle Williams Gamaker: Yeah, I think so.

Matt: It makes it more sense I think.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: But it was also like I often used to just, I used to just marvel at how coherent somebody's practice looked.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: [00:21:30] And I didn't know how it could look like that, I just couldn't imagine with just my fragments of images, I didn't know what it meant to have this idea of a practice that the dots seem to connect or one work seemed to [00:21:45] dovetail into the other. And I've sort of, 20 something years on, I do have one of those more coherent practices, but it's partly because if you give your practice time and you hang on in there, it will just [00:22:00] keep on growing. It's just really hard to believe that at the beginning. 

Matt: Yeah, sure. 

Michelle Williams Gamaker: And I also really want to say it's also really hard when you see a production with a lot of money behind it, to actually believe that it's also possible for [00:22:15] you to do find that level of support or see that capacity to scale up, but it really is possible, but it's just basically believing that each project is building... 

Matt: Yes, that you're working towards something incrementally over [00:22:30] exactly over time. What is the role of a director? What does the director do?

Michelle Williams Gamaker: It's a really good question because one thing to say is every time I shoot it was only just in this recent production that I felt a bit more like a director because [00:22:45] You get such little time on set as a director, most of your time is spent in what's called pre-production, the development of the idea, the script writing.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: If you are the screenwriter, casting, building the crew. [BREAK IN AUDIO] The [00:23:00] actual time on set proportionally is just really small. But when you are on set, I think the directors, It's the first point of call for most of the decisions to be made. So, as a director, I try really hard to not make it [00:23:15] feel oppressively hierarchical, so that means that I've got a lot of people with me making decisions, and I feel good about that.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: My sharing of decisions doesn't feel like it's damaging my auteurship, [00:23:30] or my authorial power as director. For me, it's like Tom and I are discussing the image behind the camera, what we're getting. My first AD is telling me we need to cut this little [00:23:45] piece of the sequence so that we can get to the larger scene with more dialogue.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: I've got a costume department who say, actually, we really think that you should have the costume like this because it will help. And I'm like, well, I think that's actually going to [00:24:00] complicate the story because we need her to be in this position. So we, we're constantly in dialogue.

Matt: There's a negotiation happening all the way through.

Michelle Williams Gamaker:  I hope so. And I am also trialing all the time, this idea that a film set might be this pedagogical vessel, [00:24:15] like it has the potential to be live on set. So we were shooting at Kingston university and a number of the film students came in and just shadow observed the cinematographer and myself. And one thing that [00:24:30] sometimes some directors will be quite possessive of is the monitor, which is basically what's being recorded.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: And I felt really excited about the monitor being a kind of, almost like a free for all [00:24:45] on the last shoot, Strange Evidence, because people were able to stand alongside me and co-watch what was being captured. And that they had an absolute curiosity that I also have, and it's like, together we were [00:25:00] looking at the image that was being created.

Matt: And I guess it increases their level of investment in the project as well, to feel like they've had some level of artistic input into what's being made. And it feels like a very, a creative [00:25:15] process of filmmaking rather than an industrial process of filmmaking.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: That's nice. I mean, creative and also, uh, a slightly more interpersonal. 

Matt: Yes. 

Michelle Williams Gamaker: So obviously I can say that because I'm still making at a scale where there's time for a [00:25:30] level of investment in.

Matt: Do you leave contingency to be able to have these negotiations, these conversations? 

Michelle Williams Gamaker: That's the plan. 

Matt: Yeah. Yeah.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: Well I think the problem is I'm always going to be a tutor. So. I think I'm [00:25:45] always going to look for the space for pedagogy when I can, or at least even afterwards you can even deconstruct a film and do the teaching in that moment. If you can't do it on set, you could do it before we're [00:26:00] on set and after we're on set, where we're looking at the thing we made or we're thinking about what the edit means.[00:26:15]

Matt: Teaching is something that has intertwined and run parallel with your film career, isn't it? Could you tell us a little bit about the teaching that you've done or continue to do?

Michelle Williams Gamaker: I am off on this big three year fellowship so [00:26:30] I feel a little bit rusty but I've felt recently that the teaching has had much more stake outside of the institution and in these kind of mentorship spaces because I'm keen that it's not only within [00:26:45] institutions that are now fee paying spaces: that education can be received. But outside of that, as a studio tutor at Goldsmiths, I've tried to trial a number of things that probably comes back to this idea of what [00:27:00] is the hierarchy or the contract between tutor and student. And I think that I've spent time, I think sometimes getting it right, sometimes getting it wrong, between trying to break down what we've [00:27:15] understood the hierarchy of tutor-student to be.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: And I think there'll be people resistant to this, but I've tried to bring a stronger equality in the idea that as we learn, we co-[00:27:30]learn. It's a key principle for me that I have always said to my students that I am ahead in years and experience. But I'm also really [00:27:45] ready to learn alongside, we don't work in classrooms anyway, we work in studios.

Matt: Yeah, and it breaks down a lot of those negative associations that some people have from like the previous education experiences that have been in that traditional kind of [00:28:00] model and it enables them to maybe re-engage with learning in a different and better way, doesn't it?

Michelle Williams Gamaker: Yeah, and of course once, if a classroom structure is imposed, it obviously can limit how you can teach but I've often [00:28:15] tried even within the classroom context to ask people to invest something of the personal that brings them to the subjects and in that moment I also bring sometimes [00:28:30] with some vulnerability, some of my personal in, to be able to share the process of what it means or what's at stake in our decision to learn about something on that given day. There's no right or wrong to this, but I've, I'm [00:28:45] interested in the idea of co-learning and with a number of colleagues have spent time developing something called a particular reality, which initially we started in 2018, pre the [00:29:00] 2020 push with BLM (Black Lives Matter) for more parity for Black people, but also individuals of color in allyship.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: And what we found in the studios at Kingston University and Goldsmiths [00:29:15] pre 2020 was the process of kind of individuals, tutors, students of colour feeling slightly on the edge of their course, um, not really being in on the conversations. And that could [00:29:30] sometimes mean awkward or problematic conversations with tutors. Or being within the studio, but not feeling like they could form a strong friendship group or, and now [00:29:45] I feel like so much has happened since that moment and still we continue to try to improve the experience of anyone with a intersectional background within their art and design degrees or study.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: And so it's sort of, [00:30:00] we found that we needed to actually, on the first instance, just make connections across the city. So Kingston and Goldsmiths students, this was with Joe Addison, we put this project together, basically forming [00:30:15] collaborative connections. And that snowballed into making a collective exhibition, which then developed into a making zines that could be shared during the pandemic to now Kingston [00:30:30] and Goldsmiths being partnered with Manchester Met and some projects at Bath Spa and we've had projects at Middlesex. So a kind of network where we've been co-learning now since 2018 and actually [00:30:45] asking our students to help us with generating and taking hold or shape of their curriculum.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: Um, now this is not an official programme at Goldsmiths or at Kingston or at Manchester Met, but we've slowly [00:31:00] been raising funds and redirecting funds to offer a kind of alternative or additional programme of study. And it's been hard to be on the margins and yet very much [00:31:15] used as a kind of model of good practice.

Matt: Yeah.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: I think we're always striving for parity and equity in the learning environment, as well as on my film sets. But there's [00:31:30] something that is hard to really drill down into, which is what the individual experience is within the structure of an institution’s desire to aim at those things. The [00:31:45] reality is that courses move at a certain pace and within that um, one of the things that's very important is that we ask all the students no matter what their background to bring their experience in with them. [00:32:00] But how are we actually doing that?

Matt: Yeah.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: And is that actually a genuine invitation or is it something that a prospectus 

Matt: Yeah, this is it, it's sort of challenging organizations to be more than just the use of kind of [00:32:15] buzzwords, isn't it? It's sort of things like social mobility, social purpose get thrown around a lot. But then when actually organizations really start to dig into what that means, that can be really complicated to, to do authentically. It can [00:32:30] be really expensive. And then suddenly there's this kind of. Uh, you know, not a rejection, but there's a more of a resistance to doing the hard work, isn't there? Maybe remaining free of ties to a large organisation gives you that [00:32:45] agency to do things, doesn't it?

Michelle Williams Gamaker: I think so. I mean, one of the things that we trialled or tried to think about is, first of all, with a particular reality, initially, we thought that this was a project that was for [00:33:00] students of colour. And that's where it started. But as we continued into 2020 and beyond, and we were really pushing for kind of more equality within the learning environment, it became clear that actually, [00:33:15] as we've always known, the work of anti-racism should be everybody's work and what would an anti-racist classroom look like, or what would going through your education without experiencing racism be?

Matt: Yeah. 

Michelle Williams Gamaker: And that's[00:33:30] a real big one because of course people probably would say along their journeys if they've experienced racism, it's going to be a fairly common in some, whether it's a microaggression or it's a big form of racial [00:33:45] prejudice that hits them across some point in their feedback or in their moment of being spoken to by a tutor, It's all our work to keep on working on ourselves, and yet we've done things through alumni, a [00:34:00] particular reality, to think about what it might be to reimagine the CRIT format.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: Within the CRIT format, there's a lot of assumptions made, and some of those kind of moments of pain for an individual who's trying to [00:34:15] share their practice can be really, can be very discouraging. So, how might a CRIT be shaped to imagine who's in the room and make people aware of what they're saying when they give feedback.

Matt: That's what I was going to [00:34:30] ask you is obviously if we've got teachers listening to this, who maybe want to explore this work or introduce these types of conversations into their classrooms. Do you have any sort of tips or advice or some practical strategies that they can [00:34:45] employ right away to get things going.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: Yeah. We have some resources on aparticularreality.co.uk. But in addition, I think, I think one of the most important things is, is to sort of, as a tutor, [00:35:00] realize that some of the work can be done by being much more open to this idea of co-learning. And so saying we don't have all the answers and we're actually willing to listen so much more to your [00:35:15] position and some of the times it's about unraveling the idea of what learning is and just coming back to starting with tea and some food and time together to actually build [00:35:30]a relationship which I think we've of course we're under a lot of time pressure. So ‘a particular reality’ benefits from not being an official programme and offering precisely those moments of conviviality or [00:35:45] time together that actually students desperately need and lose sight of because of the pressure of deadlines or course.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: And I know that we are not always in a [00:36:00] position to be able to fund these things, but I would argue that every university needs to allocate core resources to this form of community development. Because once we've addressed that [00:36:15] better, we can actually move forward in all our conversations with a bit more transparency.You know, in also saying, I got that wrong as a tutor and I'm aware that I perhaps need to read more.

Matt: That's the thing I think that [00:36:30] people are anxious about, isn't it? They are frightened.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: I think we're all nervous of making mistakes, but I think by saying that we might not have the vocabulary to address the kind [00:36:45] of the university has to address the fact that its demographic has changed and also in terms of class and ability there's such a wide range of individuals studying [00:37:00] now, but we're not quite there with perhaps being ready to support those needs. But we obviously we're doing as much as we can, but we could do more, to say that we're still learning.

Matt: And the encouragement is to say to people that [00:37:15] the learning is in the things maybe that don't go exactly right. The things that maybe go wrong, but it's important to, to try to take the initial step to actually try to open a conversation. I really liked what you were saying about creating a space, which [00:37:30] removes some of those kind of perceived collision of purposes that maybe the education setting has where the students are like, okay, well, what am I here to do? Am I doing this or doing that? But actually taking away some of those pressures of [00:37:45] the course content or the expected deadline and actually say, well, we're going to have this conversation now and then we will then return to the education in a different way as a result. 

Michelle Williams Gamaker: Oh, I hope so.  I mean, I think if we could just open up a bit [00:38:00] more time, it would just help so much. And that it might not be that it's a concrete learning outcome, as we've been led to believe is the way we need to get through our curriculars. It's actually about [00:38:15] strengthening who, who you've got in your space and knowing them a little deeper.

Matt: Hopefully as activities, initiatives, processes like  ‘A Particular Reality’ sustain, this will become more embedded and [00:38:30] just become part of the education process. I think it's, it's a wonderful piece of work. So just returning to art and film, are you working on something at the moment you could tell us a little bit about?

Michelle Williams Gamaker: Yes, I can. We are [00:38:45] working towards an exhibition in May at Matt's Gallery, which is in Nine Elms. And the project's called Strange Evidence, and we'd shot this body horror. There will be some of that moving image within the exhibition, [00:39:00] but actually it's quite an experimental format. I'm planning that the exhibition will be a film set, and that during the exhibition run, we will activate the film set and shoot the second half of the film.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: Wow. During the, yeah, [00:39:15] during the show, and, The plan there would be to potentially even invite members of the public in as extras.

Matt: How does that feel to you in terms of that? Because obviously there's some unknowns there, isn't there? And as you mentioned earlier, you do like to have a certain level [00:39:30] of oversight, shall we say, about what, so is there, is that exciting to you? Does that feel challenging?

Michelle Williams Gamaker: It's good. I've written it as a proper control freak, I've written it when the public will be able to be extras. No, it's exciting for me [00:39:45] that I could actually, an audience,his idea that the film set itself is something that we could enter and that could be the exhibition and that we could really look at the kind of trappings of what fiction looks like.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: [00:40:00] It will also hopefully be the place where I'll almost be artist in residence during the time at Matt's Gallery. The plan will be that I'll be around to talk to students who want to come and visit the set and talk to me about filmmaking.

Matt: It's a brilliant concept. It [00:40:15] speaks massively to that core value that you have of:allowing people to come on this journey with you, making that space for them to be part and to collaborate. So finally, we do always ask our participant interviewee if they have what we call a creative [00:40:30] provocation that they could potentially set to our listeners. Did you have anything in mind?

Michelle Williams Gamaker: I think I would like to come back to this idea of time. And ask whoever's listening who has the remit as a tutor [00:40:45] to consider destabilizing or shaking up a lesson for the, for whatever that plan is. What would it be like to start with some tea? Maybe start with a moment of [00:41:00] asking how people are in the room and maybe then going on a walk and thinking about the idea that  for that session, you are co developing and co learning together and maybe on that [00:41:15] walk considering the city or the context that you're in as a potential film set and  if that was a film set, what decisions might you take as part of a production crew [00:41:30] and what decisions might you take if you were.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: performers within that scene. So there could be individuals in the group that would like to participate in being crew members and others who might wish to [00:41:45] gravitate towards being on camera or making decisions as performers. And what would you co develop under that kind of provocation? 

Matt: Yeah, I love it. I love the idea of welcoming the world in to the conversation and see what comes through that.[00:42:00] Thank you ever so much.

Michelle Williams Gamaker: My pleasure.

Matt: Thank you for listening to this episode of Teach, Inspire, Create. A massive thank you to Michelle for such an incredible conversation. I found it incredibly interesting to learn [00:42:15] about her value systems around filmmaking, art, and teaching. If you want to know more about Michelle and her work, you can visit her website, michellewilliamsgamaker.com. As always, really hoping that you're enjoying the podcast. And that you're sharing with your [00:42:30] friends. Please do remember to subscribe and rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us to understand what you think of the show. Thanks for listening until next time. Take care. Bye.