Figure 1. Photo of first Picturing Security drawing workshop taken by Benjamin Hall, 2023.

This text presents the 2023/24 research project Picturing Security, which was funded by the Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF) to explore experiences of security, risk and threat using collaborative arts practice as a tool for conversation. What follows are reflections on what happened to provide the rationale behind the project and the gathered insights into how creative communities might foster opportunities for agency and provide voice through drawing and animation.

During 2023 and 2024, myself and artist activist Jill Gibbon established a studio community of students and staff from Leeds Beckett University to discuss what ‘security’ meant to the group. The project centred around consecutive, open workshops where creative practice was used as a form of enquiry and a means of encouraging dialogue. There was a loose intention to create a short, animated film using the material from the workshops, though we were not wedded to this specific outcome, or any for that matter. We were conscious that to set a particular expectation as to the result might have a narrowing influence on proceedings. We therefore adopted a processual mode, as Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson outline: “Rather than deploying a means-ends rationality, the processual mode entails both means and ends, however they may emerge in the flow of activity. The processual mode is not linear, nor are its ends foreclosed.” (O’Neill & Wilson, 2010, p. 19).

In order to allow for an expansion of possibility, we were keen to establish a community where the decision-making followed a consensual trajectory for the activity moving forward. Throughout conventional education, choices are few for young people and there is a lack of agency in terms of what they learn and how they are taught (The Children’s Society, 2024). Equally, outside of education, ‘democracy’ is a socio-political mechanism for appearing to offer choice. However, that which is labelled democratic still suffers bias, and unrepresentative binaries formed by those who hold financial and material power and might censor, silence, and sometimes violently suppress oppositional forces, which is true of a wider global context.

Democratic or sociocratic education is an established pedagogic method “where the students have much or full control over their own activities and learning and have a clear voice in school governance” (Gray et al., 2021). There have been notable, historic records of institutions to date that follow such pedagogies including Yasnaya Polyana School (Russia), Barcelona Modern School (Catalonia), Summerhill School (UK) and Bagsværd Ny Lilleskole (Denmark). It was our intention to utilise these approaches to give the participants agency, directing the creative course of the sessions, and ultimately the outcome of the project.

Figure 2. Still from the finished Picturing Security (2025) film based upon the table drawings.

With each consecutive workshop, we returned to the material from the session before, developing the drawings further using new processes. Participants differed each time we assembled: some were existing, others new, which meant that we would often be working with the images of others. We used simple animation techniques such as hand-drawn animation in the form of boiling line to bring material to life. As these drawings were not always our own, we looked to the inherent dynamism of the forms to tell us how they might move. In this way, we looked to the drawings of others, brought to life gently by animation, to direct and guide us.

As the project progressed we were conscious of two matters in relation to both possibility and agency. Firstly, if an outcome might take the form of an animation, then the convention here (with the exception of more experimental modes) is one that follows a meticulously planned narrative, often enforced by a hierarchy of creative direction. Secondly, we were also aware that even though we were looking to the community for direction, this would have to be actively voiced by them, which takes confidence and articulation. Within the workshops we identified that the material we generated could be this voice, and might direct us in what to do next, offering an authentic form of democratic representation for all. 

In the context of the Picturing Security project, and more generally, ‘animation’ is an ambiguous term. Etymologically this term evolved from the Latin animāre,  literally ‘to give life’ – which can apply to the act of animating material, though we can also see this meaning relate to facilitation too. Simon Nicholson, educator and author of play philosophy The Theory of Loose Parts writes: “One joins a community as a catalyst and helps the community identify its resources and communication tools, etc., whereupon the community, all by itself ‘takes off…’, and the person who was the catalyst then moves elsewhere. Other names for this approach are ‘facilitator’ or ‘animator’.” (Nicholson, 1976, pp. 44 – 45).

Figure 3. Excerpt from Picturing Security (2025).

We were fortunate that Picturing Security, due to its funding, allowed us to hand the material we had created over to a small team of animators once the workshops had ended in July, 2025. These materials consisted of drawings, animations and audio recordings of parallel dialogue to the activity. In keeping with the project’s democratic method, our briefing to the animators was: do what you feel the material gives you permission to do. The animators, being used to explicit instruction, were initially puzzled by the relaxed approach, but as they began to work with the drawings, they felt a sense of liberation “like returning to art school” (Fisher, 2025).

There are moments within education and creative practice where both expectation and ego can suppress the agency of others. We might have a set idea or fixed agenda of how a project or teaching session should go, but to insist upon this removes the democratic voice of the community. As an animator and educator it can feel uncomfortable to relinquish agency for reasons of control and authorship. There are both external and internal pressures for ‘outputs’, associations with success and achievement. To forego these and to permit a project to run its own course is not only refreshing, but essential in order to arrive somewhere truly new and unknown. As we observed during one reflective exchange: “Real security comes from letting go… Real security comes from acknowledging vulnerability.” (Gibbon, 2024).

In our closing conversations together, we realised that the project arrived at a paradoxical endpoint. We were exploring themes of security that might conventionally be associated with fortification: building defences as an active form of protection, or taking assertive control. In education and creative practice, these are the responses that we feel obliged to adopt to withstand the pressures for success or excellence, that are linked to our professional survival. Looking back, what is now obvious from working with all the collaborators on the Picturing Security project is that vulnerability too can be a strategy for security: admitting our limitations, openly acknowledging failure and embracing uncertainties along the way. Curiously, within a community setting, these qualities can lead to strengthened trust, shared understanding – and ultimately – security, achieved through peaceful, democratic means.

Credits

Picturing Security (2025): Rosa Fisher, Martino Gasparini, Jill Gibbon, Benjamin Hall, and Leeds Beckett University Illustration Students. Music by Buffalo (Jon Foulger, Lins Wilson and Tom Hudson). This project was funded by the Independent Social Research Foundation (ISRF) with support in kind from Leeds Beckett University, United Kingdom.

References

Fisher, R. (2025) Face-to-face conversation with Jill Gibbon and Benjamin Hall, 3 July. United Kingdom.

Gibbon, J. (2024) Face-to-face conversation with Benjamin Hall, 18 March. United Kingdom.

Gray, P., Riley, G. & Curry-Knight, K. (2021) ‘Former Students’ Evaluations of Experiences at a Democratic School: Roles of the Democratic Processes, Staff, and the Community of Students’. Other Education: The Journal of Educational Alternatives. Vol. 10(2), Pp. 4-25.

O’Neill, P. & Wilson, M. (2010) Curating and the Educational Turn. Open Editions.

Nicholson, S. (1976) ‘TAD292/10 ‘Interactive Art and Play’. The Open University.

The Children’s Society (2024) ‘The Good Childhood Report 2024’. [ONLINE] Available from:https://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/information/professionals/resources/good-childhood-report-2024

Benjamin Hall is a Senior Lecturer in Illustration and Animation at Leeds Beckett University, and a tutor at The Open College of the Arts, a distance-learning art school based in Barnsley. In his research, Hall utilises creative practice to instigate opportunities that explore alternative pedagogies and learning communities. Through playful and participatory workshops, he draws upon collaborative storytelling methods such as animation, experimental writing and interactive fiction that enable the open exploration, expression and articulation of lived experience. With a background in broadcast animation and digital narratives, Hall has had his work screened and exhibited across platforms worldwide.