As an Occupational Therapist and Photographer I have worked in mental health for around 19 years - the majority of these have been with children and young people.
During this time the sharing of photos and personal information, on the internet, has increased phenomenally as have the risks associated with this.
The use of photos on social media is not going away and continues to offer some positives for some people.
But more and more I have heard of young people being approached by people in a harmful manner. This can be through cyber-bullying, grooming, sharing of personal images, sexting etc.

The aim for the workshops is to help educate young people around the risks associated with sharing images, and personal information, on the internet and so reducing some of these risks.

The project will consider how and why images might be shared on the internet and address some of the reasons associated with this - For example sometimes people are looking for peer approval and validation through the images.

We will then go onto to task young people with a taking a number of images which portray themselves and their lives.
This will be done using disposable film cameras - partly because this limits the number of images a person can take and so makes people think more about the images they would like to take,.
Using film also means that the young person has to wait for the film to be processed and this give reflection time which people don't use prior to sharing images on social media.
Young people will then be asked to chose a number of images, they feel, that best portray them and the messages they want to share about themselves. By doing this they are again able to reflect on the images, the messages the images show and also that not everything has to be made public.

If the young people would like to I would then hold an exhibition of their work to increase their self esteem further.