Photographer Rob Honstra's 'The Europeans' translated into Punjabi at the behest of BCVA

We recently worked with dutch documentary photographer Rob Hornstra as he reached out to us for help to be able recognise the Punjabi community's significant prescence in the region and so we got them involved in the project. Rob is working on a large scale photography project all over the continent called ‘The Europeans’ to mark how Europe has changed by migration beyond recognition and challenging what we are used to regarding the term European. The Black Country was given focus for a book in his monologue series across Europe. Rob has listened to our concerns when approached to help about photographers being parachuted in to photograph in the Black Country and being paid a lot of money and then leaving without any co-creation and co-production with local community members, certainly no lasting benefits on the minorities who pay taxes to the local authorities and are used to have their images taken and don’t have any focus groups to attend to their needs. We were pleased to see a very ethical approach from the dutch photographer in the way he worked with communities and what he offered them. Not only this we were taken seriously on the low impact of arts on the large Punjabi communities and Rob at his own cost has had a number of these books to distributed to the local communities to help understand where they fit in to the project!