While Assignment 4 has been simmering away in the background – I am just about ready to start writing in earnest – I have been thinking more about Assignment 5 and this has in turn set off further musings about the issue of development of a personal voice (which I last wrote about when reflecting on the work I did for Assignment 3) and the development of something that might at least start to form a recognisable body of work.

It increasingly looks likely that what I want to produce for Assignment 5 will be feature aspects of the village where I live and will develop the theme of spaces and places that I looked at in Assignment 3. With that at the back of my mind, it occurred to me while walking the dog this afternoon on one of his increasingly well-trodden routes round the village that a lot of the work I have done while studying with OCA has been local, much of it within the confines of the village itself. Newcastle, half an hour away by train, is about as far as any of my work has taken me physically. Starting right at the beginning with Square Mile for EYV, many of the exercises for that module, much of I&P, and just about all of the photographic work for LPE, has been local. C&N was a bit different in that it was more personal because of the events of that year but still was very locally based.

For all that I have before questioned the extent to which a personal voice is developing, it strikes me now that this fairly consistent, close focus on my immediate surroundings, how the locality is feeding and developing my ideas, and is consistently offering material to work on, is in itself becoming something of a distinctive voice.

It also struck me that there is at least the potential for a definable body of work. I can well imagine taking much of the work I have done to date, separating it from the specific context of the OCA courses and their assignments, and starting to build from it a personal vision of and response to where I live. Something to think about over the longer term but for now I think I will just let it take its course and see where I end up.

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