After a study was conducted with over one hundred contributors, strangers and peers alike, in an attempt to define the particularities of chosen family within this community, I moved on to translate this data into a creative project meant to show the importance of these relationships in real-life context.

My original plan was to seek out multiple chosen families, which I knew were interconnected by one or more members, creating a web of relationships spanning across the UK and the continental USA. I wanted to catch small moments of tenderness and love between the members of these extended families, seeking out particularities in these relationships that made them unique and special within themselves. In my experience, I have always perceived those platonic relationships created by queer people to be deeper and more intimate than those created with a heteronormative lens. Obviously, these relationships still vary greatly even outside of that sphere of influence, but I truly believe that we as a community have collectively agreed to transcend some kind of expectation for a line to be drawn between romantic and platonic love and intimacy. I wanted to prove this idea by showing the greater world, perhaps unaware of this notion, a different version of these relationships.

Read more about Francesca story on the Leeds School of Arts Festival Site…

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