As part of Global Intergenerational Week, FolkDeep hosted Through Her Lens, a gentle and reflective online workshop under Radha Sutra: Stories Across Borders. Bringing together women from Belfast and Delhi, the session used a PhotoVoice-inspired therapeutic photography approach to explore themes of diaspora, cultural identity, memory, belonging, and home.
At the heart of the workshop was a simple but powerful idea: that photographs can hold far more than what they visibly show. They can carry memory, emotion, longing, connection, and stories that often remain unspoken. Through visual sharing and honest conversation, participants were invited to reflect on images that mattered to them and to speak about the feelings, experiences, and meanings held within them.
The session was facilitated with care by Natasha Bhatia, whose approach created a calm and safe environment for personal reflection and collective exchange. The workshop encouraged participants not only to look at photographs as images, but as emotional entry points like small moments captured through any form of expression and transformed into a channel for feeling.
What unfolded was a moving exchange of ideas, experiences, and memories across borders. Participants spoke openly about the deeper meanings within their chosen photographs, and in doing so, created a space of empathy, trust, and connection. The workshop showed how visual storytelling can help people better understand themselves and each other, especially when navigating themes as intimate and layered as identity, migration, culture, and belonging.
The reflections shared afterwards revealed the emotional impact of the session. One participant described it as “an amazing exchange of ideas, connections, experiences, and conversations.” Another shared that the workshop was “truly enriching”, helping them understand how capturing small moments of life can become a way of expressing inner feelings. Others reflected on how the session supported their reflective practice, introduced them to the importance of therapeutic photography, and made them feel part of a beautiful and cozy community.
There was also a strong sense that this was only the beginning. Participants expressed a desire for more such sessions and conversations, and several looked forward to future workshops that would allow even more time for interaction and dialogue. One reflection beautifully captured this hope, describing a wish for conversations that lead from the self, to each other, to the wider world, and right back.
Natasha’s workshop reflections also highlighted the value of the process. She noted that therapeutic photography, through visual exploration and honest conversation, can strengthen our sense of self and our relationships by creating safe spaces where meaningful discussions can emerge. In this way, the workshop supported not only creative expression, but also personal growth, emotional processing, and deeper understanding.
For Radha Sutra, Through Her Lens became an important part of the wider cultural exchange between Belfast and Delhi. It showed that storytelling does not always begin with words. Sometimes it begins with an image, with a memory, with a detail from everyday life that quietly holds a much larger story. By making space for those stories, the workshop added a beautiful and thoughtful layer to the project’s ongoing exploration of lived culture and shared humanity across borders.
We are deeply thankful to Global Intergenerational Week for giving us the opportunity to be part of this wider global moment and to hold this workshop as part of that journey. This session may have been our final one within this strand, and it allowed us to gather reflections, learning, and meaningful connections — but it is only the beginning. Next time, we hope to go bigger, reach further, and continue building spaces where stories, images, and lived experiences can bring people together across generations and across borders.
Through Her Lens reminded us that cultural exchange can be soft, personal, and deeply transformative. It can happen in moments of listening, in the act of witnessing another person’s memory, and in the courage to share our own. In that sense, this workshop was not just a session. It was a small archive of feeling, connection, and possibility — and a meaningful step in FolkDeep’s journey of keeping stories alive through care, creativity, and community.