Picturing High Streets
Picturing High Streets is about our relationship to place and makes use of photography as a powerful tool through which people can connect with a sense of place, community and the historic environment.
A Collective Portrait of a Place (Zine Making as a Collaborative Practice)
A learning resource about using photography to connect people with place, community and the historic environment through collaborative practice. Part of the Picturing High Streets programme.
Picturing High Streets: Some Visual Strategies
A learning resource for teachers supporting students interested in creating a photographic portrait of their high street. This resource offers a series of short, simple visual and photographic strategies that will help students uncover the stories behind the shopfronts and tell the story of their locality.Picturing High Streets
Picturing High Streets was a 3-year project by Historic England and Photoworks that recorded the stories and communities behind England’s shopfronts to create a contemporary collection of high street photographs. Produced in partnership with national and regional photography organisations.
Over three years it documented and celebrated the history, experiences and connections of the people and places that make up an often-overlooked fixture in our lives. It involved artists co-creating work with local communities, public participation through @picturinghighstreets, national and local exhibitions, and a new archive collection of 377 photographs.
This project was produced in partnership with GRAIN Projects, Impressions Gallery, Open Eye Gallery, London College of Communication, Photofusion, QUAD/FORMAT, Redeye, ReFramed and The Photographers’ Gallery.
The programme formed part of a wider High Street Cultural Programme, the UK’s largest ever public community-led arts and heritage programme. It’s also part of a Government funded regeneration effort across more than 60 high streets known as High Streets Heritage Action Zones.
Find out more about each area of the project by following the links below.
A Collective Portrait of a Place (Zine Making as a Collaborative Practice)
A learning resource about using photography to connect people with place, community and the historic environment through collaborative practice. Part of the Picturing High Streets programme.
Picturing High Streets: Some Visual Strategies
A learning resource for teachers supporting students interested in creating a photographic portrait of their high street. This resource offers a series of short, simple visual and photographic strategies that will help students uncover the stories behind the shopfronts and tell the story of their locality.Picturing High Streets
Historic England and Photoworks invite you to look at the high street as never before. Over the next 12 months, we’re asking you to uncover the stories behind the shopfronts and post your own photographs on Instagram using #PicturingHighStreets. Your photos will contribute to an unofficial photographic archive of the English high street; charting and celebrating the history and experiences of the people and places that make up an often-overlooked fixture in all our lives.
Starting on Wednesday 28 September 2022, you’re invited to join in with a fortnightly challenge that will create a rich and varied picture of our high streets. To complete the challenges – fronted by photographers, celebrities and community leaders – you will need to visit your local high streets and discover the secret stories of these places of commerce, conversation and community.
The most evocative photographs will be featured on the Picturing High Streets Instagram channel. A selection of photographs submitted before 6 December 2022 will be displayed in a national outdoor exhibition opening in March 2023 filling advertising space, outdoor exhibition panels and shop windows on high streets across England. These photographs will also enter the Historic England Archive, the nation’s archive for England’s historic buildings, archaeology and social history.
We know high streets are struggling. Their futures feel uncertain and they are facing a pivotal moment in their long histories. Help us record a year in the life of the high street and tell the stories behind the shopfronts.
Follow @PicturingHighStreets on Instagram and post your pictures using #PicturingHighStreets.
Historic England is the public body that looks after England’s historic environment. We champion historic places to help people understand, value and care for them.
Photoworks champions photography for everyone. We are an international platform, global in reach, and have provided opportunities for artists and audiences since 1995.
Picturing High Streets is produced in partnership with GRAIN Projects, Impressions Gallery, Open Eye Gallery, PARC (Photography and the Archive Research Centre), Photofusion, QUAD/FORMAT, Redeye, ReFramed and The Photographers’ Gallery.
A Collective Portrait of a Place (Zine Making as a Collaborative Practice)
A learning resource about using photography to connect people with place, community and the historic environment through collaborative practice. Part of the Picturing High Streets programme.
