Picturing High Streets: South West locations added to Historic England archive
Picturing High Streets is said to highlight a 'diversity of views through places, people, history and activities'
Images of Bristol and the South West have been entered into an archive curated by Historic England.
Picturing High Streets is said to highlight a 'diversity of views through places, people, history and activities'.
25 photos in Bristol join 13 others in Gloucestershire, Dorset, Devon, Somerset and Cornwall in the brand new archive, submitted by locals under a national campaign, which has been running since September 2022, under the Instagram hashtag - #PicturingHighStreets.
Across the country, 204 winning photos have officially been added to Historic England's Archive, alongside 173 new images taken as part of local projects with resident artists on high streets.
Picturing High Streets was a partnership between Historic England and Photoworks, helping to build a contemporary picture of England’s high streets through mass public participation and community engagement.
The call out and exhibition marks the final year of Historic England’s High Streets Cultural Programme and the £95 million High Streets Heritage Action Zones Programme which has been revitalising more than 60 high streets across England.
Duncan Wilson, Historic England Chief Executive, said: “We were overwhelmed by the amazing responses from the public and artists to our call out for photographs of high streets across England. Through contemporary photography, people have captured what makes high streets such special places for social connection, revealed the histories hidden behind shopfronts and celebrated the communities that are keeping them alive today. This new national collection is a truly brilliant historic record of high streets today for generations to come.”
Alejandro Acin, Director, Bristol Photo Festival said: “Through Picturing Bristol, Bristol Photo Festival worked with over 20 community groups and 14 artists across the city, collectively building a contemporary portrait of Bristol’s high streets as living cultural spaces at the heart of every community. We’re proud that those images can now be explored and enjoyed as part of a new national collection in Historic England’s Archive.”
Louise Fedotov-Clements, Photoworks Director, said: “This incredible and ground-breaking national programme has produced a truly unique and important photographic representation of the high street. The works highlight a diversity of views featuring the places, people, histories and activities that help us to understand our dynamic relationship to, and the importance of, the high street today. Created in collaboration with Historic England alongside England’s leading photography organisations we have worked together with artists, communities and the public through socially engaged residencies and mass participation. We are very proud of the range, depth and historical significance of the images that have been created and that will now enter the Historic England Archive.
To date, #picturinghighstreets has over 10,500 posts from the public on Instagram - and there have been over 13,877 engagements with the Picturing High Streets page.
Works by resident artists based across England will now be seen together for the first time in the Archive.
These come from across the country, including Bristol, Chester, Coventry, Leicester, Prescot, Stoke-on-Trent and London, who have produced snapshots of how the high street is used and who it is used by including the local customs and traditions linked to the high street in different parts of the country.
Photographers from Bristol were commissioned by Bristol Photo Festival to co-create work across Bristol’s historic high streets. These photographers worked with local communities and businesses to co-create new images that tell the stories of these unique places.
From March-November 2023, photographs from the public and artists toured across towns and cities in England.
Kicking off in London in the form of projections at Soho Photography Quarter the images then popped up in Derby, Bristol, Hastings, Middlesbrough, Prescot, Norwich, Bradford, Walsall and Stoke-on-Trent. The exhibition reached over 1.1 million people in these towns.