FORMAT23: Picturing High Streets: Uncovering the stories behind the shop fronts

Description

amsin Silvey, Cultural Programme Curator, Historic England  

England’s high streets have always been at the heart of our communities. They are our landmarks, points of reference and meeting places. Across the centuries people have gathered together on high streets for different reasons; from traders setting up for market days, determined crowds finishing Christmas shopping, friends meeting for coffee or a night out, to landmark celebrations like jubilees and summer festivals.  
 
The photographs co-created and crowdsourced for Picturing High Streets highlight each place has a unique and distinctive history that creates identity for many different communities. They also show the struggles high streets face as they adapt to survive and the individuals working to maintain these life lines. 

Picturing High Streets is a three-year project commissioned by Historic England and delivered by Photoworks to create a contemporary picture of England’s high streets through artist residencies and a public call out on Instagram. It is a key commission of the High Streets Heritage Action Zones Cultural Programme, a nationwide scheme designed by Historic England that engages with artists and creatives to help bring a very special and diverse set of places together in collaboration with local communities. It is the largest ever community-led arts and heritage programme and accompanies a major capital regeneration programme.  

By bringing together ten of the leading not-for-profit photography organisations in England, Photoworks was able to design and deliver a co-created programme to build a deeper picture of high streets across the country. Six artists, selected via open call, undertook residencies at six high street locations across England facilitated by regional photography organisations. The artists – Tim Mills (Coventry, GRAIN Projects), Natalie Willatt (Stoke-on-Trent, GRAIN Projects), Suzanne St Clare (Chester, Open Eye Gallery), Tony Mallon (Prescot, Open Eye Gallery), Rehan Jamil (Tower Hamlets, London, Photofusion) and Khatun (Leicester, Quad/FORMAT) – each used a socially-engaged approach, working alongside local communities to co-create a set of photographs that capture their dreams for their high streets. Tim’s, Suzanne’s, Natalie’s and Suzanne’s photographs feature in FORMAT and provide a glimpse into the diversity of uses and communities inhabiting high streets today. 

The residency photographs are both hopeful and urgent. They show the importance of high street spaces to marginalised groups, from young carers to adults with learning difficulties, highlighting the importance of often overlooked sites that provide solace, refuge and community. They show the people who work on high streets, the impact individuals have in their local areas and the hardships of making a living in the wake of a pandemic and cost of living crisis. They also show the joy of being part of daily life, how shops and shop keepers become local touchstones and vital to the identity of a place. The artists uncovered the communities that form through shared occupations in locations that are invisible to many, including taxi ranks and parades of shops, and demonstrate how high streets are sites of memory for intergenerational dialogue. Their photographs reveal spaces of sanctuary and worship, concealed behind shopfronts bearing old names from days gone by, and how new uses can inspire people to see high streets in new lights.  

In addition to the residencies, since September 2022, people across England have been sharing their high street photos with Historic England on Instagram to crowdsource a snapshot of a year in the life of the English high street. Having produced a responsive crowdsourcing project during the pandemic, Picturing Lockdown (2020), which generated over 3,000 images from the public over a week of lockdown, we knew that to get a deeper and wider engagement we needed time. By running call outs over a year on Instagram we want to reach more people and invite them to capture the seasonal uses of high streets.  

From high street heroes to candid street scenes, the images gathered so far and exhibited at FORMAT invite you to take a fresh look at your high street. Together, they celebrate the history, experiences and connections of the people and places that make up a constant yet changing fixture in our lives. The public are showing high streets to be places of dynamism, as they are sites for celebrations and interaction as well for kindness, as individuals work through these places to give back to their communities, providing free meals, charitable help and quietly brightening lives in daily transactions.  

Picturing High Streets is a testament to partnerships, networks and the power of photography to convene conversations, connect communities and inspire creativity. The photographs show high streets to be vital for communities and individuals as sites of memory, solace, necessity and inspiration. These spaces mean something because they continue to serve, and Picturing High Streets show how we need a new vocabulary to understand and express the importance of high streets today. Without a better understanding of these historic places of contemporary connection, their future is not guaranteed, and neither is that of the communities they serve.  

Credits: 

The High Streets Heritage Action Zones (HAZ) Programme is a nationwide scheme designed to secure lasting improvements to our historic high streets for the communities who use them. It is Government funded and run by Historic England. It is co-funded with The National Lottery Heritage Fund and supported by Arts Council England.  

Picturing High Streets is run by Photoworks and produced in partnership with GRAIN Projects, Impressions Gallery, Open Eye Gallery, London College of Communications, Photofusion, QUAD/FORMAT, Redeye, ReFramed and The Photographers’ Gallery. The yearlong call out via Instagram asks people to send in photographs responding to a fortnightly challenge. 60 photographs chosen by a panel of judges including designer and retail expert Wayne Hemingway MBE, artist Camille Walala, Ben Hope, Clear Channel’s Marketing Director and Duncan Wilson, Chief Executive of Historic England, will enter the Historic England Archive as a new collection and form the basis of a national outdoor exhibition.