Picturing High Streets was a three-year project delivered by Photoworks to create a contemporary picture of England’s high streets through artist residencies and a public call out. It was part of the High Streets Heritage Action Zones Cultural Programme, 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.
From September 2022 to September 2023, people across England responded to themed fortnightly challenges and submitted their photographs on Instagram under the hashtag #PicturingHighStreets. All entries created an unofficial archive documenting a year in the life of the English high street on Instagram, and a selection form this permanent collection in the Historic England Archive.
From March to September 2023, Bristol Photo Festival commissioned leading Bristol-based and international photographers to draw out the stories of Bristol’s high streets and co-create work with the communities who inhabit them. The project, DREAMLINES: Picturing Bristol High Streets, was jointly funded by Historic England and Bristol City Council, and was part of the West of England Combined Authority’s Love our High Streets project.
Kirsty Mackay has continued her long-term work of the impact on the cost of living crisis on local communities. She began by interviewing local food bank clients, before utilising their stories to create a new body of photographic work. We decided not to photograph people using the food bank, but instead take their voices out into the public and onto the High Street.
The photographer wrote the following text to explain the image: "I wanted to get peoples’ experiences and their voices out there into the public domain. So I wrote their words across the high street on bus shelters and across the pavements. It is an imperfect, but urgent response."
This is part of the Volume: HEC01/128/02/31 Picturing High Streets: Mass Participation Project - Bristol; within the Sub Series: HEC01/128/02 Picturing High Streets: Mass Participation Project; within the Series: HEC01/128 Picturing High Streets; within the Collection: HEC01 Historic England
© Kirsty Mackay
Photographer: Mackay, Kirsty
Bus Shelter, Graffiti
Our website works best with the latest version of the browsers below, unfortunately your browser is not supported. Using an old browser means that some parts of our website might not work correctly.
