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For twelve months, I was Photographer in Residence in Coventry as part of Historic England’s Picturing High Streets Project. Using a socially engaged approach, I worked alongside local communities to create a contemporary response to The Burges, one of the few traditional historic high street areas surviving in the city.
Operating within a small geographic area and, informed by industries that defined the city of the past and those that shape it today, I explored the exchange of goods and services by engaging with shop owners and the wider community in photographic acts and workshops, to harness the skills and expertise of local businesses and people to co-create the artworks.
I made a range of small experimental studies that reflect my ongoing interest in ideas of arrivals, departures, transience and place, using photography, moving image, sound, textiles and performance to produce collaborative outcomes that feature multiple authors and voices.
Throughout the commission, I engaged with the taxi drivers in Palmer Lane to explore the history of Coventry’s most established and long-standing taxi rank. The drivers contributed to a series of portraits, showing the objects that hang from their rear-view mirrors, revealing an insight into each individual driver through their beliefs, passions, and allegiances.
In September 2022, I made portraits of new arrivals at Millennium View in Palmer Lane. Each participant was photographed with their belongings before entering their new student accommodation for the first time. A silk woven name tag for each participant was produced by Cash’s, the sole survivor of Coventry’s ribbon weaving industry, and machine stitched onto the print by Sina from Godiva Tailoring on The Burges. The artworks are completed with a gold trimmed strut frame; the type of presentation method associated with ‘first day at school’ photographs.
I was interested in the high street as a space for performance through the changing nature of fashion, trends and styles. During a workshop at the Sidney Stringer Academy, I asked the children to vote on the haircut I should receive at Sky Barber on The Burges.
Debo, the Barber, created the haircut and circular photographic portrait that was displayed on the shop front, placed amongst other example haircuts from the internet.
Picturing High Streets was a three project by Historic England and Photoworks to create a contemporary portrait of England’s high streets, part of Historic England’s government-funded High Streets Heritage Action Zone scheme.
GRAIN Projects was the lead regional partner on Picturing High Streets delivering projects in Coventry, Stoke on Trent and Walsall.