Picturing High Streets – National Photography Competition

Follow @PicturingHighStreets on Instagram and share photos of your high street with others.

Impressions Gallery are proud to be one of the 10 partners in this new national project, and we’re inviting 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 21 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.

Get involved: Follow @PicturingHighStreets on Instagram and post your pictures using #PicturingHighStreets.

Picturing High Streets is a Historic England project led by Photoworks, and 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.

Top image: From Picturing High Streets Residency in Chester, 2022. © Ciara Leeming

Next steps

Follow @PicturingHighStreets on Instagram and discover the fortnightly challenge.

Share your photos using #PicturingHighStreets.

Find out more about how to get involved by clicking below.

Get involved

Judging panel

Wayne Hemingway MBE

Designer and retail expert

Co-founded HemingwayDesign with his wife Gerardine in 1981. Their first success was in founding the iconic Red or Dead brand. Since then it has grown to become an award-winning multi-disciplinary design studio with a portfolio of successful projects that traverses disciplines and sectors, and with clients including international brands and household names as well as numerous towns, cities and places across the UK.
Camille Walala

Artist

Known for her ambitious, large-scale and explosively colourful interventions in public spaces, Camille Walala uses the man-made landscape as a platform for disseminating positivity. Her work encompasses full-facade murals, immersive 3D installations, street art, interiors and set design – characterised by a fusion of bold colours and playful geometric patterns.
Ben Hope

Marketing Director at Clear Channel UK

A proud northerner and a member and champion of the LGBT community, he has over 10 years’ experience in the marketing and advertising industry across brands and media owners in both Out of Home and digital. He is passionate about well-designed, carefully crafted, clever and creative communications. A CIM and University of Teesside graduate.