Picturing High Streets: Photowalk

The Art House invites you to join a free photowalk, documenting Wakefield’s high streets and giving our city a place in a new national archive. This opportunity is open to photographers, creatives, and hobbyists with an interest in capturing their locality through a lens. The photowalk is part of a much larger look at our high streets, forming a chapter in the project, Picturing High Streets.

Picturing High Streets is an Historic England project led by Photoworks. Taking place from 2021-2024, the project aim is to create a contemporary picture of England’s high streets. The project has two parts: a socially-engaged photographer in residence programme and a public call out to create an unofficial photographic archive of the English high street on Instagram. The photowalk, led by photographer Emily Ryalls, will provide participants with a point and shoot 35mm camera and a roll of B&W film, supporting those who are totally new to analogue photography as well as more experienced users. It will be a very relaxed look at how we can use photography to represent people and place and give visibility to Wakefield’s high streets.

Following the workshop, participants will be given the opportunity to return to The Art House and watch as their film is developed by Emily. The film will then be digitised and sent out to participants for sharing. Picturing High Streets is accepting photographic submissions to the archive via a hashtag on Instagram – if you are not able to contribute via this platform, The Art House can support by sharing on your behalf.

When booking, you are able to book a ticket with a 35mm camera provided (though this is limited to 10) or you can book a ‘bring your own camera’ ticket which is also free.