Picturing Bristol High Streets

We are excited that Bristol Photo Festival will be working with Historic England and Bristol City Council to deliver a series of commissions for photographers, writers and facilitators responding to Bristol’s high streets. The resulting work will be showcased through collaborative projects, workshops and exhibitions in summer 2023. The project will focus on Filton Avenue, Two Mile Hill, Shirehampton, Stapleton Road, Brislington, Church Road, East Street, Filwood Broadway and Stockwood. Picturing Bristol is a project funded by Historic England and one of the activities under the City Centre and High Streets Recovery and Renewal programme, funded by Bristol City Council and the West of England Combined Authority’s Love our High Streets project.

As part of this nationwide project, a new outdoor exhibition Picturing High Streets, telling the stories behind the nation’s shopfronts,  goes on display at Bristol’s Merchant Street from today until 1 May 2023. The photographs are the winning entries from a nationwide call for entries for images which reveal a sense of community, belonging and pride in our local high streets. The winning images will be displayed on outdoor advertising screens hosted by Clear Channel UK. The exhibition is part of a three-year project by Historic England and Photoworks, in partnership with national and regional photography organisations, to create a contemporary portrait of England’s high streets. 

Picturing Bristol will be an interim project by Bristol Photo Festival before its second edition in Autumn 2024, more information about this will be announced in Autumn 2023.

We will announce all the info here:

http://highstreets.bristolphotofestival.org

High Street Eats: Fish ‘N’ Chips “Many traditional, authentic shop front facades that are still here today catch my eye – be it by their colour palettes, typeface or tiling & interiors, it can often feel like stepping back in time – this all adds to their uniqueness to this country and is reminiscent of a past era.” Taken by Georgie Gibbs in Skegness, July 2021 © Georgie Gibbs, Source Historic England Archive