Picturing High Streets Collection
A national collection of 377 images that tell the stories behind the shopfronts on the English high street.
Picturing The Burges, Coventry with Tim Mills, Photographer in Residence
For 12 months, artist Tim Mills was Picturing High Streets photographer in residence in Coventry. Using a socially engaged approach, Tim worked alongside local communities to create a contemporary response to The Burges, one of the few traditional historic high street areas surviving in Coventry.
GRAIN Projects were the regional partner, working alongside Historic England and Photoworks to deliver the commission.
Picturing Coventry collection
Photographs from Tim Mills's Coventry residency have entered the Historic England Archive, the nation’s archive for England’s historic buildings, archaeology and social history. They are part of the new Picturing High Streets national photography collection.
Working with local communities
Operating within a small geographic area and informed by industries that defined the city of the past and those that shape it today, Tim Mills explored the exchange of goods and services in the area.
He engaged with shop owners and the wider community in photographic acts such as giving his camera to the shop owners and he ran a number of workshops to harness the skills and expertise of local businesses to create his photographic artworks.
Participants in the project included taxi drivers, retailers, students, school children, shoppers and local residents.
Experimental studies of Coventry
Tim produced a range of small, experimental photographic studies in Coventry that reflect his ongoing interest in transience, place, heritage and community.
Using photography, moving image, sound, textiles and performance, the collaborative artistic outcomes feature multiple authors and voices, focusing particularly on three communities who occupy the city centre: taxi drivers, university students and shop keepers.
Students moving in
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Taxi interiors
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Exhibition
From 12 November to 27 November 2022, a selection of Tim’s collaborative photographs were exhibited in and around The Burges and Palmer Lane, placing his photographs back within the communities who collaborated in making them.
Tim Mills
Tim Mills uses photography and reappropriated archive material to explore and engage with communities and place. His work is often presented as installations within public contexts and outdoor locations.
This residency was a timely opportunity to re-engage with my own photographic practice and reconnect with my family history in Coventry. Through the ongoing support of the commissioners, I was enabled and encouraged to take creative risks to explore the possibilities of socially engaged photography projects.
Tim Mills
Collaborative portraits
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Supported by
