Project Manager: Matt Daw
Facilitators: Matt Daw, Lorraine Goddard
Partners: NHS, HM Prison Leeds
Local Support: Anne Cowman (NHS)

The aims of Shutter Release are:
• To reduce re-offending rates for prisoners by increasing their level of mental and practical preparedness for successful rehabilitation through photography.
• To raise awareness of the barriers and anxieties faced by prisoners upon release from prison, in order to campaign for better support structures and to allow prisoners to feed into the design and implementation of those structures.
• To create a model of good practice and an evidence base to support the wider use of photography as a tool to tackle issues around release and rehabilitation.

In November 2012 PhotoVoice Project Manager Matt Daw and facilitator Lorraine Goddard delivered a course of eight full-day workshops with a group of three prisoners approaching release, based in the Jigsaw Centre – a charitable project based on the prison grounds and offering support to prisoners’ families who come to visit their loved ones. The course consisted of technical photography skills, visual literacy and storytelling through images, and group discussion of issues involved in preparing for, and dealing successfully with release from prison. The prisoners were given ROTL (day release) to take part in this project over the two weeks of workshops.

The course included a visit from an ex offender working as a mentor with the St Giles Trust, who gave a talk to the prisoners about his experience breaking the cycle of re-offending after his last prison term, and finding work after over 40 years of never having been employed.

Through the course, the participants were supported to consider what challenges they would be facing upon release – both those that would generally affect anyone coming out of prison and also those specific to their situation. They built up personal scrapbooks with photos they had taken, photos they had found and evaluated from newspapers, magazines and books provided as visual stimulus, and notes on their personal milestones after release and how they would reach them. These scrapbooks were invaluable since the prisoners were not allowed to take their cameras back into the cells, but could take their scrapbooks to reflect on photos they had taken and continue work storyboarding their personal journey photo stories.

All the participants succeeded in creating a captioned photo story specific to their situation, conveying what they wanted to explore and encourage others in similar situations to consider. Issues explored included finding employment, facing family and friends, and money troubles. Their work also highlights some issues that those with no experience of prison may not be aware – for example the costs incurred by prisoners in order to maintain a balanced diet and personal hygiene, leading to a draining of resources while they are not earning.

Partner Organisations: Main project partner –
National Working Group for Sexually Exploited Children and Young People

Individual regional project partners:

Barnardos SECOS (Middlesbrough)
Blackburn Engage (Blackburn)
Walsall Street Teams (Walsall)
NSPCC Protect and Respect (London)

PhotoVoice are partnering with the National Working Group for Sexually Exploited Children and Young People in running five participatory photography projects over the next year.  All projects will run in partnership with specialist support organizations (all the participating partner projects support young people identified as at risk of sexual exploitation or who have been affected by sexual exploitation). The young people involved have the opportunity to participate in a 3-month photography project.
So far projects in Middlesbrough and Blackburn ran throughout the summer and a project in Walsall commenced this September. A London project starts in November and there will be another project in the South East in early 2013.

Participating young people will explore different themes that offer a context to sexual exploitation including gender, power, relationships and sex. They will represent their thoughts, responses and experiences through photography, text and music, creating their own digital stories. There will be a national launch and celebration for participating young people (and their friends and families) from all the projects in 2013. A selection of project images from Blackburn and Walsall were featured as part of Brighton Photo Fringe Photography Festival 2012.

All the young people have the opportunity to complete a SEPE (Supporting Employability and Personal Effectiveness) BTEC certificate as part of each project – So far Middlesbrough and Blackburn projects have completed and all the young people submitted portfolio’s for accreditation.
PhotoVoice and project participants will work with the National Working Group for Sexually Exploited Children and Young People to develop their digital stories into a resource pack for a diverse range of professionals to use in their support of young people in specialized as well as mainstream support services throughout the UK.  This resource pack will be piloted in mid 2013 with 500 hundred packs subsequently being distributed to schools, youth projects and a range of specialist support services by the beginning of 2014. This resource is planned as a resource for service providers and professionals to deliver projects and services directly informed by the experiences and perspectives of young people. As a consequence the input from the participants will support many other young people across the UK to understand the issues and context of sexual exploitation and to safeguard themselves.

An online resource and independent website with a gallery and resources will also be developed to support young people, their families and professionals and also to profile the portfolio of work created by all the young people on the projects.

Partner Organisations: Catch 22, Chapter 1, FACT Liverpool, FARE Glasgow, LIVE Magazine, Media Trust, Nottingham Photographers’ Hub, Waltham Forest Community Safety, Z-Arts Manchester
Project Manager: Matt Daw
Project Support: Clare Struthers, Aimée Woollard

Lookout is encouraging and supporting young people across the UK to speak out about issues that affect them and other young people in their community.


LOOKOUT UK website is now LIVE! - http://www.photovoice.org/lookout

Under 25? Submit your photo and message with the form below (and model release form or video of subject giving consent if it is a photo of a recognisable person) signed by you (and your parent /guardian if you are under 18). Your photo and voice will join those of young people all over the UK and could be seen in exhibitions, online, posters, leaflets and more. Watch this space for details of prizes and opportunities for those submitting photos!

Photo Submission Form

Model Release Form

The debate around issues such as gangs, knife crime, youth opportunities and peer pressure is too often held in political circles and the media, over the heads of those most affected, and those who hold the key to improving the situation – young people themselves.

Workshops have just finished in Walthamstow, London, resulting in powerful digital stories on the subject of girls and gangs. Watch this space for a chance to view these online!
Workshops start in January in Manchester (in partnership with Z-Arts), and in Nottingham (in partnership with the Nottingham Photographers’ Hub).
In February Lookout Glasgow begins, with workshops with young people in partnership with FARE Scotland.

Since June 2010 UK-based international charity PhotoVoice has been working with young people from all backgrounds across the UK providing free training in digital photography and offering opportunities for young people to amplify their voices in the debate around youth issues. The first phase of this project, Lookout London, included groups of young people in supported housing in Walthamstow and Homerton, and focused on the issues of gangs and knife crime in London. Click here for more details about the project and where the work was shown. Throughout 2012 and 2013 PhotoVoice will be running workshops with hundreds more young people in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Nottingham, Glasgow and more, to support them to speak out about issues they feel strongly about through photography, music, spoken word.

Throughout 2013 photos and words by young people about all sorts of issues affecting youth in the UK will be showcased via youth media websites and magazines (including features in 3 consecutive issues of LIVE Magazine), viral internet campaigns and national press.

A Lookout Youth Conference at FACT in Liverpool in June 2013 will be a chance for young people from the North of England and beyond to come together to discuss some of the issues and attitudes raised in the photographs and captions produced. The Conference will feature a photographic exhibition, multimedia screenings, photography workshops and a keynote panel debate tackling the issues facing young people in modern day Britain. Young people are invited to participate whether they have been involved in the Lookout project or not. Booking (free) will open in February 2013. The day will end with a social event for young people, with live music and spoken word performances.

The outcome of the Liverpool conference will be the beginnings of a ‘youth manifesto’ containing testimonies, perspectives and recommendations for the government and local authorities from young people. This document will be worked on and added to by young people throughout the Lookout campaign in 2013 and the finished manifesto presented at a follow-up youth conference in London in September 2013.

The youth conference in London in September 2013 will take place at Rich Mix and will consist of a day of debates, workshops and presentations, and a day of fun activities, live music, creative workshops etc to engage public and further young people in responding to the perspectives shared through the work.

The first group to complete a course for the newly expanded Lookout UK project is a youth group run by Catch22 in the Rye Hill Estate in Peckham. Click here to watch a documentary about the workshops.

Project Manager: Matt Daw
Action for Children Project Coordinator: Mark Benson
PhotoVoice Photography Facilitators: Liz Orton, Chris Smith, Rashmi Munikempanna, Zoe O’Reilly, Becky Duncan, Heidi Gazeley, Debbie Castro, Adam Lee, Brian Cregan, Mark Chilvers, Clare Struthers
PhotoVoice Film Facilitator: Sam Liebmann
Headliners Journalism Facilitator: Sam Hepworth
Book and Website Design: Erin Joy

Free online resource: www.rightscamerasaction.org.uk

Accompanying booklets are available featuring captioned photographs by young people illustrating the first 41 articles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Ideal as a classroom resource. For copies please email clare@photovoice.org.

16th December 2011 marked 20 years since the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) was formerly adopted by the UK. Throughout 2011 PhotoVoice, in partnership with Action for Children, worked with young people all around the UK in order to gather their thoughts and experiences on the relevance and importance of child rights to their lives. The young people involved have included Young Carers, Looked After Young People, Homeless Young People and Disabled Young People.

On December 16th PhotoVoice and Action for Children launched an online multimedia resource at www.rightscamerasaction.org.uk to inform and engage young people across the UK about UNCRC. A booklet has also been produced to be used as a classroom tool and to signpost the online resource.

PhotoVoice worked throughout the Summer with six young people from Action for Children’s Southwark Young Carers group, exploring how they feel the UNCRC affects their lives and the lives of other young people in the UK. Through 12 workshops these young people were introduced to digital photography, journalism and film-making skills and supported to use their new skills to create content for the Rights Cameras Action resource and to illustrate the Right Year for Children website. While this course was in progress PhotoVoice facilitators travelled up and down the country to run one-off photography workshops with other groups of young people representing diverse demographics of young people in the UK. The workshops were designed to explore how photography can be used to engage and inform young people about children’s rights, while at the same time giving these young people the opportunity to feed their creativity and personal messages into the resources that will help to engage other young people going forward.

• Location: London
• Funder: The Photographic Angle (TPA)
• Project Manager: Clare Struthers
• Project Support: Matt Daw, Ingrid Guyon

PhotoVoice runs a bursary scheme to support photographers trained through our projects to continue developing their photographic skills and explore opportunities for work placements and further study and we are thrilled that the fantastic charity The Photographic Angle generously supported six PhotoVoice project participants from our Lookout London project, throughout 2011-2012.

Bianca Tennant, 18
Nathaniel Williams, 18
Victoria Omobuwajo, 18
Sansha Edwin, 18
Venesha Cunningham, 23

All of the recipients were living in Chapter 1 supported housing schemes and had previously taken part in the Lookout London PhotoVoice project, exploring youth perspectives on gang and knife crime.

After a discussion with each participant about the type of photography project they’d like to develop, together we devised a schedule of workshops in a range of different photographic practices to help them achieve their goals.

“The workshops were great, because when we were given the cameras I didn’t really know what to do with it, so without them I wouldn’t have used the cameras so much as I do now. I normally use it on special occasions like parties etc, I am learning how to use it more often now. The helped me in finding my own style, especially when it came to the holidays when young people don’t often have much to do, some people wouldn’t really think that photography is for them, but once you get in to it, you begin to realise how interesting you find it and all the different things you can find from it, like your own style.” –Bianca Tennant


Each participant was given a Canon 1000D SLR camera, with a memory card, card reader and camera case, along with a laptop in order to be able to complete their personal projects at the initial weekend workshop organised for them, which introduced them to the basics of using an SLR camera, as most of them had never had the opportunity to use one before.

“The workshop we did with Ingrid was really helpful in terms of getting to know how to use the camera, it was good to be able to read through the notes she gave us and practice to learn how to use it properly.” - Victoria Omobuwajo

After the initial workshop, another 3 workshops were organised, in studio photography, a photojournalism outshoot covering the London Marathon, where the images taken were used in an online article published in the youth publication LIVE magazine, and a final one in photo editing techniques.

They were all given the summer, supported by personal mentoring sessions with PhotoVoice to complete their personal projects.

“I would say the bursary scheme has kept us motivated, thinking, always on the go as well so we don’t get bored, so we’ve had that mentality that we have to keep moving, keep stepping forward. It’s given us something to do.” – Bianca Tennant

Project Manager: Matt Daw
Geffrye Museum Project Manager: Rachael Crofts
Geffrye Museum Project Officer: Louisa Knight
PhotoVoice Photography Facilitators: Chris Smith, Clare Struthers
William WilberForce Trust Community Worker: Zak Stavrou

The Geffrye is a key partner in Stories of the World: London. Stories of the World is one of the major projects at the heart of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. Stories of the World is a UK cultural celebration of diversity and creativity which will explore the stories behind museum collections and work with young people to create exhibitions and events around specific themes that will attract new audiences to our museums. http://www.london2012.com

PhotoVoice teamed up with the Geffrye Museum to deliver a course of five weekly digital workshops with the young people from the World’s End Estate, Chelsea in Re:generate trust facilities, to learn and develop their photography skills and techniques.

Throughout the project the participants used photography as a way to engage with and think about what ‘home’ means to them. This project has enabled young people to engage in an open dialogue about their homes and has encouraged them to think about them afresh, exploring ‘what makes a home’ and the way they live.

The work displayed in this web gallery are photographs which the participants feel signify the themes they discussed the most. They have also written corresponding captions which gives you an insight into their lives.

The Worlds End Estate, London
Young people: Apphia, Robin, Damilola, John, Yanique

Project Manager: Matt Daw
Facilitators: Becky Duncan
Partner organisation: Scottish Parliament

The Scottish Parliament hosted a day for 155 16 to 25 year olds, from across Scotland, for their Get the Picture! participative and interactive event. The event aimed to offer young people the chance to showcase their views, issues and lives in Scotland, as well as give them the opportunity to present their aspirations for Scotland over the next 5 years.

The means for expressing their views and opinions offered to the participants on the day ranged from cartoon making and street art, through photography to an open debate in the Debate Chamber.

The series of portraits created by the PhotoVoice participants make a visual comment on their chosen political message of the day. The results of their work are now avaliable for viewing in the gallery below.

Project Manager: Matt Daw
Facilitators: Miguel Amortegui (Homerton) and Ania Dabrowska (Walthamstow)
Support Facilitators: Dinah Kenyon (Homerton) and Jaime Antonio Leme Jr (Walthamstow)
Partner organisation: Chapter 1 (www.ch1.org.uk)

Generously funded by the Marathon of Marathons Trust and an anonymous funder

Lookout London is becoming Lookout UK!

Young people needed this Summer to join the debate around gangs and knife crime.

The Lookout project provides young people (under 25) with the opportunity, the skills and the support to feed their perspectives into the debate on gangs and knife crime issues through photography. The aim is to amplify the voices of young people in the discussion about the causes and potential solutions to gang and knife crime issues, encourage other young people to speak out, and to encourage the media and public to consider their voices to be relevant and important in the debate.

PhotoVoice is looking for groups of young people from a variety of locations and demographics to take part in the Lookout project. They will receive photographic training from professional photographers and be supported to create work that will be part of local and national outputs, and showcased at a youth-orientated conference on gangs and knife crime in 2013.

If you are interested in a group of 10 young people from your organisation or Local Authority participating in the Lookout project, and you can cover the costs of a course of 10 workshops (Approx £6,000 including equipment retained by the project or participants and a local exhibition of their work), please contact matt@photovoice.org

In 2011 PhotoVoice completed a course of photography workshops with 19 young people living in supported housing in Homerton and Walhamstow.

The groups have been supported to explore the issues of gang culture and knife crime through photography, in order to produce captioned photos that convey their experiences and perspectives to peers and the general public. Too often the media representation of these issues is confused with a general representation of young people, without recognition that young people are more often the victims of these issues than adults, and the perpetrators are only a limited cross section of young people in Britain.

Funding Partner: Cheshire East Council
Project Manager: Matt Daw
Facilitators: Adam Lee, Tabitha Jussa, Glynis Shaw

In March 2011, PhotoVoice ran digital photography workshops with young disabled people attending activity clubs organised through the Aiming High for Disabled Children 2011 programme. The aim was to provide the young people with tools and skills that would allow them to share what they enjoyed and what they felt could be improved or added in future short break service programmes. Armed with cameras and supported by PhotoVoice facilitators, twelve young people from three different activity clubs in Macclesfield - Active8, SPACE and The Parachute Club - used their cameras to document and explore their experience of short break services.

The photographs and accompanying captions by the young people were showcased at an event in Middlewich, Cheshire East, on 29th March 2011. The event was attended by service providers, teachers, staff from Cheshire East Council, parents, local press and the Deputy Mayor of Cheshire East. This event was the first stage in a review of the Aiming high for Disabled Children programme, which will feed into decisions about what shape future services for young disabled people in Cheshire East could take. This photography project ensured that the young people who experience these services first hand could feed into this process, and that their first hand experiences will inform the decisions made now and in the future.

Photographs by the young people will be put on permanent display in local authority buildings throughout Cheshire East, so that these young people retain a visible presence in the very places where policies and programmes that directly affect them are created.

“We have really enjoyed working with Photovoice and their skilled team of workshop leaders.  The young people had a fantastic time and were able to express their own views in a very hands on, immediate way.  Not only did we get a chance to see what short breaks worked and what we should concentrate on in future short break design, but everyone had fun doing it too.” Ann Clark, Project Adviser – Aiming High for Disabled Children

Funding Partner: Awards for All Scotland- The National Lottery, The Gannochy Trust, The Robertson Trust
Project Manager: Jane Martin
Facilitators: Brian Sweeney, Christina Kernohan, Becky Duncan

In the year 2009-10 more than 10, 000 young people (aged 18 – 24) in Scotland were accepted as homeless.

Over the winter we’ve been working with Fairbridge Glasgow (for the second time) and eleven young people affected by homelessness. After a residential teambuilding trip of night photography, glowsticks and white water rafting, they met twice a week for six weeks with facilitators Brian Sweeney, Christina Kernohan, and Fairbridge Staff, travelling over Glasgow to shoot an impressive body of work.

In 2003 the Scottish Parliament passed groundbreaking legislation stating that everyone who is homeless would have the right to a home by 2012. This programme to tackle homelessness has received international acclaim and Scotland has been recognised as having the best homelessness legislation in western Europe.

Many young people are living in unsuitable temporary accommodation, waiting for a permanent place to live. When they are offered a place it is often in a location or in a condition that others won’t accept. Support available to furnish it can take a long time to come through, and young people can be forced into paying rent for places they can’t yet live in.  For some young people this means double rent and years paying off the arrears. 

In 2012 when the legislation comes into place all homeless young people will have the right to a home – but for this right to become reality there must be homes for them to live in.