The Stevenage Old Town Business and Community Partnership

I went along last night to my first meeting as a member of the Stevenage Old Town Business and Community Partnership (SOTBCP).

I had no idea what to expect. How many would be there? Who would they be? Was it an ‘open’ meeting that anyone could attend, or was it just members? (I’d once, many years ago, attended an “Old Town Local Forum” meeting, organised by the Local Authority, that was ‘open’ and well attended.)

It turned out to be more a committee meeting than a public meeting, but very useful none the less. There were sixteen people (or thereabouts) present, including representatives from business small and large (Waitrose!), three churches, the local newspaper, a community magazine, and a couple of other residents like myself. Much of the meeting was allocating some funding following a grant from the local authority, and reviewing some recent events the SOTBCP has organised.

I was given a small slot in any other business where I introduced myself, and the project, and I had mounted prints to show around. These are the notes I’d made for myself to use as a guide, and which I broadly stuck to:

Notes for Stevenage Old Town Business and Community Partnership meeting

Introduction

• I’m a life-long Stevenage resident, member of the Partnership, and a photographer
• I’ve grown to cherish the special community feel of the High Street
• The people who run businesses on the High Street are major factor
• I’ve embarked on a project to record something of that atmosphere by photographing retailers and traders inside they premises

Why tell the meeting?

• I’ve been approaching retailers individually, and will continue to do so
• Wanted to make it more generally known
• Would like to be able to say I have ‘support’ from the SOTBCP

What next?

• May be a long term project
• Eventually hope to hold an exhibition
• Possibly make a publication of some sort

Other notes

• Currently self-funded
• May need to source some sort of funding/sponsorship later

Close

• Thank you for your time
• Please come and look at the test prints so far.
• Also mention website

I’d say it was pretty well received. People liked the idea and certainly don’t mind if I say I have the support of the Partnership. A couple of people suggested possible venues for exhibition (though I did point out that would be many months ahead!) and of other people it might be worth involving.

No idea how quick or efficient the (new!) secretary will be at distributing the minutes of the meeting, but when he does I’m hoping there will be mention of my project website so other members will be able to take a look, and because of that I spent the rest of the evening updating the website to tidy up and update the wording and, more importantly, to feature my own photographs taken so far, removing the page of other projects I’ve been influenced by. You can see the new version by clicking on the screenshot below.

All in all, I’m glad I went – not just for the project but as part of the community.

Draft letter to shopkeepers…

Had a go at drafting a possible letter to deliver to High Street shops. Here’s the (very!) first draft…

Dear [Sir/Madam, or name if known]

I am a photographer who has lived in Stevenage all my life, and have grown up to love and appreciate the special atmosphere of the Old Town.

I am planning a photographic project aiming to record what makes the Old Town special, and have come to realise that the community of the High Street is in many ways created by people like yourself who run the independent business we are so lucky to have. To this end, I am proposing to produce a series of portraits of shopkeepers taken inside their own premises, and I would love to hear from you if you would like to be a part of this project. I would need a little of your time to discuss your own thoughts on being part of the Old Town community, and to set up a photoshoot in your shop (most likely out of business hours so as not to disrupt your customers). In return you would receive a professional print of the final photograph.

At this stage, I hope to be producing a series of prints with the aim of holding an exhibition and possibly producing a book. My plans are at an early stage, but if you are happy to be included I will look forward to hearing from you.

Yours [sincerely/faithfully as appropriate]

A couple of thoughts already:

• the draft refers to independent businesses. Would need rewording if I decide to include chains
• in the case of several shops, I’d individualise the letter to refer to my own use/apreciateion of their specific business
• I offer a professional print. If I use somewhere cheap like Simlab and give them an A3 ish print, that’s about £1.05. Imagine if I end up getting cooperation from all 126 businesses! That’s quite an expenditure, and that’s before I consider printing for exhibition. Of course one of the businesses is a photo processing place. (A more expensive one, through.)
• I’d love to be able to include a line like “I have the full support of the Stevenage Old Town Business and Community Association”.
• and on a related note, this may be a long shot but I wonder if there’s any element of sponsorship available? (No idea at all if such a thing would be within the remit of the association.)

If anyone reading this has any suggestions, I’d really love to hear them – and I don’t just mean my tutors. (Hi, by the way. Hope you’re well.) The comments on this blog are open to all.

First group tutorial session…

Today we had tutorial sessions in small groups in which we each took an image that would inform/inspire/shape our project. I had printed out one of Rob Evans’ images in readiness, but that was before I had discovered John Londei’s book. I’d planned this morning to present the whole book as my inspiration, but at the last minute thought I should show one image so used his image of a cobbler on the grounds that the cobbler in Stevenage is one of the people I’d really hope to be able to use in my project. Before showing the book and the cobbler, I did briefly outline my idea.

The point of the group tutorial was to encourage some discussion and elicit ideas from the group of eight or so classmates and one tutor, and we had a good discussion about the merits or otherwise of my thoughts so far. One classmate took a few notes of the discussion, so here’s the bullet points they noted down, with what I can remember of the discussion:

• Locality – personal connection but limited
  I think this simply refers to my outline of the project, that it is my own connection with Stevenage that sets the scope of the project, but inherently limits it, too.
• Venture from above, expand project
  One classmate thought I was (ironically!)  staying in my comfort zone by shooting in Stevenage rather than beyond, and indeed there are many more beautiful in other local towns like Hitchin and St Albans. Of course there are. But in my mind the whole point of this is to document my home town. It’s my own connection with Stevenage that drives this project. If it goes well, I said, maybe I could expand it later.
• Possible changes; lighting (do you need to change?)
  I can’t really recall what this refers to! Oops. I had mentioned the need to analyse the lighting and approach each location individually as no two shops will be the same.
• Have shopkeeper in background
  This was following a discussion of whether or not particular shopkeepers will want to get involved. Someone suggested I could perhaps persuade some by having them ‘working in the background’ rather than featured as a portrait.
• Complete High Street
  Following on from the above, a couple of people thought I should aim to somehow record the ‘whole’ High Street, so if there are shopkeepers who don’t want to be featured, I’d need to have some wide shots showing their shops in relation to the surroundings and so on.
• Photograph shops from outside
  …which leads neatly to this one. Flicking through John Londei as we chatted, I realised for the first time just how many of his were shot outside the shops, with the staff posing in the doorway. It’s more than the internal shots. I think I overall prefer the internal shots, and certainly that’s what I first envisaged, there is undoubtedly something lovely about the context that the exterior shots give, when you can see the type of building and the signage. Perhaps a mixed appraoch might be useful, and could be dictated by the shop.
• Don’t just pick pretty shops!
  This was part of a discussion about whether to include the likes of Costa and Tesco, or solely focus on the small independents. I certainly hadn’t planned to make ‘pretty’ one my criteria.
• Link yourself to the work
  This was related to my own connection to Stevenage, and my approach to potential subjects. I’ll certainly, when explaining the plans to the shopkeepers, want to say that I’m a local photographer who’s known and loved the High Street all my life and want to record it.
• Zoe Leonard, Deutsche Börse Photography prize 2010
  Our tutor Michael Heilgemeir suggested I should look at the work of Zoe Leonard, who was nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in 2010 for her project “analogue” which was based on shopfronts. I’ve had a quick look, and that will have to be the subject of a whole other entry here.
• Linking photographic approach with work
  This stems from a technical discussion, in particular relating to taking an analogue approach. John Londei’s series were all shot on an 8″ x 10″ plate camera, and he talks about this being reflective of the shops he was photographing being something from a bygone era.  Zoe Leonard, photographing 25 years later than Londei, also chose to shoot analogue for similar reasons. Whilst I can see the connection, I’m not planning to go this route. My confidence with lighting and exposures isn’t sufficient (yet?!) to shoot a project like this without the ability to check what I’m doing as I go along, so it will be a digital shoot for me.
• Do you incude chains?
  I’ve mentioned this above. It’s still a matter needing some thought. My instinct is mixed here. Waitrose has been on the High Street throughout my life and feels like part of the community as a result. Tesco opened a small branch a couple of years ago and still feels like an intrusion. I’d happily include Waitrose, but reluctantly Tesco. This feels wrong, like I’m making a moral decision about what should be in the High Street rather than documenting what is. Of course there is also a practical issue involved in including the chains: I’d imagine it nigh on impossible to get permission to shoot in Tesco, compared with, say, “The Florist on the Green”.  And if it’s about people, which in my mind it is, who should be included in the chains? It’s not like they’ve made the shops their own, reflecting their own personality.
• Showing change in personal connection between big changes and small businesses
  Follows on from previous point. Could I find a way to represent the change from the personal, individual service you get from an independent shopkeeper owning their own shop and knowing their customers, to the ‘disconnected’ service more typical of an employee of a big chain.
• Document facts of High Street (types of businesses, numbers, etc.)
  I’d briefly mentioned some of my statistics about the numbers of different kinds of shops/businesses, and people thought it a good idea to somehow incorporate some of these into the project.

Well, there you go. Lots to think about. Currently on my list of things to do for this project:

• review Zoe Leonard’s work (and ask for permission to reproduce a few)
• draft a potential letter to introduce project to shopkeepers
• arrange to attend meeting of Old Town Business and Community Association, hope to get their whole-hearted support
• make mood-board for next tutorial.

That should keep me busy.

Farmers’ Market?

Coming through the High Street this morning I spotted the Farmers’ Market, which appears every few weeks. Hadn’t occurred to me before. Should I include that?

On a related note, whenever I see or hear the words “Farmers’ Market” I immediately have this in my head.

Making contact…

Two posts in one morning! (You can tell I actually have work to be doing on my other modules. Ahem.)

I met with one of the High Street traders this morning to introduce myself and let him know of my plans. Andre Etienne runs a carpet and flooring shop, and is a relative newcomer to the area, having opened up shop eight years ago. But I knew he was a key figure in the Stevenage Old Town Business and Community Association, so figured it would be useful to make contact.

We had a great chat about my idea, I described some of the other similar projects I’ve seen and explained what I’m hoping to do. That was about it, really, but I was glad that he seemed receptive and thought that it sounded like a good project. He’s suggested I go along to one of the association’s regular meetings. They happen to have one on Monday, but I said I’d want to leave it a little longer until I have a slightly firmer plan in mind. In the meantime I need to draft a possible introductory letter to drop into all the potential subjects, and do some more thinking about who I’d want to ask. (Do I include pubs, for example? Is my focus ‘small independent shops’, as I’d imagined, or is it ‘Stevenage Old Town Faces’?)

But perhaps more importantly, I need to put this whole one to the back of my mind for a while and concentrate on the stuff that expected by next week in my other modules!

Researching the locations…

I go through Stevenage High Street pretty much every day, and have recently been looking a bit more carefully as I wonder how I’m going to approach people and persuade them to come on board and be involved with this project. How am I going to explain what I want to do? And why I want to do it?

And who, exactly, am I going to approach? I went for a stroll today simply to make a list of all the business that seem to have a public ‘shopfront’ on the High Street. It’s way more than I would have estimated: I counted 126 different businesses, comprising the following:

Stevenage High Street

20 restaurants/cafes/coffeeshops
11 takeaway food shops
9 hairdressers/barbers
9 estate agents
8 pubs
7 legal/financial places (banks, solicitors, etc)
6 health/beauty services
4 undertakers (well, okay, 3 and a stonemason)
4 gift/card shops
3 florists
3 dentists
3 pharmacies
3 newsagents
3 clothes shops
3 betting shops
2 supermarkets
2 charity shops
2 jewellers
1 fireplace suppliers
1 library
1 dry cleaner
1 picture framer
1 motorbike shop
1 cake decorating and fancy dress shop
1 computer shop
1 bridal outfitter
1 optician
1 printshop
1 trophy engraver
1 hardware shop
1 carpet shop
1 guitar shop
1 camera shop
1 photo processor
1 cobbler
1 model shop
1 kitchen worktop shop
1 (temporary) fireworks shop
1 taxi office
1 hotel

And looking at them all, I was pleasantly surprised to see that a good majority of them (99 to 27) appear to be independent places, not part of a large chain. (For anyone reading this from outside the area, it’s worth mentioning that the High Street is part of the Old Town of Stevenage which has a distinct character from the Town Centre where all the household names are.)

But analysing all this opens up questions. How wide-ranging and expansive do I want this project to be? The plan I have in my head is to focus on the ‘individual’ shops, especially those that seem to have been there forever, but there are a lot of them. And do I include things that aren’t really ‘shops’? Of course the other big unknown is how many will want to be involved. I’m planning to pop in to visit one tomorrow. One who I’ve learned is a key player in the Old Town trader’s association (not sure if that’s what they call themselves.) I just feel like he’d be a good person to mention it to with the hope that he’ll be able to offer suggestions of who to approach and how to go about it.

Question is: do I describe myself as a “student photographer”?  I think not.