Picturing High Streets, Walsall, 2023

Picturing High Streets

An outdoor exhibition in Gallery Square, featuring a collection of photographs presenting a snapshot of a year in the life of the English high street. The exhibition also features three winning images from Picturing Walsall, Historic England and GRAIN’s recent competition for images, celebrating what is special, unusual and unique about Walsall’s high streets.

Picturing High Streets 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.

This exhibition is part of Historic England’s £95 million government-funded High Streets Heritage Action Zones scheme, breathing new life into high streets across England. At a time when our high streets are continuing to change rapidly, this exhibition invites the public to reflect on the purpose of the high street. It also considers the history and experiences of the people and places that make up an often-overlooked fixture in all our lives.

The national winning 65 photographs have been crowdsourced from more than 1,000 public entries and will tour towns and cities across England. The 65 images featured in the national exhibition can be viewed online here.

The winning photographs of Walsall were chosen by a panel of judges including Annabel Clarke, Senior Communications & Marketing Executive at The New Art Gallery Walsall, Stephen Burke, Project Producer at GRAIN Projects, and Tamsin Silvey, Cultural Programme Curator at Historic England.