Young Shoots Social Club was a year-long photography project developed by Liz Lock with young people aged 14–17 in Salford.
Participants were invited via Salford Youth Services, local schools and social media. Around 50 young people participated in workshops, nature walks, and day trips.
Beginning with walks, conversations and camera-based exercises, the group used photography as a way of looking at nature, one another and themselves.
A visit to RHS Bridgewater, Spring 2026
Over the course of the project, photography became only one part of a wider collaborative process. Participants wrote, interviewed one another, made portraits, produced zines and books, designed objects and selected work for exhibition. Rather than working towards a single predetermined outcome, the project developed through the interests and personalities of the group.
Bella, Blackleach Country Park, Salford
A short film about the project by Jules Lister
Alongside the participants’ own photographs, Liz made a series of portraits shaped by the conversations and relationships that developed through the project.
Olivia and Alicia, Peel Park, Salford
A BOOK OF YOUR OWN
Participants developed their photographs into finished book covers, thinking about how an image changes when it becomes part of a designed object. They were asked to photograph horizontally so that a single image could wrap across the front, spine and back of the book.
Each participant paired their photograph with an autobiographical title drawn from their own experiences. Through sketching, arranging and repositioning the words by hand, they explored the relationship between image and text and made decisions about how their book should look and feel.
The workshop shifted the emphasis from simply taking photographs to considering what those photographs could become: edited, sequenced, combined with language and transformed into a personal object with its own identity.
HIDE & SEEK Zine
Participants were given a photography assignment inspired by hide and seek, using the outdoor environment as both setting and material. Working together, they photographed one another hiding, searching and moving through the landscape, experimenting with staged situations as well as unexpected moments.
The exercise encouraged them to think about composition, narrative and the relationship between people and place, while keeping the process playful and collaborative.
The resulting photographs were then edited into a shared zine, introducing the group to sequencing and collective authorship: how separate images, made by different people, can be brought together to form a single visual story.
LOOKING CLOSELY
Participants also made photographs independently throughout the project, particularly during visits to RHS Garden Bridgewater and time spent outdoors. Moving through gardens, paths and open spaces with cameras gave them the freedom to follow their own interests and notice details that might otherwise have been overlooked.
The resulting images range from portraits and landscapes to plants, weather, colour and small observations of the everyday. Together they show the participants beginning to develop individual visual instincts: choosing what to photograph, where to stand, what to leave out, and what felt worth paying attention to.
These photographs became an important part of the wider project, showing how photography could be used not only to complete an assignment, but as a personal way of exploring and responding to the world around them.
