A year-long photography project led by Liz Lock and made with young people aged 14–17 across Salford

Around 50 young people took part through Salford Youth Service, local schools and community networks.

Through workshops, walks and day trips, photography became a reason to go somewhere, notice something, spend time together and make things.

Young people photographed the natural world, themselves and one another. They made portraits, interviewed each other, designed book covers, produced zines and helped decide how their work would be shown.

At the centre of the project was the simple idea that photography can change the way we look at the world, at one another and at ourselves.

Why photography?

Photography has a particular ability to bring people together.

Walking with cameras can make conversation easier. Looking at photographs together gives people something to talk about. Photographing someone creates a different kind of exchange.

A camera also gives you a reason to pay attention. To stop somewhere. To move closer. To wait. To notice a person, a place or a detail that might otherwise have been passed by.

Young Shoots grew from this way of thinking about photography: not simply as a technical skill, but as something social. A reason to look, talk, make things and spend time together.

LOOKING OUT

Using photography to see the world differently

The project began with a simple invitation to go outside with a camera and see what catches your attention.

Participants photographed gardens, landscapes, people, weather, colour, animals, plants and small details that interested them. Visits to RHS Garden Bridgewater, local parks and other green spaces gave them time to wander, follow their curiosity and decide for themselves what was worth photographing.

Some pictures were deliberate, others came from chance encounters or things noticed along the way.

Photography became a reason to stop and look at things that might otherwise have been passed by.

Choosing what to photograph, where to stand, when to press the shutter and what to leave outside the frame also meant making decisions. Over time, participants began to develop their own visual interests and their own ways of looking.

LOOKING AT ONE ANOTHER

Photography as a way of playing, collaborating and connecting

Over time, photography in the groups became increasingly social. Participants photographed one another, interviewed each other, experimented with portraiture and took part in assignments designed to encourage collaboration.

One exercise was inspired by the game of hide and seek. Using the outdoor environment as both setting and material, the group photographed one another hiding, searching and moving through the landscape. Some images were carefully staged, while others came from unexpected moments.

The exercise created reasons to talk, perform, joke, direct and respond to one another.

The photographs were later edited into a shared zine. 

Different ways of making a portrait

As the project progressed, photography became increasingly connected to questions of identity. Sometimes that meant making photographs of yourself. Sometimes it meant choosing an image that said something about you. And sometimes it meant allowing somebody else to make your portrait.

SEEING YOURSELF

In a bookmaking workshop, participants selected photographs they had taken and paired them with autobiographical titles drawn from their own experiences. They experimented with image, language and layout, deciding how each finished cover should look and feel.

A landscape, portrait or apparently ordinary detail could take on another meaning once paired with a title. The exercise suggested a different kind of self-portrait, one in which you do not necessarily have to appear in the photograph at all.

BEING SEEN

Portraiture as an exchange between photographer and sitter

Alongside the young people’s own work, Liz made a series of portraits of participants she came to know during the project. These portraits developed through the time spent together in workshops, conversations, walks and shared experiences.

For Liz, portrait-making is not simply about recording what someone looks like but is an encounter between two people. The photographer looks closely, but the sitter is also taking part by deciding how to stand, how to look, how much to reveal, and how they want to be seen. It is an exchange that requires time, attention and trust.

A carefully made portrait asks us to spend time looking at a person rather than glance past them. This exchange between looking and being looked at became one of the central ideas of Young Shoots.

MORE THAN A PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP

A flexible creative process shaped by the group

The project changed in response to the personalities, interests and energy of the young people taking part.

Photography remained at its centre, but it led naturally into conversation, interviewing, writing, bookmaking, zine-making, design and editing. Some sessions were quiet and observational. Others were energetic, funny or collaborative.

Sometimes the most interesting photographs came from an assignment. At other times they came from somebody wandering away from the activity and noticing something for themselves. Rather than asking every participant to arrive at the same result, the project created different ways of taking part by making photographs, appearing in them, choosing images, writing, designing, editing or simply looking closely at what others had made.

What emerged over the year was not one single outcome but a body of photographs, portraits, books, zines and publications. Together, they record both what people made and something of what happened while they were making it.

WHAT WE MADE

Photography, publishing and exhibition

Over the course of the project, around 50 young people took part in photography sessions, walks, workshops and visits across Salford.

Together they made more than 5,000 photographs.

The project also produced:

• portraits of participants by Liz Lock
• collaborative zines
• autobiographical book covers
• participant-led selections of photographs
• work prepared for public exhibition

Young people worked with cameras across parks, youth centres, schools and RHS Garden Bridgewater, moving between photographing the world around them and photographing one another. The work was then brought back into the group to be looked at, talked about, edited and turned into other things.

What began with taking photographs gradually became a much larger process of looking, choosing, making and sharing.

PROJECT PARTNERS & CREDITS

Young Shoots Social Club developed from a socially engaged photography residency commissioned by the University of Salford Art Collection in partnership with RHS Garden Bridgewater, Open Eye Gallery, Salford Youth Service and Salford Museum & Art Gallery.

The original commission focused on photography, nature, new places, self-expression and creating opportunities for young people’s work and voices to reach a public audience. The idea of the Young Shoots Social Club originated in Liz’s proposal for the residency as a welcoming, sociable space in which photography could connect people, places and ideas.