Supporting Show & Tell: the charity that helps young people improve their mental wellbeing through photography.
Show & Tell uses photography to help children take and share great photography, with the ultimate goal of boosting their mental health through creative expression.
The first service provided by the charity, which grew out of parent organisation The Photography Movement, is a programme of workshops for schools, run by many of the UK’s leading professional photographers. Talents have included the likes of Rankin, Jane Stockdale, Daniel Regan, John Mannell & Mike Chudley covering modules on everything from street to sport, nature to fashion photography. They share both live and pre-recorded workshops but then crucially follow up with live feedback sessions for the students.
The second component is a now annual photography competition, which we renamed #MyPhotoMyFeeling, to provide a clear call-to-action and hashtag in one. This part of the campaign was run in partnership with Untitled – the new youth arm of the global creative network Talenthouse.
There were more than 34,500 entries uploaded, although many of these came from outside of the UK and could not be considered as valid entries there was still an overwhelming number of entries to go through and both creativity and photographic skill in evidence.
the next steps were to shortlist the contestants to a final 100 who would make up the online exhibition. From there 12 individual winners were chosen by a panel of professional judges – including creative and self-expression talents Akram Khan, Anna Richardson, JSky and Soma Sara – and their work blown up to be shown on billboards across the UK.
It was then the final part of our job to make sure their work was properly celebrated and shown off online, which we did with an accelerating montage of the exhibition finalists and then a pan across the 15 winners in a mocked up virtual gallery.
The reaction from stakeholders (teachers, mental health community & professional photographers) and their communities was incredibly positive. It was the ongoing engagement from the core community, however – who continued to share their photos and emotions with us a long time after the competition had finished – that made it feel like the core objective had been squarely met.
Thanks to CISCO for sponsoring the programme, the Show & Tell team for their passion and commitment to manifesting the project and their support, plus all of the amazing young photographers for sharing with us.