The Grove Road Project

The Grove Road Project was born on the day of the royal wedding. This project is not about wedding’s or royalty, but about community. On the day of the Royal Wedding, Grove Road was one of the very few streets in Hereford to host a street party. While this had taken much organisation, the final result was fantastic. The street was cleared of cars and replace by a variety of tables, charrs and games, bunting lined the street’s and pretty much every one of the residents from 30 houses came out, eat drank and socialised. It was really amazing to see!

This was the first time that this had happened since 1977… 34 years since all the neighbours of a single street enjoyed a communal gathering. The process of organising and communication that preceded the street party has helped create a peculiar atmosphere on the street, where everyone now know’s the names, and a little about there neighbours… Think this is no big deal? I’d ask you to think about how many of your neighbours you know by name… I know that on my street, I know just a handful of the 100 or so residents…

So, was borne the Grove Road Project. A documentary photography project aimed at creating a document of the community, right now in 2011. To act as a reminder of the day of sense of community that was manifest during the street party, and to reming us of the importance of developing a community. My initial goal for this project is to create a book. A book in which every residence has a page. The final object will be a limited edition print run, of 32 books, one for every residence, one for me and one of the local record office.

What’s on the pages… this is part of the journey. I would like to work with every residence the street, to help create photographs of my own, fused with the images, text, poetry, art and significance of each resident, hopefully every resident…

I’ll keep you posted…