In partnership with multiple national photography organisations and led by Open Eye, SIXTEEN was a collaboration with young people from across England conceptualised by photographer Craig Ashley.   GRAIN worked across the West Midlands with photographer Kate Peters and sixteen year olds from diverse backgrounds to create a series of portraits for the national touring exhibition.

Photographer Craig Easton had conceptualised this initiative after engaging with sixteen-year-olds during the Scottish Referendum. This was the inaugural, and to date, the only time when sixteen-year-olds were granted voting rights. He then invited some of the UK’s leading documentary portrait photographers, Linda Brownlee, Lottie Davies, Jillian Edelstein, Stuart Freedman, Sophie Gerrard, Kate Kirkwood, Kalpesh Lathigra, Ronan McKenzie, Roy Mehta, Christopher Nunn, Antonio Olmos, Kate Peters, Michelle Sank, Abbie Trayler-Smith, Simon Roberts, and Simon Wheatley, to collaborate with young people throughout the country to create a visual vox pop. Sixteen is an age marked by transition, development, and societal change. During this time of heightened national and international anxiety, these young individuals transition from adolescence to becoming the adults shaping a politically redefined nation, separate from the European Union.

SIXTEEN was exhibited as a largescale public realm exhibition outside Millennium Point and the Birmingham City University Parkside building.

Image credit: Abdullatif, Coventry 2018, (c) Kate Peters