In partnership with a range of organisations, led by Open Eye, we are delighted to be collaborating on Sixteen, a project that opens up conversations with young people about their hopes and fears. Award winning, internationally acclaimed British photographer Kate Peters* has been working with sixteen year olds in the Midlands.

Photographer Craig Easton  conceived this work following his engagement with sixteen years old at the time of the Scottish Referendum. It was the first, and as yet only, time that sixteen year olds were given the vote. He went on to invite some of the UK’s foremost 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 across the country to make a visual vox pop. Sixteen is an age of transition, of developmental, and of social change. At this time of increasing national and international anxiety, these young people are shifting from adolescence to become the adults who will live in a politically reshaped country, divorced from the Europe Union.

Working with photography, film, social media, audio recordings and writing, Craig and his colleagues bring together the faces and voices of more than one hundred young people from diverse communities across the United Kingdom. Locations span large conurbations such as London, Birmingham and Manchester, isolated areas in the South West, Northern Ireland, the Scottish Islands and post- industrial towns of
the North.

The photographers open up conversations with these young people about their hopes and fears, and who or what sustains them, giving prominence to voices rarely heard. The project explores how social background, gender, ethnicity or location might influence aspiration.

This integration of stunning portraits and candid reflections, will tour regionally, to institutions and organisations, arts festivals, and smaller venues beyond the boundaries of the museum. Each partner venue will co-curate a version of Sixteen inspired by their own location, and relevant topics and themes. Dedicated engagement programmes will initiate and encourage further conversations with young people across the country.

www.katepeters.co.uk
www.craigeaston.com

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