The Kilburn High Road Project: Participatory Practice Photography Project

I have been working with the Kiln Theatre in NW London on their major project: The Kilburn High Road Project: https://kilntheatre.com/creative-engagement/participation/kilburn-high-road-project/chronicles-of-kilburn which aims to showcase the ‘tangible and intangible’ heritage of people in this vibrant area of NW London.

This is a three-year project in which I will be participating in a variety of ways; facilitating workshops, making new portraits of people in the area and, (TBC) directing a short film about different people’s migratory experiences.

To begin with, building on my previous archive of work in Brent, I have been working on a participatory practice photography project with a youth centre in the area, helping young people share their own thoughts and build their own stories. Working with a producer and two researchers, we began in June 2025 by working with the Oxford Kilburn Youth Trust (OK Club), giving young (mainly 10 to 12yr old) people cameras, asking them to take photographs of each other and to document the area around the club using digital and disposable film cameras. The aim was to build a distinctive voice coming from young people and to hear directly from them.

This resulted in a series of vibrant portrait and group photographs. This was followed up by another workshop in September 2025 in which we presented the young people with prints of their images. We needed captions for the images in order to exhibit them and in order to build and manage the storytelling, we asked them to complete the following questions:
“The thing that would make Kilburn better is….?”
“When I walk through Kilburn I feel….”
“Who Are You? I am ….”

I then made a set of urban landscape photographs on Kilburn High Road to be used as contextual vinyl backdrops, against which the young people’s photographs and quotes were presented on the main walls of the Kiln Theatre.

This resulted in an exhibition, launched at the theatre in January 2025.

• https://kilntheatre.com/creative-engagem...
• https://kilntheatre.com/creative-engagem...