Submission Deadline: Friday 7th February 2025.
As a part of Bolton’s Town of Culture programme, Live from Worktown is building on our 2024 work revisiting Mass Observation by launching a photography competition on the theme of Our Cultural Landmarks.
We’re asking you to take a photo of a place that’s important in your life and best sums up your personal experience of living, working or being in Bolton. Your subject could be in a town within the borough or set in the local countryside.
Where do you hang out when you’re not at home and where’s important to you? Possibly places of worship, music, theatre & entertainment, sporting venues, iconic shops, new building developments, or more informal places where people just hang out. You might consider schools, playing fields and recreation grounds, youth clubs and community centres, street corners and backstreets, derelict buildings or subways. It’s down you to decide!
The best 30 images will be uploaded onto an exhibition gallery page on the Live from Worktown website, but the 20 most striking will be included as black and white illustrations in a complementary Bolton Observed anthology of writing that Live from Worktown are publishing to celebrate Bolton’s year as the Greater Manchester Town of Culture. The overall winning image, out of these 20, will be used as the front cover for the publication.
Closing date for photo submissions: midnight 7th February 2025.
The entries will be judged by Don Tonge, Bolton’s acclaimed documentary photographer.
Entrants should be living, working or studying in Bolton. Former residents, workers or students may submit but should indicate their links to the town with dates.
By Bolton we mean the wider Borough including its towns and villages.
How to submit your entries:
Please send one email per photo to massobs@livefromworktown.org.uk up to a maximum of three, with your photograph attached in the form of a jpeg file. You can submit colour or black and white photos taken with your phone or with a camera. In the email, please include the title of the shot, your name, the date and where the photo was taken, plus up to 25 words explaining more about the image. Any replies back to you will be via the email you use to submit the photo.
Tips for selecting subjects and taking photos:
- Our selection criteria will ensure that we do not have multiple images of the same location in the anthology and we’ll aim to keep duplicates to a minimum in the gallery, so we advise that you avoid the very obvious buildings in the town, like the Town Hall or Le Mans Crescent.
- If you are taking photos that feature people, please either obtain their permission to be in the shot, or ensure that that they cannot be directly identified, e.g. by taking images that only features peoples’ backs.
- If you’re taking shots inside a building, please obtain permission from the building manager or owner.
- Please do not endanger yourself or others when taking your shots.
We will inform you if you have been successful by Monday 24th February 2025. All published images will remain the copyright of the photographer and no use will be made of the image other than in the gallery, the anthology or publicity for the competition, without the express permission of the photographer.
Publication of the illustrated anthology and the photography gallery will be in March 2025 when a launch event will be organised as part of the Bolton: GM Town of Culture celebration. All entrants with images selected for the anthology will be invited to the launch and receive a free copy of the publication. Additional copies will be available freely through the borough’s libraries.
Why not enter our related writing call-out for the anthology too? You could even submit a written piece about your photograph. Visit BOLTON OBSERVED: AN ANTHOLOGY to find out more.
We are delighted to be launching this photo competition with the support of Bolton Council, as a part of the Greater Manchester Town of Culture.
Val Hulme
admin