MIRIAM NASH - GREAT BRITISH YOUTH

My Great British Youth exhibition at Southbank Centre ended last Sunday. During the four months of the Festival of Britain, I photographed over forty young people aged 25 and under in places they had a special connection to or doing the things they love. The seed for that idea started when I was seventeen. I'd written a list of friends roughly the same age as me who I wanted to interview about the creative projects they were involved in. I wanted to share positive stories of the British Youth at a time when there was a lot of coverage of crazes like happy-slapping and robbery for phones.

Well, back then I never managed to develop the idea much further. I got busy with college, university and the world of poetry. However, while I was studying and building my career, I continued to meet inspiring youth people who where, students, artists, dancers, volunteers, teachers, journalists. So the opportunity to begin photographing some of these young people, and to have a public exhibition open for all to see, was one I couldn't turn down. I'll be taking some time now to organise the next exhibition and organising the next people to be photographed. I'm also working on a project website that will feature the photos and stories of those involved in the Great British Youth project. I'll keep you posted about that. But until then, I just wanted to say thank you to all those photographed, those and visited the exhibition and the many people who supported me in making my idea a reality.

I'll leave you will a picture of Miriam Nash, writer and collaborative artist photographed in a park very close to her new home in South London.