Hastings Youth Press

This was a pilot project for the Magnum Photos Foundation that it hopes will be the first in a series of local visual journalism projects around the United Kingdom in regional cities and towns, with a focus on under-served and under-resourced communities, and supporting local journalism.

For the Hastings Independent, the project provided staff and resources to deliver on its promise of providing journalism and media training to the people of the town, and support voices that are otherwise frequently unheard or silenced.

The project was designed to increase skills, wellbeing and social connectedness for the young people participating, strengthen community participation in the Hastings Independent and develop a stronger feeling of community “ownership” of the local paper. Hastings Independent aim to deliver this project yearly, and we will support the former participants to be tutors for the next cohort (pending additional funding).

Whilst there were 11 young participants involved in the project, here we focus on the four that have been associated with PhotoHastings.

Joe Charrington is a photographer whose work stems from an interest in the local East Sussex lore. His photographs search “for traces of the past, forever etched in earth, tree, rock, and stone that breaths alongside us in parallel layers, webbed through our land and culture.” Joe hopes “to see larger bodies of funding being made more accessible to community projects” though he acknowledges positive steps have been taken over the last ten years.

Josie Barnes, a photographer who would eventually like to specialize in film stills or photojournalism says: “We are in the same storm, but not in the same boat”. Josie interviews and photographs local women in the fishing industry to help give voice to their specific stories and enable us to better understand how women continue to be poorly represented in fishing today.

Michael Amos is a passionate environmentalist who wants to see a positive change in the state of the Earth. His work in HYP specifically documents the growing sightings of harbour porpoises at Dungeness, Kent’s vast shingle peninsula and designated National Nature Reserve. He longs for more scientific research on these marine mammals just off of the UK coast so that they may be better understood and protected from future harm.

Nour El-Din was born in the Syrian city of Homs, “a beautiful city and its people are more beautiful…whose hearts are as white as the whitest of Homs’ houses.” His work documents his experience of migration after the outbreak of war in his home country. Nour has been exhibiting his portrait series in West St Leonards International at Electro Studios and The Dove Café as part of Refugee Week Celebrations. He has also been commissioned to make a new photo-documentary project about the Dove Café by the Hastings Museum and Art Gallery, which will open there on June 20th and be on display until Sept 17th, 2023.

It has been a wonderful project for the participants as well as providing an interesting insight into their work and passions. To see all the articles and images in full visit the Hastings Independent Press – Youth Press Project.

Image Gallery