Four Years On

 

A social cohesion project with the residents of Johnson Fold housing estate in Bolton that follows the lives of the tenants every four years during the England World Cup campaign. 

The project  began in 2006 when Adrian Barber began photographing the community as part of his Masters degree in Photo - Journalism with the book "Lowndes - The last community and their World Cup summer".

 

The project was seen by Bolton at Home, the housing company, who funded Adrian to return in 2010 to see what (if anything) had changed on the estate. The project went on to be the book and exhibition "England 'Till I Die - a community and their World Cup". The project was a great success and has since been exhibited as a three month exhibition in Bolton Museum and Art Gallery.

 

In 2014 Adrian returned once more to the estate, the toddlers he had photographed in 2006 were now beginning secondary school and the school leavers were now adults (some of them with children of their own).

Many of the unemployed were on the "Back to Work" scheme and volunteering for supermarkets, shops and charity shops. Those who were on the sick complained of a new regime that made them feel like criminals. Many of the working residents complained of an economy that was in decline and a government that was out of touch with it's people.

 

The project "Four Years On" captures the wider changing times of the UK, the bedroom tax, the welfare cuts, the changes in government and the struggling economy but it also captures the trends of the moment, the Ed Hardy T-shirts, the rubber band 'Loom' fashion, the Vuvuzela African horn, affluent times when people could afford to buy England shirts and the recent times when they could no longer afford them. 

All the projects have been made accessible to the public, with public exhibitions, with Facebook pages, Flickr pages (where people can download the original hi-res files), there are also slideshows on Youtube / Vimeo and the residents who featured in the photobook all received their own hardback copy to share with their friends and family.

 

Check out the project on Facebook:

View the photos on Flicker :

View the SLIDESHOW BELOW on Vimeo or Youtube:           

 

Preview the book on Blurb :                   Read the blog about the project :