Waltham Abbey Photography Group

Clive Simpson talks about how the Photography Group he runs at Waltham Abbey U3A and the competitions they've been running during lockdown.

For the last six years, I’ve run a photography group at Waltham Abbey with twenty members. My background is photojournalism and media. I run tutorials in a studio and we cover a vast range of things like the history of photography in Waltham Abbey. For the last few years, we’ve been covering events for the local council and local paper. Some weeks, we’d have three pages of photos in the newspaper. At the local tourism office, there’s a loop of 3,500 of our photos of the area.

When lockdown came about, me and my wife decided to go in to complete lockdown. We needed to find a way to keep the group active - we only had a break for a week. Immediately after that, I got in touch with everyone and said I want to run a competition. During lockdown, it was important to keep as much going as possible.

I wanted something that everyone could take part in – so we have two competitions: theme of the week and picture of the week. For picture of the week, people could submit either current photos or photos from the archives. From the word go, we had roughly 40 entries each week in both competitions. Judges are competition entrants and I have a pool of other judges from the local community, such as a councilor.

Some members are in complete lockdown, such as one member who has been taking photos in her garden. She's been producing stuff every single week. We’re trying to create a history of Waltham Abbey so that in fifty years, people in the historical society can see what was going on in this unique period. For instance, one of our members is in complete isolation and has been sharing what she's feeling through photographs, for instance preparing medicine for her son, or what she's growing in her garden. Some of the members write copy onto the photographs too.

We've just started doing Zoom meetings too. The aim is to do the same thing as we used to in the studio by putting pictures on the screen and talking about them with the group.

This coronavirus has knocked the socks off a lot of people – and we’re trying to keep them active as much as possible. During lockdown, we have to find ways to keep people interested.