Tim Mills stands with camera equipment, chatting to a taxi driver sitting in his car. — Coventry taxi driver Major Singh reviews the outcomes of his collaborative portrait prior to installation on The Burges. © Tim Mills

Coventry taxi driver Major Singh reviews the outcomes of his collaborative portrait prior to installation on The Burges. © Tim Mills

Picturing The Burges, Coventry with Tim Mills, Photographer in Residence

For 12 months, artist Tim Mills was Picturing High Streets photographer in residence in Coventry. Using a socially engaged approach, Tim worked alongside local communities to create a contemporary response to The Burges, one of the few traditional historic high street areas surviving in Coventry.

GRAIN Projects were the regional partner, working alongside Historic England and Photoworks to deliver the commission.

On this page

Working with local communities
Experimental studies of Coventry
Exhibition
Tim Mills

Picturing Coventry collection

Photographs from Tim Mills's Coventry residency have entered the Historic England Archive, the nation’s archive for England’s historic buildings, archaeology and social history. They are part of the new Picturing High Streets national photography collection.

View the Coventry collection

Working with local communities

Operating within a small geographic area and informed by industries that defined the city of the past and those that shape it today, Tim Mills explored the exchange of goods and services in the area.

He engaged with shop owners and the wider community in photographic acts such as giving his camera to the shop owners and he ran a number of workshops to harness the skills and expertise of local businesses to create his photographic artworks.

Participants in the project included taxi drivers, retailers, students, school children, shoppers and local residents.

Experimental studies of Coventry

Tim produced a range of small, experimental photographic studies in Coventry that reflect his ongoing interest in transience, place, heritage and community.

Using photography, moving image, sound, textiles and performance, the collaborative artistic outcomes feature multiple authors and voices, focusing particularly on three communities who occupy the city centre: taxi drivers, university students and shop keepers.

Students moving in

Please click on the gallery images to enlarge.

Taxi interiors

Please click on the gallery images to enlarge.

Exhibition

From 12 November to 27 November 2022, a selection of Tim’s collaborative photographs were exhibited in and around The Burges and Palmer Lane, placing his photographs back within the communities who collaborated in making them.

outside Millennium View student halls, Palmer Lane, The Burges. — Exterior view of the Millennium View student accommodation, with photographs of students on moving in day displayed in the windows © Tim Mills

A black cab with a black and yellow livery parked on a side street, framed by a tree overhead and planters in the foreground — View of the Palmer Lane taxi rank, showing photographs taken by Tim Mills as part of a project displayed on the wall © Tim Mills

Tim Mills

Tim Mills uses photography and reappropriated archive material to explore and engage with communities and place. His work is often presented as installations within public contexts and outdoor locations.

This residency was a timely opportunity to re-engage with my own photographic practice and reconnect with my family history in Coventry. Through the ongoing support of the commissioners, I was enabled and encouraged to take creative risks to explore the possibilities of socially engaged photography projects.

Tim Mills