The first exhibition in the Postcards from Great Britain project, at Hotel Lion d'Or, Haarlem, The Netherlands, 5 March - 2 April 2020. Supported by Fujifilm Original Photo Paper. Photograph by Jayne Lloyd/Shutter Hub.

The Postcards from Great Britain project started because we wanted to reach out and connect. We launched in Haarlem, Netherlands, guests came from across the UK and mainland Europe, from the British Embassy, FujiFilm, Foam, Amsterdam Partners, Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions and the Dutch press. So many of our photographer friends joined us, it couldn’t have been any better; the sense of community was massive!

Then COVID-19 came along and stopped us all in our tracks. Our friends are all on lockdown in different countries and different towns.

So many of our plans have been cancelled (No Postcards from Great Britain at Eurovision! No Postcards from Great Britain on the North Sea!) but we realised, although we might not be able to do what we first planned, maybe we can do something different, and we can still share our postcards with our friends all across Europe.

So, what’s the plan?

Isolation has encouraged us to find new ways of sharing, and we hope everyone will get on board with this alternative direction and show how powerful the photography community can be.

We are asking friends in mainland Europe to host pop-up postcard exhibitions, share some great photography with people (and of course document it for us to see) and invite people to send their photos from Europe in return.

If you’re in mainland Europe could you host a Postcards from Great Britain exhibition in the windows of your home, or in a workspace or public place that people will be able to see?

It’s simple, it’s friendly, and we hope it will be effective in sharing great photography with good people. If you can host an exhibition, please let us know.  We will send you an exhibition pack that will include everything you need, and we’ll make it as easy as possible for you to get involved.

For each exhibition in Europe we will share the location details, installation photographs, and any business info and links. We are grateful for the friendships and support we are offered, and want to offer this in return.

We are looking for locations that are visible to people passing by, we’ll share the locations so people are aware of what’s in their area, but we’re not encouraging people to visit it as a destination.

For each of the locations we’ll promote business information (if relevant) and links on our website reaching around 20,000 viewers per month, in our newsletter to around 6000, and also on our social media to our combined audience of over 12,000.

And we’ll create a Postcards from Europe exhibition to be shown in the UK at Cambridge University from November – December 2021. A full exchange.

Sounds good? We hope so!

Please get in touch and tell us if you have an exhibition location in mainland Europe and would like to get involved. Thank you.

Postcards from Great Britain is a largescale project from Shutter Hub, inviting photographers to share their visions of British culture through photographic images and create conversations and exchange. Pop-up exhibitions will be held in locations across Europe, with related events, showcasing thousands of postcard-sized images. Every image submitted to Postcards from Great Britain will be collated into a digital and print catalogue, to be housed in libraries and archives around the world, and 100 images will be selected for a collectable postcard set. (See the up-to-date Project Overview here).

In a significant time in European history this project sets out to document and share aspects of British culture, spanning all genres of photography, and collating images which include social, political, historical, traditional and observational responses.

If you know a venue in mainland Europe that would like to host an exhibition in 2021, when hopefully we’ll be able to move around again, please let us know!

See photos from the launch event at Haarlem’s famous Hotel Lion d’Or here: INAUGURAL EXHIBITION & PROJECT LAUNCH, HAARLEM

Read the background on the project here: EXHIBITIONS / EVENTS / PRODUCTS / ARCHIVE

Postcards from Great Britain is supported by: FujiFilm Original Photo Paper

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