The People. Project is brave, collaborative and beautiful and began with two questions…

The project began with Steve Ellis, Vice President and former CEO, St Petrocs who posed two important questions:

  • How can we raise the esteem of the clients of St Petrocs who’ve taken such a beating during the pandemic and the many lockdowns?

  • Can portraiture be part of how we do this?

The idea of a photographic portrait exhibition underpinned by interviews, was created in collaboration with founder and director of StreetDraw24 CIC, Helen Trevaskis an artist with a background in research and behaviour change.

Early on photographer Gavan Goulder came on board bringing the power of his social documentary photography and a passion for socially engaged work.

The portrait on the left by Gavan is of Steve Ellis. It was taken on July 28th and was the 2nd portrait of the project.

While the project shape took time to evolve, a core principle underpinned its design from the start - that to feel good about yourself you need to feel part of something that matters not singled out as needing to change.

This led to some important decisions:

  • The use of high quality, black and white photography which says of the sitter, “You matter. You’re important”.

  • Including other people in Cornwall who’d experienced problems with housing insecurity or homelessness since the start of the pandemic alongside St Petrocs’ clients - sadly not a difficult thing to do given the scale of the problem.

  • Making the output of the project public and visible, a statement.

  • Choosing to challenge stereotypes and stigma people facing homelessness and housing issues face.

The project grew to include 70 people’s accounts of housing challenges since the pandemic (and before) as many people did not want to be photographed, typically due to the embarrassment felt at their situation. The size of the project has made it an important research ‘snapshot’ of a time where housing is at crisis point in Cornwall.

The project is a collaboration between St Petrocs and the people of Cornwall because of all this and because when we decided to stage the exhibition outside by inviting people and organisations to take part, to host a portrait, so many stepped up and said “Yes”. This collaboration signifies what we believe is necessary for positive and lasting change to happen - we must look for solutions together and work to implement them together.

The project ended up as a book, an exhibition at The Royal Cornwall Museum and outdoors across Cornwall as well as this website. There were workshops at the Royal Cornwall Museum exploring the power of portraits and the project caught the attention of the new Duke and Duchess of Cornwall including during their visit to Falmouth in 2023. It has also been entered into The Orwell Foundation’s new prize for reporting homelessness.

Beyond this, where the project will go next we are not sure, but paraphrasing Steve Ellis - if we get it right, if we do it well, something important will happen because of it.