Welcome to Bishop's Waltham 2020 Vision...
our one-year pop-up photographic project to explore and record everyday life in our local community. We especially thank the 38 photographers who uploaded 1100 images of a historic year for the benefit of future generations.
Our curator, Tony Hunt comments ...
When we launched this project a little over a year ago, we envisaged what we would pursue, to achieve the aims of an accurate and fairly comprehensive record of life in Bishop’s Waltham during the year of 2020. Our intention was to record aspects of domestic life, employment and industry, social and cultural events, leisure pursuits, environmental issues and characteristics of the weather.
An ambitious concept began well in January with an emphasis on visiting commercial businesses and shops in the village centre. The vision was soon stopped in its tracks by the emerging news of a global viral infection. In the following month it became clear that our intended programme was to change radically.
The advent of Coronavirus led to two lockdowns during the year and significant changes in the way that we were leading our lives. Businesses and shops closed; education and schools were disrupted; everyone was restricted on how, when and where they might go. What we had envisaged for the project now had to be largely abandoned, and a new photographic profile for us to follow quickly emerged. Recording how the Covid-19 pandemic was changing our lives in 2020 became the over-riding and unique theme for the year.
Our photographer-contributors responded splendidly, with ingenuity and creativity to the fore. We are now able and pleased to forward an archive of nearly a thousand photographs to the Bishop’s Waltham Museum Trust to add to their existing collections.
We are most grateful to all those who have contributed their personal images to the project, thus ensuring that there is a permanent and accessible record for future generations to understand this significant chapter in the history of Bishop’s Waltham.