Inclusive Community Photo Walks at St Mark’s Church
Urban Wilderness CIC were commissioned as part of the Under One Roof heritage project to support community engagement during the development stage of works at St Mark’s Church. The project sought to repair and restore the church while celebrating the heritage found within and around it, placing local communities at the heart of interpretation and participation.
Self-Led Photo Walk Guides
Urban Wilderness CIC designed a series of self-led photo walk guides to encourage local people to explore heritage independently and creatively. The guides mapped a two-mile circular route starting and ending at St Mark’s Church, taking in local historic buildings, Hanley Park, and the Caldon Canal.
The guides invited participants to slow down, notice details and reflect on how heritage is encountered in everyday spaces, using photography as a tool for observation, storytelling and connection.
Inclusive Group Photo Walks
Alongside the self-led activity, Urban Wilderness CIC delivered a programme of artist-led photo walk workshops with specific community groups.
A photo walk workshop was delivered with primary school children, supporting pupils from the neighbouring school to explore the church grounds and surrounding area. Young participants were encouraged to look closely at their environment, experiment with photography and share their own perspectives on familiar places.
Urban Wilderness CIC also led a dedicated photo walk with Deaflinks, building inclusive connections with the local Deaf community through placemaking and creativity. The session created space for shared exploration, visual storytelling and discussion, foregrounding non-verbal communication and visual ways of experiencing place.
These workshops strengthened relationships between diverse communities and the heritage site, ensuring that multiple ways of seeing and experiencing place were valued.
Outdoor Exhibition
An outdoor exhibition was installed on panels within the grounds of St Mark’s Church, sharing photographs taken during the workshops. The exhibition celebrated the site from multiple, diverse perspectives — particularly those of the Deaf community and children from ethnically and religiously diverse backgrounds.
By bringing these images into the public realm, the exhibition transformed the church grounds into an open-air gallery, inviting wider audiences to encounter the place through the eyes of those who know it differently.
A Shared Sense of Place
Through walking, making and exhibiting together, Urban Wilderness CIC supported an inclusive, community-led approach to heritage engagement. Under One Roof demonstrated how creativity can build understanding across difference, and how heritage sites can become spaces of connection, care and shared ownership.