A Bay View Xtra – Mark McNulty
15/06/24 – 27/07/24
Come and celebrate our community with us in our brand new exhibition! If we photographed you, come and see your photograph in the exhibition! If we didn’t, we’re sorry to have missed you but why not pop in and see how many people you recognise or know…
Towards the end of 2023, Oriel Colwyn and The Northern Eye Photography Festival worked with photographer Mark McNulty to create a new archive and exhibition. During the October half-term we set up a free pop-up studio in the Bayview Shopping Centre and photographed passers-by over a period of four days. The full set of these images are currently being exhibited in the foyer of the Coed Pella council building in Colwyn Bay. (A Bay View)
Seeing the joy and engagement this exhibition is bringing to both our community and visitors alike, we looked at ways of adding to and extending this exhibition. Primarily we wanted to meet and engage with more people and also offer the chance for them to be included in the exhibition.
So, six months after taking the original photographs we set up our pop-up studio again, this time in a borrowed gazebo on Colwyn Bay’s prom for a unique and busy weekend.
On the Saturday we photographed people who were visiting the town’s Prom Xtra event. Prom Xtra is an annual family event, which takes place on Colwyn Bay Promenade. It attracts thousands of people and fills a 1km long site with free family activities, live entertainment, charity stalls and fairground attractions… and this year…us!
Prom Xtra is an event where the community comes together for a fun day to remember, it is a community centred event with many attendees coming from the Bay of Colwyn area whilst also attracting day visitors from across North Wales and beyond.
We thought this was a perfect opportunity for us to add to and include more people into the Bay View portrait archive.
The following day (Sunday), we built the gazebo and set up the studio again, this time in readiness for Colwyn Bay Pride.
With the town’s Pride event now in its second year, the event planned to showcase the “vibrant spirit and resilience” of the LGBTQ+ community in Colwyn Bay and build on the success of its inaugural event. Pride event manager Kia Davies said “Colwyn Bay Pride is about more than just a single day of celebration – it’s about fostering a sense of belonging and acceptance within our community,“
Again, we saw this as an ideal opportunity for us to work with, and include more people into the Bay View project in celebration of our town.
Over the weekend we met so many brilliant people and photographed an amazing 640 of you! We had great fun and were glad to meet so many people at the events – thank you to all who took part.
‘A Bay View’ initially started off as a way to honour Daniel Meadows’ and his historic work from 1973 ‘The Free Photographic Omnibus’, but it has grown into a wonderful and unique record of life in Colwyn Bay in 2023/24.
To allow you to see the full show in its entirety we have extended the original exhibition in the Coed Pella building to run in conjunction with, and to compliment these new portraits.
