Curator Tour - Craig Easton: Is Anybody Listening? Thatcher's Children

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Join the University of Salford Art Collection for a curator tour of the first instalment of Craig Easton: Is Anybody Listening?, Thatcher’s Children, on Thursday 14th September.

Is Anybody Listening? is a touring exhibition showcasing two award-winning series of works by photographer and University alumnus Craig Easton. Passionate about politics since his teenage years, Easton aims to challenge the ‘accepted’ narratives and stereotypes presented by and through the mainstream media

In 2021, Easton was named Photographer of the Year at the prestigious Sony World Photography Awards for his series Bank Top, shot in Blackburn between 2019 and 2021 (before and during Covid). He was awarded second place in the documentary category for the series Thatcher’s Children, started in 1992 and continued in 2016-22. The exhibition brings these two important series of work to a wider audience across the Northwest.

The exhibition in Salford is presented in two parts, beginning with Thatcher’s Children running from 11 September – 27 October in the New Adelphi Exhibition Gallery. Thatcher’s Children explores the inter-generational nature of poverty and economic hardship as experienced by three generations of one family across the North West.

Thatcher’s Children is a long-term project, started in 1992 as a series documenting the Williams family – two parents and their six children living in a hostel for homeless families in Blackpool – and trapped in a cycle of unemployment and poverty.

The original connection that Easton built in 1992 continued after Easton reconnected with the six children, now adults with their own children, in 2016. He visited regularly – accompanying them in their daily life – from shopping and playing in the park to witnessing moments of joy and despair. These intimate and personal moments of family life tell a much wider story – one of the cyclical nature of poverty and social deprivation, exacerbated by successive governments’ failure to tackle social policy, as evidenced by the current cost of living crisis.