Introducing the Craig Willson Gallery—Citizen Journalism Docks at the Bayl

Craig Willson is a talented local photographer with an extraordinary ability to capture images of Pevensey Bay, the hidden jewel in the crown of Sussex.

His understanding of portraiture and the particularity of the place means that his work is noteworthy. Amongst his work are images taken of the sun rising over the Bay, stunning in their compositional qualities.

Bay Life will be featuring his work through 2012, in a gallery dedicated to his emerging portfolio.

The plan is for Craig to become the first of our ‘in-house citizen journalists’, who are joining the publication to report on local issues, events and news stories in the spirit of Life Magazine and Pathé News in the fifties.

We hope to be able to ‘break’ a local budding journalist or photo journalist, by giving them a platform that will promote their work to a wider audience.

Freelance employment in the arena of photo-journalism is hard to come by, but if we can get work noticed and out there to a wider audience, we believe that this might lead to the start of a tentative career path for a few young local people under-employed, and distinctly lacking in opportunity.

Regular readers will know that Bay Life is the only publication online in Sussex to be issued with a Guardian ‘Open Platform licence’. This entitles us to publish from 1.4 million articles in the Guardian news vault on any given day.

The relationship is a two way street. The reach of such a licence has a ripple effect locally, regionally and nationally.

This is part of the thinking by the Guardian in the implementation of the scheme. This week on Channel 4, The Guardian began its advertising campaigning which includes mention of some of the principles behind the ‘open platform’ approach to the web.

Working with the licence enables us to draw into the readership of the Bay Life people who would not otherwise bookmark and browse a local community based publication. This shines a potential positive light on the local community. It also brings good young local photographers to the notice of all kinds of professional people who work in the national media, who are always on the look out for budding new talent.

In the process, we hope to to able to benefit the economic situation of the Bay in a various number of very small ways.

Anyone who is able to find gainful employment through their link with Bay Life would be given a significant personal booster jab in the arm that holds their tripod. Any new company or business enterprise choosing to set-up or relocate to the Bay, seeing the potential of the place, is also an injection of life at a critically difficult economic time.

We welcome Craig and his work to the pages of Bay Life.

We would be very interested indeed to hear from any funding body or grant provider or private funder who might like to help us launch ‘the Citizen Journalism Project’ with Bay Life. The cost, we believe, of a ten week induction programme, with professional teaching support. to train up photo-journalists to ‘a beginners level commercially’, on the basis of an intensive one day class, weekly, for five young students, is in the region of £5,200.

Any organisation or company interested in finding out more about our plans for the ‘Bay Life Citizen Journalism Project’ can contact us .