Assignment 4 - research (1)

 'Love Albert Road' 

Tossing around a number of ideas for my fourth assignment I've decided to go for an area in Portsmouth called Albert Road. The assignment is called  'A Sense of Place'. The aim is to come up with six images on a specific location - an in depth treatment that demonstrates an appreciation of what spaces and buildings mean for the people who live in and among them.
I need a location that offers scope for me to explore and show the character of the place and the people with as much visual variety  as possible. And I need one close by as I guess I'll need to revisit more than once.

Love Albert Road facebook

Why Albert Road? Funny enough, it is an area of Portsmouth that I do not know that well  but where friends shop and work. So it gives me an opportunity to get to know a place , perhaps in a sense almost 'inbed ' myself over a few weeks ...

Located in central Southsea, this is an area described by some as 'exciting, Bohemian, contemporary, highly diverse and unique to Portsmouth. What makes this long road a possibility is that it has very few national or chain retail outlets. The majority of shops are independent traders,many of whom belong to ARTA ( Albert Road Traders Association ).The road also has its own Facebook page - 'Love Albert Road'. 

I wondered whether this mix of widely different and interesting range of shops might suggest some interesting opportunities to represent photographically how the people who live, work and use the road.

Add into this mix the Edwardian Kings Theatre dating from 1907, a music and comedy venue called the Wedgewood Rooms and a converted Victorian police station now operating as a pub, Albert Road sounds a real possibility.

There is though a more serious angle to explore - the current viability of local traders. For a short period  a very popular community street festival called Love Albert Road Day was held each year to promote the area and showcase the businesses located there. It was cancelled in 2010 after becoming too popular ( an estimated 100,000 attending in 2009 ) leading to prohibitive costs for policing, insurance, bus diversions etc..and hasn't been held since. 

So how is the road faring now?