Miniclick - Jim Stephenson
Miniclick Jim Stephenson Photography organisation Miniclick curates free talks and discussions, hosts participatory events, workshops and exhibitions and publishes affordable photography books and ‘zines with the remit of being open and accessible to all. Miniclick experiments with different ways of looking at images and focuses on stories and ideas instead of kit and cameras. Curated by Jim Stephenson, Lou Miller, Bryony Good, Roz Doherty, Lauren Holder, Marta Benavides, Livia Smith, Kristina Salgvik and Joe Conway, there are bases in Brighton, London and Leeds. A series of Miniclick talks at RPS HQ, Bristol began in July, curated by Jack Latham and Sadie Catt. For this edition of DM, Gerry Phillipson LRPS interviewed Miniclick founder Jim Stephenson. Images courtesy of Miniclick. When you started Miniclick who was it you wanted to reach out to and why? We formally started Miniclick in Sept 2010, but a few months earlier I’d arranged a phototalk with an organisation called Design Brighton, who I was working with at the time. What interested me was the broad audience we got for the talk. As it was part of a series of talks on art and design, we didn’t just get photographers and because the talk was informal and not kit based, everyone was able to take something away from it. This was really exciting. I didn’t have a formal photography education, so I suppose I’d been slightly intimated by the more academic photography lectures I’d paid to see up to that point, and the ones that focused on technique and cameras didn’t interest me that much. So, off the back of that test run, I thought there was a space for these more informal talks that focused on stories and I hoped they’d appeal to a really broad audience, not exclusively photographers. They’re also free, so anyone can come along. The idea was to create a series of events with as few barriers to attendance as possible. 32
