Leicester’s city centre looked bright under the first warm sun in weeks, yet a walk with my camera revealed more than just busy streets and shoppers. While people filled cafés and shops, the lens also caught the realities of decline that many UK towns now share: boarded-up units, littered streets, people sleeping rough, and traffic endlessly circling with little sense of purpose. What began as an attempt to capture creative energy and positivity quickly shifted into a reminder of how hard it is to frame hope against such backdrops.
Today was the first properly warm and sunny day in Leicester after what felt like a long run of grey and overcast skies. I decided to walk through the city centre, camera in hand, something I’ve not done for some time. Normally, I rely on my phone for quick snaps, but today I wanted to be more deliberate, to capture images that might reflect the vibrancy and creativity of the city.
The centre was busy. Shoppers moved between the usual high street stores, queues formed outside fast food cafés, and the streets carried the hum of people making the most of the weather. I hoped to catch moments that told a positive story of Leicester as a creative and stimulating place. Yet as I walked, the lens pulled me towards a different reality. The signs of neglect and abandonment were hard to ignore. People sleeping in doorways, litter scattered across roads, boarded-up shops standing as reminders of decline, and traffic looping endlessly around the centre without purpose. These images spoke more loudly than anything else.
I stopped for a pot of tea and opened my book, a biography of Carl Jung. It was a quiet pause before heading home, where I sat in the yard trying to continue reading in the evening light. Later, I turned to practical matters, planning the long-awaited launch of Radio Lear. That meant considering licence applications and thinking through how I might generate and curate content that remains free of PRS and PPL copyright restrictions. It felt like a necessary grounding task, linking ideas of creative renewal with practical steps forward.
What I am realising is that the act of photography itself can become a way to lift my mood. By consciously choosing what to notice, and what to frame, I can search for signs of encouragement amidst the disintegration. The decay may be unavoidable, but the challenge is to find images that point towards the possibility of a fulfilling life in the UK. That is the task ahead: to use the camera not only as a recorder of decline, but also as a tool for changing focus, seeking glimpses of what still inspires.
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