#37: Joanne Coates - Documentary Photographer

“The projects you do best are the ones that you love” Joanne Coates is a documentary photographer, and the founder of Lens Think - a social enterprise set up to promote diversity in the creative arts. Lens Think put on socials and pop up exhibitions in locations all around Yorkshire, and help share artist opportunities. In Joanne’s work as a photographer she is interested in working life and class inequality, which is represented in her diverse portfolio of personal and commissioned work. She has been published by the BBC, Vice, The Telegraph and The Guardian, and has had her approach to photography described as democratic and poetic. In this episode we discuss how photography can be used as a medium to highlight under represented issues, the social responsibility artists have when saying they are giving people a voice, and the need for a more representative generation of artists to become the creative future of tomorrow.