The latest message from Crosby Plaza Cinema

ON Sunday, 10 May 2020, Crosby's Plaza Community Cinema's LED message read:- "In keeping with our support for key workers we pay a special THANK YOU to all Ambulance workers both at North West Ambulance Service and St John Ambulance you are amazing." This is the latest of the many messages the Cinema has been displaying over the Covid-19 Lockdown. For more information about the Cinema and also how you can help to support them, please visit:- PlazaCinema.Org.UK.

Life in lockdown:- a 'doortrait' of our times

TO raise funds for frontline NHS staff, photographer Andy Sillett has launched a national campaign:- doortraits4nhs. Photographers are offering free doorstep portraits:- "doortraits" for households during the Coronavirus lockdown. Sillett was inspired to launch the project after photographing frontline nurses at his local Hospital in Kingston upon Thames, Greater London. Sillett, a professional portrait photographer who has photographed numerous celebrities and royals, said:- "I photographed their emotional reactions during the weekly applause, and nurses holding up photos of colleagues who had died of Coronavirus. As an underemployed photographer, I tried to think of a way I could help them."

In return for their free photo, families are asked to make a discretionary donation to their local Hospital charity fundraising appeal. Photographers around the country are asked to submit:- 'doortraits' to a FB or flickr group (both called Doortraits). Sillett added that:- "We aim to eventually hold and exhibition and publish a book to raise more funds as well as provide a historic portrait of Britain during the Coronavirus pandemic. We are told that so far he has been inundated with requests from families, couples and individuals. People are really responding positively to the project. Social distancing guidelines are strictly maintained at all times and it's fun to see the variety of styles, ranging from lockdown casual to very bizarre costumes. People are delighted to have a record of how they are spending lockdown, and who they are spending it with, including their pets. It's a time in history like no other, and I'm trying to help capture that; as well as supporting the NHS."