The Team
The People’s Picture is delivering Our River for Luton Council with support from the European Regional Development Fund’s Welcome Back Fund and The Mall Luton. It helps meet the Luton 2020-2040 Transforming Lives through Arts, Culture and Heritage goal and the town’s strategy for arts, culture and creative industries 2017-2027.

The People's Picture
The People’s Picture is a photography and design studio founded by British artist Helen Marshall, that has evolved into a small studio of talented artists, technologists and designers. As an artist-led studio practice, we create photo mosaic artworks and installations at the leading edge of design and technology.
Pictures are powerful. People connect with pictures. People share their memories, dreams and celebrate through pictures. We are experts in visual storytelling, digital photo mosaics and bringing communities together to create, celebrate and own their unique legacy.

Luton Council
Luton Council’s vision is for Luton to be a healthy, fair and sustainable town, where everyone can thrive and no-one has to live in poverty. This is a truly ambitious vision for Luton that builds on our strengths and key assets as a town as well as our shared values. Together, we will build on the success of recent years and overcome the challenges we face today to build a healthier, fairer and more sustainable town.

June Essex
Community Photographer & Participation Officer
June Essex is a professional photographer with a lifetime of experience capturing and creating images for press, PR, corporate events, festivals and weddings, photographing everything from Prime Ministers to pop idols and all manner of weird and wonderful things in between. Her lifelong enthusiasm for all things photographic was sparked as a teenager working as a darkroom assistant at a local newspaper, captivated by the magical process of black and white printing, she eventually trained as a press photographer and gained National Council for the Training of Journalists qualifications.
June, who has lived in Luton for more than 30 years, is now working as a freelancer having navigated the dramatic change from analogue to digital photography and darkroom to desktop processing. She needs no excuse to talk about photography and hopes that sharing her knowledge will help to inspire new talent to flourish!

Maureen Weekes
Community Participation Coordinator
Maureen Weekes has years of experience working on a freelance basis within community development and engagement. She has worked across various sectors of the community in roles that include project management and workshop facilitation for organisations, including a charitable Trust in Luton, a South West London Borough and an East London based housing provider. As a programme leader over the summer for the National Citizen Service, she most enjoyed supporting a group of 60 young people and six mentors to develop and engage in social action projects that directly helped organisations such as Age UK, local animal shelters and fundraising initiatives for local charities.
Maureen is also the director of a boutique publishing company called EIV Publishing Ltd, which she hopes will become part of a larger media enterprise. She stands by a quote from Plato that says, ‘those that tell the stories, rule society.’ She aspires to change some of the narratives in society one story at a time. Maureen also lends her talents to undertaking writing projects on a freelance basis. She is also a poet, a poetry event host and a singer and songwriter.