When I arrived at College in 1984 I'd been in the UK Three months.

I was Sixteen and knew nothing about the UK; nothing except for an idyllic life in Malawi growing up in an expatriate life of tennis courts, great friends and private pools, sunshine and a boring school.
I knew nothing about life.
Phil Shallcross was on the streets of Stoke-On-Trent photographing the real beginning of the post-industrial decline in The Six Towns.
Slum clearances: derelict pot banks, and pit heads rising above the terraced houses of its employees were the subjects he was processing in the darkroom labs of Newcastle-Under-Lyme College under the tutelage of 'Darkroom Dave' Heath... A tutor we shared in our separate career choices. When Dave knew you had the instinct for photography, he pushed you to keep shooting and keep processing, to keep looking for the story that every photograph needs to make it live it's own life. 'The photograph has to the tell the story' was his mantra.

In part autobiographical, and part graphic novel Phil and I merge imagery ... a collaboration of our respective hunting of these Stoke-On-Trent streets for the material that makes our work ..