Photography workshops begin!

The Cafe Art Royal Photographic Society Mentoring Group ramps up a notch this year following a grant from Santander. Here the group meets for the first time at the National Theatre on Saturday afternoon. Photo: John Kelly.

Cafe Art got it's very first grant recently and we're proud to say it's for the RPS Mentoring Group that meets up on weekends to learn the basics of digital photography!

Thank you Santander Foundation! We are going to use the £5,000 to develop the photography mentoring group run by Royal Photographic Society (RPS) volunteers Neil Cordell and Mo Greig. On Saturday we had the first meeting at the National Theatre and we are very appreciative of the team of volunteers from The RPS!

After three years of the mentoring group being run on a shoestring budget, we were able to purchase a laptop to teach photo editing skills and we will have our first exhibition.

The group was started in 2015 by Neil Cordell. This year the group will have a series of sessions looking at all aspects of digital photography, ending in an exhibition in September.

Last year the Qbic Hotel commissioned the group to take photos of East London for the hotel's rooms, resulting in 14 photos being chosen for every room in the hotel.

The cheque presentation at Spitalfields Market. From left to right: Richard Smith Manager from UCL Branch, Mo Grieg from The Royal Photographic Society​, Kaniz Hussain, Tottenham Court Road Branch Manager, Neil Cordell who runs the Cafe Art Royal Photographic Society Mentoring Group, Ray of Light who is a past winner of the MyLondon contest and judge in last year’s contest and Paul Ryan, director of Cafe Art.