Just over 12 months ago one of the UK’s best-known street photographers was joined by hundreds of amatuer photographers in a unique social experiment to capture the spirit of some of the UK’s biggest cities in 24 hours.

Building a visual library of what Manchester, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Liverpool and Newcastle looked like in that day in history, the A Day In The Life experiment compiled hundreds of images of the people and places that made those bustling cities tick – from buskers to office workers, students, skateboarders, OAPs, tourists, and many more.

Today that library provides a stark reminder of what our cities looked like, before lockdown. View the ‘before’ images of these cities, available for free use, here:

•  Manchester images (from 1st April 2017): Click here to view the album

•  Bristol images (from 19th August 2017): Click here to view the album

•  Glasgow images (from 7th April 2018): Click here to view the album 

•  Liverpool images (from 28th October 2018): Click here to view the album 

•  Newcastle images (from 23rd March 2019): Click here to view the album 

•  Cardiff images (from 28th September 2019): Click here to view the album

The experiment has huge poignance today. Describing why it was created in the first place, event organiser, Ian Cowley of Cartridge Save, explained: “There project was created because we recognised the potential to capture some amazing images, pictures that would last for years to come as a snapshot of the city on that particular day. 

“Life is fast, nowhere more so than in cities. That’s what made A Day In The Life so appealing – we were taking moments in time and freezing them. Little did we imagine that only a few months later, life in cities would be put on pause.”