From the series Jaywick Sands Happy Club © David J Shaw.
The photographer’s ongoing project Jaywick Sands Happy Club celebrates the much-maligned community spirit of the Essex village of Jaywick
When David J Shaw first arrived in Jaywick in January 2025, he was anxious. Located in Clacton, the constituency of Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, the village had recently been designated England’s “most deprived neighbourhood” for the fourth consecutive year. The headlines attracted troughs of unwanted attention, from nosey journalists poking around for stories, to YouTubers looking for cheap clips.
Shaw approached the village warily, his camera tucked under his arm. “I wasn’t comfortable,” he remembers. “At that point I didn’t really want to work there, because I didn’t want to make a project about deprivation.” He had walked down the high street and taken one photograph of fly-tipped furniture when Robbo, a retired youth worker of around 60, struck up a conversation off the back of Shaw’s Charlton Athletic FC shirt. “He said to me, ‘Don’t worry about what you read about Jaywick. I run a karaoke party, why don’t you come and have a look?’.”
“Everyone was proud of Jaywick, and proud of being from there. Quite quickly my idea of the place completely changed” – David J Shaw
When Shaw turned up at the Broadway Club a few weeks later, Robbo announced his arrival over the speakers with a wink: “That’s Dave, he’s a journalist, he’s a Charlton fan, don’t beat him up.” Shaw was immediately welcomed by a lively, tight-knit community, and by the end of the night had a long list of markets, youth clubs and birthday parties to photograph. “Everyone was proud of Jaywick, and proud of being from there,” he says. “Quite quickly my idea of the place completely changed.”
Shaw lives around two hours away, so he bought a converted van that he drove up and slept in every week for three-to-five nights at a time. He quickly built relationships, slowly piecing together a story about the community. He captured young women at a winter dance hosted by Sonny’s Army, a charity that supports children with long-term illness, and made portraits of local personalities such as community activist Danny Sloggett and Linda McGarry, who used to be a regular on TV show Gogglebox. According to Shaw, many residents compare the community spirit in Jaywick to that of the East End decades ago.
Built in the 1930s, the village was originally a holiday destination for Londoners, but when the Butlin’s resort closed in the 1980s, many jobs disappeared with it. Today Jaywick has a population of about 5000, with 62 per cent living on some form of government benefit – a statistic that in part designated it ‘most deprived’. Earlier this year, Shaw spent nine days in Jaywick on assignment for Der Spiegel with a German journalist who pointed out that labelling a place ‘most deprived’ can vilify it.
Shaw, who has an MA in photojournalism and documentary photography from London College of Communication, is now working on a book, Jaywick Sands Happy Club, which will be published with Dewi Lewis Publishing. He is also setting up a programme to encourage young people in Jaywick to think about representation. “When I look back at that first picture of the fly-tipped furniture, I realise how problematic it is,” says Shaw. All of this is not to diminish the social issues in Jaywick, he adds, but it is to reach for more nuanced narratives: “They say Jaywick is deprived because there isn’t loads of money flying around. But it’s rich in community.”
davidjshaw.com https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2055916793/jaywick-sands-happy-club-photography-book
