Everyday Heroes

Taking place across Southbank Centre, Everyday Heroes is an outdoor exhibition that celebrates the contributions that key workers and frontline staff have made during the pandemic.

It features more than 40 portraits of some of the entirely ordinary but also utterly remarkable people – among them health workers, bus drivers, faith workers and shop assistants – who have helped to keep this country going during the crisis, often working in extremely challenging circumstances and putting their own personal safety at risk. 

Many of the contributing artists and writers have chosen to portray family members, friends, or people in their local communities. Often disarmingly intimate, each portrait – whether originally rendered in paint, charcoal, photography, collage, or with language – is vividly imaginative and emotionally compelling in its own way. 

Together, they highlight the sheer scale of the collective response to this crisis, and the many different ways that people across the country have come together to support one another, and find a way through it.

The Everyday Heroes exhibition was made possible through a generous donation which covered all costs.

Michael Armitage, Lydia Blakeley, Jeremy Deller, Laura Grace Ford, Mahtab Hussain, Evan Ifekoya, Matthew Krishanu, Ryan Mosley, Janette Parris, Alessandro Raho, Silvia Rosi, Benjamin Senior, Juergen Teller, Caroline Walker and Barbara Walker.

Romalyn Ante, Raymond Antrobus, Simon Armitage, Jackie Kay, Vanessa Kisuule and Roger Robinson.