The battle to make Grimsby great again

Grimbarians feel isolated many times over: from London, from Britain and from the fishing industry that once opened it to the world. Yet among the concern, Tim Burrows finds new energy. All images by Christopher Thomond

Zoe Moore grew up in Grimsby, not far from her family's chip shop. She visited the docks every day with her mum to buy the fish they would later skin, fillet and fry. Now Moore is a manager for Young's Seafood, which supplies the breaded cod found in the freezers of corner shops countrywide; she attended last year's carnival dressed as a fish finger. The twentysomething is a Grimbarian made good, but she's not celebrating. Something is wrong in her town.

"Mum's had CCTV [installed] on her house," says Moore. "People try to steal cars on her street. They even cut the brake lines [of her car] and put fireworks in it. There have been stabbings. It's awful."

This community was built around an industry that doesn't exist any more

If a local person can say, 'I designed that,' you are a long way to breaking the back of the chip on their shoulder

If you come to Grimsby, you come for a reason

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Some consultants told us of all the wonderful plans for Grimsby. Everybody got very excited about it. Nothing happened

There is great concern, but great hope as well

I don't know whether Grimsby has an audience for critical art yet, but you don't until you've tried

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