MATTHEW Pontin is creative director and lead photograph projects at Fotonow CIC, a media social enterprise company based at Royal William Yard in Plymouth which specialises in exploring visual culture as a means to stimulate social change.

Based in Plymouth since 2010, the company’s ethos is to use the power of creative media to enable people’s voices to be heard and its creative team brings together people with expertise in education, community development and media production.

Mr Pontin explained that Fotonow’s involvement in the Tamar Bridge 60th anniversary celebrations included working with young people and youth groups in photography projects helping to demonstrate the heritage and importance of the Tamar Bridge, and recording oral history about the bridge in the form of speaking to people who were involved in building the giant structure in the late 1950s and early 60s. These recorded stories can be accessed via the Tamar Crossings website via the SoundCloud platform, as can pictures of the photography displays created in the youth project at https://www.tamarcrossings.org.uk/tamar-bridge-60th-anniversary/

As well as the challenges of building the bridge, he said that one thing that really came across is how the building of the bridge changed life in Saltash overnight – something that is perhaps hard for us to understand nowadays as we take the bridge so much for granted.

He said he believed the toll of £2 for crossing in a car was unbelievably good value when you think about it, and he said visiting the Bridging the Tamar heritage centre and walking across the bridge to look at the structure of it and the views from it made a nice afternoon out for families and was something he did sometimes with his children.