This year’s festival starts with the Urban Photographers Association (UPA) annual artist’s lecture from the internationally acclaimed photographic artist Roger Ballen at Tate Britain on Friday 10 November, followed by a wine reception and festival launch event.

The following day (Saturday 11 November) sees the annual Urban Encounters conference also at Tate Britain. Other festival events include: a symposium, Urban Photography: Making, Researching, Teaching at The Photographers’ Gallery; a masterclass with Francesca Catastini in association with The Mango Lab, a seminar with London Independent Photography (LIP), a workshops and walks day (we’re calling it ‘Jam-Packed Sunday’ because it’s, well, jam-packed with stuff), a UPA portfolio review and the Urban Photo Village, all exploring this year’s theme ofCartographies.

At the Tate Britain Urban Encounters conference on Saturday, we have a wide range of international artists and theorists whose work is concerned with mapping contemporary city spaces. Some speakers focus on history and memory, others discuss the politics of representation and what ‘counts as knowledge’. This event will rethink what is meant by ‘critical urbanism’ against a backdrop of visual evocation and image-making. The conference will be of interest to artists, photographers, urbanists, social researchers, architects and planners, and those concerned with cultural activism. Confirmed speakers include: Edward Hillel, Layla Curtis, Ofri Cnaani, Claire Holdsworth, Michelle Henning, Linda Lai, Jamila Cooper and Abbas Nokhasteh. Urban Encounters is run in partnership with UPA, Openvizor, Goldsmiths, University of London, University of West London, Kingston and Falmouth Universities.

Finalists and winners of this year’s UrbanPhotoFest Open competition will be announced at the Friday Tate reception. The response to last year’s competition theme of (re:)Thinking the Street, was very strong, and the variety of creative approaches was outstanding with 20 finalists selected from over 500 entries. Gill Golding, our competition organizer has already started work on this year’s UPF Open, so look out for details on our news, blog, Twitter and Facebook pages.

The Urban Photo Village is curated by photographer and architect Stefano Carnelli and has eleven exhibitions all within walking distance of each other, so once you’re in the area, it’s going to be well worth making some time to visit the shows. Edward Hillel, the festival artist shows his work Thinking Machine at MMX Gallery, UPA has its annual members’ exhibition Charting the Invisible at the APT Gallery, and graduates from Goldsmiths’ MA Photography and Urban Cultures exhibit The Urban Condition at Lewisham Art House.

We very much look forward to seeing you at this year’s UrbanPhotoFest, and, as in the past, we expect events to be very well attended and booked-out, so please plan your festival schedule to make sure that you don’t miss out on some great workshops, seminars, walks, master-class, conference, symposium, social events and our not-to-be missed Urban Photo Village.