New Faces, New Focus: Stories We Share is a collaborative touring exhibition by Open Eye Gallery, Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council, and Aberdeenshire Museums Service. Exploring themes of journeys, identity and belonging, the exhibition brings together new creative work, museum collections and archives to celebrate the stories of communities across Liverpool City Region, Armagh and Aberdeenshire.
Through collaboration with socially engaged artists, community members have reflected on migration, heritage and identity, to play with perceptions of self and others and create new connections through storytelling.
Work at the World of Glass has been made in collaboration with the Cafe Laziz community in St Helens. People who attend the space – which uses food and language to build bridges between refugees and local residents of the town – have worked with artist Abdullrhman Hassona to tell stories about journeys, identity and connection.
Since 2025, the group has taken part in regular sessions which created space to hold conversations and express their feelings and experiences through art. They learned photography skills, tried a range of creative activities and visited archives and collections as they developed ideas for the work they made together.
The core participants are people who had journeyed from different parts of the world and were now navigating a new life in the UK – many had never engaged with art before. Yet the creative space opened something up in them: a memory, a longing, a connection to places and people left behind.
This project is a celebration of this Cafe Laziz family. Inspired by a visit to the World of Glass museum in St Helens, group members started to use objects as a way of discussing identity and memory. First, they shared items which held meaning for themselves, later inviting others from the Cafe Laziz community to do the same and to tell a story linked to their object. While varied in detail, these have many overlaps, underscoring the many common concerns people have and the value of storytelling as a means to build connection.
The photographic work that grew from these sessions captures the objects as their owners hold them – hands visible, stories present. Alongside each image, participants speak in their own words about memory, about what it means to carry something that represents who you are and what matters most to you. Abdullrhman Hassona, Socially Engaged Photographer, St Helens, said: “What I love the most about the sessions is how it makes me bring people together and draw out the artistic side that's already there inside them. Many of the people I work with have been through really difficult times and I can see the creative space opens something up: a longing, a memory, a connection to places and times they've left behind.
“The biggest challenge has been the instability that comes with the asylum system. Most of the participants I work with are suddenly moved from one place to another with very little notice, their residency is tied to the system. I came up with an idea to start running an extra online session to continuous thread of support and connection.” A special thank you to Anoud Duwairi for supporting the development of this project, carrying out interviews with many people from Café Laziz and making a number of the photos. Other core group members were: Nour, Omar, Ulriche, Mahmoud, and Zakaria.
More New Faces, New Focus exhibitions in the Liverpool City Region can be visited at Open Eye Gallery (Liverpool, 17 September – 20 December), The Atkinson (Sefton, 17 September – 27 February), and Kirkby Gallery (Knowsley, 10 September – 20 December).
New Faces, New Focus is part of Going Places, an Art Fund programme where museums and galleries from all four nations share their collections in the largest collaborative touring project of its kind. Six museum networks spanning the breadth of the country have been co-creating 12 major touring exhibitions, taking the UK’s collections on an epic journey that will result in 40 unique exhibitions made with and for local communities. Going Places is a celebration of UK collections and the people who bring them to life.
Going Places is an Art Fund programme made possible with major support from The National Lottery Heritage Fund and The Julia Rausing Trust, with additional support from a generous group of trusts, foundations and individuals.
The World of Glass is a unique museum, gallery, and visitor attraction in St Helens that brings the story of glass to life. Through live demonstrations, exhibitions, collections, and community programmes, we celebrate the people, skills and innovations that have shaped our town and transformed the world through glass.
Café Laziz is a community business based in St Helens Minster that uses food and language classes to build connections between local people, refugees and asylum seekers.