Manchester-based artist and activist Lou Miller has collaborated with children from St Vincent de Paul Catholic Primary School in L1 to explore their vision of freedom. The resulting exhibition transforms the voices of the children, aged 8-11, into a series of textile banners, clay, and print works for adults and children alike. Miller’s practice has a strong collaborative focus, exploring themes of community, work, health, and social change. For We Dream of Our Freedom, the gallery will become a community studio, inviting audiences to share their own ideas of freedom and respond to the children’s vision.
We Dream of Our Freedom is part of Our Freedom: Then and Now, a UK-wide, locally-led arts and creative programme from Future Arts Centres, which is producing 60 new pieces of work reflecting on what ‘Our Freedom’ means to local people and their communities, following the 80th anniversary of VE/VJ Day.
The themes of the project resonate deeply with the Bluecoat’s own history. Not only was the building severely damaged during the Blitz, but for the last 100 years as an arts centre, the Bluecoat has championed creativity, and the freedom for artists, and everyone, to express themselves freely through their art.
Just Browsing is a group exhibition that allows audiences to browse tactile works of art. The exhibition borrows from the retail area around Bluecoat’s gallery to offer an experience of art that can be touched, worn and bought to take home. Artists in the exhibition use textiles, ceramics, and scent to connect with audiences in a variety of ways.
The exhibition features works and products from artists Bruce Asbestos, Ffion Evans, Garth Gratrix, Ivy Kalungi, Lou Miller, Sufea Mohamad Noor, Lewis Prosser, Ben Saunders, Daniel Sean Kelly, Chester Tenneson, and Carla Wright.
This exhibition is part of our season Felt, which features a programme of exhibitions and events that allow audiences to go beyond looking, but also to touch, wear, hold, and take part, and experience art in new, hands-on ways.
This exhibition brings together two artists exploring the complexities of human existence in the modern world. Through their artworks, Helen Anna Flanagan and Gavin Gayagoy navigate experiences of alienation through societal neglect and digital isolation. Both works were created during artist residencies at FACT and developed in Studio/Lab, our dedicated space for nurturing and supporting artistic practice.
Burnt Toast is a contemporary ghost story by Helen Anna Flanagan. The film resurrects legendary British comedian Tommy Cooper, who famously died mid-performance in 1984. Combining machine learning, analogue technologies, archival materials and a trained impersonator, the film follows a failed magician trapped in his decaying home. Unemployed and struggling with mental health and social isolation, he recites memories and anecdotes haunted by the past. Through his story, Helen asks us to question how hidden structures —such as class, culture and capitalism— can shape our lives, control our actions, and leave us feeling alienated.
Read the film transcription here – Burnt Toast (2025) Transcript.
Gavin Gayagoy’s work, Doomscroll_1, explores our relationship with smartphones, focusing on the sensation of ‘doom-scrolling’ – compulsively consuming digital content, often to the detriment of mental health. Doom-scrolling often leaves people feeling trapped in an endless loop as they mindlessly switch between apps, losing track of time. Gavin utilises game design to examine how digital environments impact our emotions and, ultimately, our understanding of ourselves. His work addresses the paradox of being online – that it holds the potential to thrill and fear, offering freedom while also holding us back.
Our homes are full of ghosts – from our memories to digital presences that haunt us from our screens, drawing us into their spectral worlds and slowly building a sense of disconnection from those physically around us. In this exhibition, both artists use the domestic setting as a way to think about the technologies, social conditions and societal structures that create this strange loneliness in being connected.
Feature Image: Gavin Gayagoy, Doomscroll_1 (2025). Photograph, courtesy the artist.
Presented as part of La Feria 2025, this exhibition showcases powerful and original works from Latin American artists based across the UK. Hosted in the elegant surroundings of the Stable Gallery at St George’s Hall, the exhibition is a unique opportunity to explore a broad spectrum of Latinx identity and creative expression.Featuring a diverse mix of mediums and approaches, highlighting the innovative and multifaceted nature of Latin American visual storytelling. With artists of heritage from across the Latin American continent, the exhibition reveals the multiplicity of lived experience within LatinX communities in the UK.
Nestled in Africa’s largest rainforest lies one of the many graves of the West’s efforts to control nations and nature – one of the world’s largest tropical agricultural research centres. Located on the banks of the Congo River, the Yangambi INERA Research Station was a booming scientific centre in its heyday. Today, it is a mix of jungle and ruin, where questions of knowledge, power over it, and access to it linger.
The Tree of Authenticity is a film by Tate collection artist Sammy Baloji. It recounts the story of two scientists, Paul Panda Farnana and Abiron Beirnaert, who worked at Yangambi between 1910 and 1950. Through their voices, the film looks at how colonialism harmed both people and the environment, and how that damage is still felt today.
Please note that this film screening is at FACT Liverpool.
Doors open at 17.00. The screening starts promptly at 17.30 and will be followed by a Q&A with the artist.
Biography
Artist Sammy Baloji (b. 1978, Lubumbashi, DR Congo) lives and works between Lubumbashi and Brussels. Since 2005 he has been exploring the memory and history of the Democratic Republic of Congo. His work is an ongoing investigation into the cultural, architectural and industrial heritage of the Katanga region, as well as questioning the impact of Belgian colonisation. His critical view of contemporary societies serves as a warning of the ways in which cultural clichés continue to shape collective memory, allowing social and political power games to continue to dictate human behaviour.
Film details
Spoken languages: French, Dutch
Subtitles: English
Length: 89 minutes
Completion: February 2025
Congo-Liverpool Routes Project
This event is part of a research and engagement project called Congo-Liverpool Routes developed through a collaboration between Tate Liverpool and the International Slavery Museum. The project engaged with museum collections and archival material that attest to the historical and present-day connections between Congo and Liverpool. It was developed with Congolese communities in Liverpool in rethinking the legacies of past exploitation while imagining roadmaps for different futures.
The Bluecoat Display Centre and Liverpool Irish Festival are delighted to announce our 2025 maker: Corinne Price; continuing our annual In The Window partnership. This event provides visitors with the chance to speak with the artist directly, about their work, general practice, ambitions and achievements. Centred on Corinne’s ceramics, which layer pigment into the clay itself, visitors will benefit from a guided question and answer session, being able to ask additional questions. Refreshments will be provided on arrival.
Friends of the Bluecoat Display Centre will receive a 10% discount on all purchases during the event.
Booking is needed. Please call +44(0) 151 709 4014, to book a place, or stop by the gallery to reserve a space with a member of staff. This event has a recommended donation price of £10 per ticket, providing a speaker fee for Corinne. See our exhibition listing for more details about Corinne.
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A private view to open a new show: Review at the Rathbone. Visitors can speak to the artists and meet the makers.
In 2024 Liverpool Irish Festival recruited several artists to work with citizen groups across Merseyside to create art works responding to Liverpool Irish Famine Trail sites. The resulting work can be seen in our app, but this exhibit provides an opportunity to see the original art works close-up, with some works on show for the very first time.
The Rathbone family – William IV (b.1757-d.1809), William VI (b.1819-d.1902) and Eleanor (b.1872-d.1946) especially – were key figures in the abolition of slavery, nursing and Ireland’s land league, harking back to their Irish connections. Being in an eponymously named gallery feels fitting.
Read more in the exhibition listing.
Image credit: Tadhg Devlin (detail only).
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Having partnered with the Liverpool Irish Festival, over years, to celebrate and share the work of Irish makers Bluecoat Display Centre hosts a retrospective of those artisans, including more that are seen through their annual portfolio of creatives. With silver, ceramics, glass, paintings, textiles and more besides, there is something to suit every budding creative, interest and price point. Whether you’re just looking for the sheer fun of it or searching for a unique gift, this is an exceptional display of contemporary talent in one of the longest serving display centres in the country.
A private view will be held at the Centre from 4.30pm-7.30pm on Thur 18 Sept 2025.
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As part of Liverpool Irish Festival 2025, the artist Corinne Price will display their incredible ceramics at Bluecoat Display Centre. A Northern Ireland based ceramicist, Corinne grew up under the open skies of the Dee Estuary in Northwest England.
Using pigmented porcelain, Corinne creates colourful and sculptural vessels that trace the time and movement involved in their making. Integrating pigment into the clay body, rather than applying it afterwards as a decorative surface, allows Corinne to effectively build in colour. Inspired by the expression of movement in water and air, sunrises and sunsets and the flow of energy in and around bodies and objects, ripples of colours become suggestive of rock strata, waves flames, or wisps of smoke. Drawn to the versatility and sometimes unpredictability of clay, embracing imperfection, Corinne’s work endeavours to infuse spaces with joy and optimism through the presence of colourful forms. ❤️??
In 2024 Liverpool Irish Festival recruited several artists to work with citizen groups across Merseyside to create art works responding to Liverpool Irish Famine Trail sites. The resulting work can be seen in our app (accessible via liverpoolirishfaminetrail.com), but this exhibit provides an opportunity to see the original art works close-up, with some works on show for the very first time.
Comprising films, embroidery, banners, cyanotypes, mixed media canvasses and rediscovered stories, the artworks help to connect people today with the legacy of The Great Hunger, considering its impact here on Merseyside.
Just around the corner from the Liverpool Irish Famine Trail’s plaque on Price Street, the gallery sits in Birkenhead where many of the Irish Famine poor arrived for refuge, just south of where tragedy struck The Sea Nymph and The Rambler in the Mersey in 1846.
The Rathbone family – William IV (b.1757-d.1809), William VI (b.1819-d.1902) and Eleanor (b.1872-d.1946) especially – were key figures in the abolition of slavery, nursing and Ireland’s land league, reflecting their Irish connections. Being in an eponymously named gallery, therefore, feels fitting.
The work was funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund and is presented here in partnership with the Rathbone Ceramic Studio and Gallery. The Festival would like to thank Tadhg Devlin, Lydia O’Hara and Nicola McGovern for their efforts – over and above the call of their original commissions – and the many individuals that contributed to the art works on show, especially Jean Maskell and Richard Orritt who worked hard to get the exhibition on show.
Visitors to the exhibit might also be interested in the Festival’s new book, which documents some of this work — Reveal — available from our online shop: www.liverpoolirishfestival.com/shop
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