Event type: Exhibition

 

New Faces, New Focus: Stories We Share is a collaborative touring exhibition bringing together new creative work by artists and community participants alongside objects and artworks from three museums collections across the UK. 

Created by Open Eye Gallery in partnership with Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Council and Aberdeenshire Council’s Museums Service, the exhibition is part of Art Fund’s Going Places programme – a series of 12 exhibitions touring the UK, created by museums working together to share and celebrate their collections in collaboration with local communities.

Developed through residencies in Liverpool City Region, Armagh and Aberdeenshire, the exhibition explores the theme of journeys, identity and home through the voices of local communities whose stories have not always been represented in museum collections – including those with lived experience of migration and displacement.

In Liverpool City Region, three socially engaged photographers have worked with communities to create new work inspired by local collections and participants’ own experiences; Anoosh Ariamehr worked with communities in Knowsley, Nina Karetska with displaced Ukrainian community in Sefton, and Abdullrhman Hassona with communities in St Helen’s supported by Cafe Laziz. Their projects have been developed in partnership with Kirkby Gallery (Knowsley), The Atkinson (Sefton), and The World of Glass (St Helen’s), where the work will also be exhibited. 

In Armagh, artists Rosalind Lowery and Catherine Willis, alongside mentee artists Maria McStay and Fionnula O’Gorman, worked with Polish, Ukrainian, Syrian, and Lithuanian communities. Together with Museums’ Curator Sean Barden, they explored the collection and selected objects to co-create artistic responses that reflect participants’ life journeys. Everyday objects have been interpreted in fresh and thoughtful ways, revealing new meanings through the eyes of the participants.

In Aberdeenshire, socially engaged photographer Nicole Gildea has engaged newly formed Aberdeenshire communities with heritage collections and photography. With additional support from mentee photographer Max Creamer, residents across the shire have co-created a body of new photographic work inspired by the diverse historic collections managed by Aberdeenshire Council’s Museums Service. 

Across all three locations, participants have worked alongside artists, curators and museum teams to explore the theme of journeys – from migration and exile to the milestones, traditions and celebrations that shape our lives – creating new work inspired by museum collections and their own experiences of place, identity and home.

For example, in Armagh, everyday objects from the museum collection sparked memories of home and family. A Harnan stand, traditionally used for toasting oatcakes, inspired participants to create their own stand to display artworks reflecting their identities and experiences. Through sewing, sculpture and writing, they explored themes of home, heritage and womanhood, creating pieces including a silk doll and delicate petticoat.

Meanwhile in Aberdeenshire, participants have used photography as a tool to explore what it means to make your home in a new place, using historic collections to consider how the movement of people, ideas and objects have made this North East corner of Scotland what it is today. Objects selected by participants hold strong cultural resonances and have brought new voices to existing Aberdeenshire collections. For example, participants felt strong links with local agricultural objects, such as an ornamental ‘bothy craft’ horse painting. Additionally, the group found links with a photograph album produced by local photographer Fred Bremner, documenting his journey across Kashmir at the turn of the 20th century, at just 19 years of age.    

At its heart, New Faces New Focus enables communities to tell their own stories through a process of co-creation and co-curation, and explore how these stories relate to local histories, collections and archives.

New Faces, New Focus runs from 18 September to 20 December 2026 at Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, with related displays taking place at The Atkinson, Kirkby Gallery and The World of Glass.

Following its display in Liverpool, New Faces New Focus: Stories We Share will tour to Armagh County Museum (17 January – 5 May 2027) and Aberdeenshire Farming Museum (June – September 2027).

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. Art Fund is continuing to fundraise to reach the full potential of the programme and make the biggest impact for museums and visitors across the UK.

Meanwhile, our Gallery 3 (upstairs) will show Next Up-2026 (18 September – 1 November) and Fractured Landscapes And How We Heal (6 November – 30 November).

 

Launch: 17 September / 6–8pm / Open Eye Gallery / free, RSVP
Next Up is an annual graduate exhibition of work from the MA in Socially Engaged Photography course, a joint programme Open Eye Gallery has run with the University of Salford since 2018. 

This year, it features work by four early-career photographers: Yaqeen Amir, Ella Horniman, Jack Smith, and Helen Constantinou (Contemporary Fine Art MA) in partnership with Homotopia.
Tadhgh Devlin, Open Eye Gallery’s Head of social practice, said: “This is a great opportunity for the students to show their work as a culmination of their MA course in Socially Engaged Photography at Salford University. Their projects highlight certain aspects of society today that can often be overlooked, and hopefully this exhibition acts as a springboard for future opportunities for all involved.”
The Gathering: Stop the Clause by Helen Constantinou, in partnership with Homotopia

This work brings together twelve separate photographs taken at the beginning of the anti-Section 28 protest march on 30 April 1988. By combining these individual frames into a single image, the work resists the fragmentation of memory and reasserts a moment of collective resistance against legislation rooted in prejudice. Revisiting these photographs is not simply an act of looking back, but a reminder of the profound and lasting consequences that suppression and censorship have on individuals, communities, and society. Section 28 was born from fear, ignorance, and hostility, seeking to erase LGBTQI+ lives from public visibility and cultural discourse.

Today, these images resonate with renewed urgency. The rhetoric employed by contemporary far-right political movements echoes many of the narratives that underpinned Section 28, once again questioning the legitimacy and visibility of LGBTQI+ people and communities. By returning to this moment of protest, the work insists that these histories are not closed chapters but ongoing conversations, reminding us that visibility itself can be an act of resistance and that remembering is inseparable from the struggle against erasure.

Without A Map: A Journey of Displacement, Identity, and Belonging by Yaqeen Amir

This work brings together photography, personal memory, and participant contributions to explore how identity is preserved and reshaped through displacement. Rather than focusing only on outcomes, the portfolio traces the process — the choices, challenges, and reflections that shaped the work. It highlights the use of self-portraiture, symbolic objects, and the involvement of participants, showing how these elements gradually came together.

Print’s Not Dead by Ella Horniman

The work is based around the printed publications: ‘Print’s Not Dead’ and ‘1922.’ 

For ‘1922’ the artist ran the workshops with and for people of North Manchester who are underrepresented in Manchester’s creative success story and lack access to creative opportunities which is the same ethos as the magazine. 

‘Print’s Not Dead’ is a collaborative zine made across different workshops in North Manchester. Participants were invited to attend sessions where they got a chance to collage and make moodboards, do some creative writing and have a go at both film and digital photography while creating their own personal magazine concepts. They talked about class, identity, neurodivergence and creativity – and most of all they had a laugh. 

Anti-Charity by Jack Smith

A series based on the environment, which focuses on dumping and fly tipping around the North West, giving a dystopian but hopefully fun look at the issue and to encourage discussion amongst the audience.  

 
About the artists
 

Helen Constantinou. Working with photography as both image and material, Helen Constantinou explores the cyclical nature of history and the ways the past resurfaces in the present. Drawing from a 40-year personal archive, they transform photographs through varied materials and processes, creating works that invite viewers to reconsider what photography is, what it remembers, and how it shapes our understanding of the world.

Yaqeen Amir is a socially engaged photographer based in the UK, who recently completed an MA in Socially Engaged Photography at the University of Salford. Her work explores themes of displacement, identity, memory, and belonging, drawing on her own lived experience as a refugee. Through self portraiture, personal objects, and interviews, she creates work that challenges stereotypes and encourages dialogue about migration, culture, and resilience. 

Ella Horniman is  a photographer and writer based in North Manchester and have recently completed her MA in Socially Engaged Photography.Her work explores class, identity and the barriers working class creatives face, inspired by her own lived experience of living in poverty and returning to creativity as an adult carer. Through photography, creative writing and her self-published independent magazine 1922, she creates work intended to platform underrepresented artists, their work and their stories. She is  heavily inspired by the resilience, innovation and strength of working class communities. 

Jack Smith is a photographer based in Wigan, who focuses on the environment, especially along the Leeds and Liverpool canal. With the work they want to raise awareness of issues surrounding the environment, in a fun and interactive way.