Exhibitions

Shifting Horizons @ Digital Window Gallery

27 March - 31 March 2024

PLATFORM: ISSUE 6

26 March 2024

Events

Saturday Town: Launch Event

10 April 2024

Exhibitions

Coming Soon: Saturday Town

11 April - 18 May 2024

Past Events

PLATFORM: ZINE LAUNCH EVENT

21 March 2024

Home. Ukrainian Photography, UK Words: Tour

4 March - 28 February 2025

Exhibitions

Home: Ukrainian Photography, UK Words @ New Adelphi

4 March - 8 March 2024

Past Events

CREATIVE SOCIAL: IN THE ABSENCE OF FORMAL GROUND

2 March 2024

Exhibitions

We Feed The UK @ Exterior Walls

8 February - 31 March 2024

Past Events

Contrail Cirrus: the impact of aviation on climate change

7 March 2024

Exhibitions

Tree Story @ Liverpool ONE

16 February - 1 May 2024

Open Source #27: Saffron Lily – In The Absence of Formal Ground @ Digital Window Gallery

6 February - 31 March 2024

Past Events

Contemporary Photography from Ukraine: Symposium @University of Salford

4 March - 5 March 2024

Past Events

Is Anybody Listening? Symposium: Commissioning and Collecting Socially Engaged Photography

29 February 2024

Past Events

Different approaches: Artists working with scientists

15 February 2024

Events

LOOK Climate Lab 2024: All Events

18 January 2024

Exhibitions

Diesel & Dust @ Digital Window Gallery

18 January - 31 March 2024

Events

Tree Walks Of Sefton Park with Andrea Ku

21 January 2024

Past Events

Artists Remake the World by Vid Simoniti: Book Launch

31 January 2024

Past Events

Shift Liverpool Open Meeting

6 February 2024

Past Events

We Feed The UK Launch and LOOK Climate Lab 2024 Celebration

8 February 2024

Past Events

Cyanotype workshop with Melanie King

17 February 2024

Past Events

End of Empire: artist talk and discussion

22 February 2024

Past Events

Book Launch: What The Mine Gives, The Mine Takes

24 February 2024

Past Events

Local ecology in the post-industrial era: open discussion

14 March 2024

Past Events

Waterlands: creative writing workshop

23 March 2024

Past Events

Plant a seed. Seed sow and in conversation with Plot2Plate

16 March 2024

Past Events

Erosion: panel discussion

9 March 2024

Past Events

Waterlands: an evening of poetry and photographs

23 March 2024

Events

Force For Nature Exhibition

27 March - 28 March 2024

Voices of Nature: Interactive Performances

28 March 2024

Past Events

Sum of All Parts: Symposium

27 February 2024

Exhibitions Main Exhibition

LOOK Climate Lab 2024

18 January - 31 March 2024

Past Events

MA Socially engaged photography Open Day event

1 February 2023

Past Events

Tish: Special screening and Q&A

13 December 2023

Past Events

Book Launch: A Look At A New Perspective

23 November 2023

Events

Community workshops @ Ellesmere Port Library

6 November - 5 February 2024

Past Events

Book Launch: ‘544m’ By Kevin Crooks

30 November 2023

Past Exhibitions

Bernice Mulenga @ Open Eye Gallery Atrium Space

17 November - 17 December 2023

Past Events

Bernice Mulenga: Artist Talk

18 November 2023

Past Exhibitions

Local Roots @ The Atkinson

14 October 2023

Exhibitions

Community @ Ellesmere Port Library

26 October - 11 April 2024

Past Events

Critique Surgery for Socially Engaged Photographers

6 November 2023

Past Events

Deeds Not Words: panel discussion

12 October 2023

Past Exhibitions

Deeds Not Words @ Atrium Space

3 October - 22 October 2023

Ode To Our Space @ Digital Window Gallery

29 September - 23 December 2023

A Look At A New Perspective @ Digital Window Gallery

29 September - 23 December 2023

Past Events

Book Launch: Crow Dark Dawn

19 October 2023

Past Events

Exhibition Launch: A Place of Our Own

28 September 2023

Reflections

12 September - 22 December 2023

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Open Eye Gallery, Collected Possibilities, 2016 © Ted Oonk
Open Eye Gallery, Collected Possibilities, 2016 © Ted Oonk
Open Eye Gallery, Collected Possibilities, 2016 © Ted Oonk
Open Eye Gallery, Collected Possibilities, 2016 © Ted Oonk
Open Eye Gallery, Collected Possibilities, 2016 © Ted Oonk
Open Eye Gallery, Collected Possibilities, 2016 © Ted Oonk
Open Eye Gallery, Collected Possibilities, 2016 © Ted Oonk
Open Eye Gallery, Collected Possibilities, 2016 © Ted Oonk

Maria Percival: Arts Council England

Open Eye Gallery was delighted to welcome Maria Percival (Relationship Manager, North, Arts Council England) to speak during the launch of Collected Possibilities and Pieces of Us.

Collected Possibilities presents a curated exhibition showcasing work from final year students of Hugh Baird University Centre. This exhibition comes out of an ongoing collaboration with the BA (Hons) Digital Imaging and Photography course, whereby dialogue between Open Eye Gallery and the students has provided critical feedback and suggested creative context on these final major projects.

Throughout our recent Open 2: Pieces of You exhibition, four emerging artists provided a series of workshops to four schools across the Wirral and Liverpool. The workshops were supported by the Curious Minds organisation and it’s Specialist Leaders in Cultural Education (SLiCE) programme. We have produced a video which captures the essence of the programme and the young people’s experiences of the workshops, titled Pieces of Us, which is displayed on our new Digital Window Gallery.

Maria Percival: Opening speech

Arts Council England’s role is to champion, develop and invest in arts and culture in England. Our Mission is ‘Great art and culture for everyone’. We support the arts, museums and libraries – from theatre to digital art, reading to dance, music to literature, and crafts to collections. But we’re about much more than just funding. We have a development role, which means we give advice and promote partnership. And through this we hope to develop a thriving arts ecology that offers everybody the chance to enjoy, participate and create. Our mission can be distilled into two core goals: we want excellent arts and culture to thrive, and we want as many people as possible to engage with it. Children and young people are at the heart of what we do. We want to help release their talent, to give them the chance to work with the best professional artists – and to show them routes to work in one of the wide range of careers in the creative industries, if they wish. Above all, we want the arts to enrich their lives – whether as artists, or as audiences. And we believe that there should be no barriers to talent.

And this goes further – Arts Council England’s promise is to support people to enjoy a learning continuum in arts and culture and high quality life experiences from early years to entering the world of work and beyond. To this end we deliver, or support others to deliver, a range of national schemes for children and young people, including Bridge organisations – we invest £10 million a year in 10 Bridge organisations who play a vital role in building local cultural alliances, increasing provision for children and young people, and who collectively now work with more than 7000 schools. We also engage with other development activity which overlaps and complements this, for instance our talent development work and which focuses on supporting artists at all career stages. And also on developing centres of regional excellence outside of London where talent can thrive.

Building partnerships between FE/HE and arts and cultural organisations offer perhaps the most useful place to develop formal and informal pathways for learning. Recognising this ACE has committed through its corporate plan to build effective partnerships with further and higher education institutions to ensure that artistic talent and workforce diversity is being developed and nurtured and to encourage more FE/HEs to work closely with arts and cultural organisations to support the arts and culture ecology in their localities.

And there are strong contextual reasons for this, the down-grading of the arts throughout the education system, the threat to practice based courses from: the introduction of tuition fees, also opportunities such as the education sector’s adoption of public engagement strategies and the cultural shift implied within the HEI Research Excellence Framework which emphasises impact of research beyond the academic sphere.

In the North there is and has been for a while a very strong and distinctive approach. The number and strength of these partnerships here has led to the development, with Arts Council support of, Culture Forum North – an open network of alliances between Higher Education and the Arts across the North and which acts as a platform through which this work can be championed, shared and developed to enable impact beyond individual partnerships – regionally and nationally.

Through 2016 Forum partners are working together on three key agendas: Research, civic, talent. All of which chime with Arts Council’s strategic priorities. And for the partners provide a key opportunity to look at what the civic role of each is in a city and how they can create an increased civic impact by working together.

As Juan Cruz (former Director of Liverpool School of Art and Design, LJMU) has said:

‘[So] we recognise in the university and in arts organisations that our success is intimately tied to the success of the city, and that we all effectively play for the city, delivering high quality art experience and education that also contributes to the cities’ broader aims and agendas.’

Specific examples of exemplary partnerships in the North, include:

  1. LJMU’s model of embedded lecturer posts based in arts organisations, at Tate Liverpool, Liverpool Biennial and FACT
  1. Northumbria University’s embedded staff and programme development with the Baltic in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in particular with the Baltic 39 space and which includes artist studios
  1. The University of Bolton’s new BA (Hons) Theatre co-designed and delivered with the Octagon Theatre Bolton, one of the UK’s most successful regional producing theatres
  1. Manchester Metropolitan University’s launch pad programme with Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, which offers artist support and showcasing at the emerging end of artistic practice and, like Collected Possibilities, offers a public platform for MMU’s annual degree show

The characteristics of these partnerships nationally can be broadly identified as being designed to: maximise current and develop new resources; add value; further shared aspirations; meet individual corporate performance targets or objectives; raise profile; realise new opportunities. A recurring theme nationally, in terms of what unlocks this potential, is that leadership at the top – CEO or Vice Chancellor level – significantly aides the sustainability, investment in and prioritisation of partnership work. Leading to outcomes such as: greater resilience; stronger programmes; work ready graduates; more student applications; higher profile appointments; more valuable assets; learning organisations; place making; extended audiences; and greater national and international profile. All of which chime with increasing emphasis within the recent H.E. White Paper on: the quality of the student experience, which includes relationships with industry in designing, developing and delivering courses; and developing work ready students. Very few (if any) of these partnerships are with HE-delivered-within F.E. institutions, such as this one with Hugh Baird University Centre. And this example is compelling in what it can teach us and offer in terms of extending the possibilities to support talent across a greater range of demographics and lifelong learning. With the greater flexibility in terms of living costs associated with undertaking degrees in this context, there is great opportunity to support diversity within artistic excellence and the next generation of artists. As well as opportunities to retain local talent and which is a key element of Arts Council’s talent development agenda.

As with all the partnerships we see, there is a strong and complementary fit between Open Eye and Hugh Baird – the shared photography focus but also Open Eye’s experience as an artist support agency and learning organisation offering vocational and professional experiences to a range of artists, professional and amateur, since launching in 1977. Collected Possibilities and Pieces of Us demonstrate two sides of the talent development challenge. Collected Possibilities presents us with the next generation of photographers, or arts workers potentially, before they emerge either as creative practitioners, into the world of work or further study. Pieces of Us shows us artists a step on, perhaps gaining their first paid professional experience as an artist, in turn inspiring a younger generation working alongside them. The opportunity to apply their skills to the real world and earn income is an invaluable demonstration of the next challenges ahead: how to navigate earning a living as an artist. And which is where the arts Council also seeks to invest and to work in partnership to enable more artists from a greater diversity of backgrounds to make a viable living as an artist, in a locale that can support artists careers through all stages of their development. And which again requires national schemes and structures, delivered via a place-based approach, but that’s another story …

Congratulations to the partnership and very importantly to the artists whose talent is clearly evident.

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