Capturing the Evolution of Liberty: Johannah Churchill and Hartlepool Community Hubs/Libraries

This month we hear from photographer Johannah Churchill about the work she created as part of Our Freedom: Then and Now project, her work centers on her Northeast roots, spanning nine regional venues, including Hartlepool.

Launched to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, Our Freedom: Then and Now is a nationwide UK arts initiative that bridges the gap between historical legacy and modern reality. Developed by Future Arts Centres and launched with a commissioned poem by Poet Laureate Simon Armitage, the programme invites artists, veterans, and citizens to explore the shifting meaning of liberty through a series of public exhibitions and installations. For photographers and creators alike, it serves as a powerful call to document the contentious lived experience of freedom in Britain today.

Freedom is not guaranteed; it was not something that was ‘won’ in 1945, but something we enact every day through our choices, our institutions, and our care for one another. While I was photographing arts centres and libraries across the Northeast, during their celebrations, I was struck by how differently freedom is experienced and how precarious it can be. For some, it is threatened by social prejudice, or legal and institutional barriers; for others, it is defended at great personal cost. What connects us all, is that freedom is delicate, interdependent, and constantly in the making. This project reminded me that commemorating liberation is not enough; we have to practice freedom actively, and alongside others if it is to endure.

Freedom

Freedom means to be authentically me,

To speak my truth, to listen respectfully.

Deserved by all, the grandest plan,

Yet never to harm our fellow man.

Freedom by Maureen Waters, Wallsend Writers Group, Wallsend Library, North Tyneside, 2025 

From the Library Door Freedom portraits of writers from Churchill’s childhood home in Wallsend to the expressive dancers in South Shields, this project moves through communities bound by geography yet distinct in voice. Using portraiture as a means to witness, it captures moments of joy, tension, pride and vulnerability as they surface in everyday community spaces. Each portrait is shaped through conversation and presence, grounded in the particular light and texture of the Northeast. Together, the images form a quiet record of lives observed with attention, care and creative intent. 

Sustaining the ongoing work of freedom by building communities

Photography has the capacity to capture a sense of uncertainty, using portraiture to reflect collective hope, while offering a visual meditation on vulnerability and the conditional nature of freedom. Right now, freedom feels brittle – making it increasingly evident that rights are not guaranteed for anyone. In my home of the Northeast, freedoms often feel particularly precarious. Longstanding economic disparities, underinvestment in public services, and social inequalities have left many communities vulnerable, while persistent stereotypes of the North or ‘Northerness’ compound the sense of exclusion. Photography can make these realities visible, challenge assumptions, reveal dignity amid hardship, and reflect the fragility of freedom.

These portraits and stories suggest that freedom is sustained by the ongoing work of building communities and protecting the legal and social frameworks that make it real. At the time of photographing, I was reading Timothy Snyder’s book ‘On Freedom’. He perceives true freedom to be about the tangible opportunities people have to shape their lives and futures. Snyder asserts that freedom is most authentically understood as the capacity to thrive, to choose, and to act collectively for shared futures. Simply removing state interference is not enough if people lack the material, institutional and social conditions – such as access to strong societal networks, healthcare, economic security, education and the democratic processes that make meaningful agency possible.

Amid these uncertainties, the community-based projects offered ways to actively practice freedoms in meaningful ways. Initiatives that bring people together through art, photography, or collective memory create spaces where voices can be heard, agency can be exercised, and social bonds strengthened. Such projects not only begin to counter stereotypes and highlight local resilience but also demonstrate how freedoms are enacted collectively, showing that liberty is not only a legal right but a lived, societal experience.

Negotiating visibility

The queer communities and refugees show that freedom is not solely written into law. Rights can be formally recognised, yet remain socially unstable, constantly shaped by political decisions and cultural attitudes. Legal protections do not guarantee safety or belonging; acceptance can be withdrawn at any moment. Prejudice or policy shifts can make the freedoms we assume to be settled feel endangered. Images of these communities, and the associated questions about photographing faces show how freedom shifts depending on visibility, vulnerability, and the willingness of society to uphold justice.

Youth Worker (Jack Cummings – Hartlepool Hubs, Hart Gabels):

As a youth work practitioner in Teesside doing Open Access and targeted youth work we see our young people grow and develop in ways they never could in mainstream education settings. Week after week our young people choose to spend their evenings with us creating friendships that will last forever. 4 hour LGBTQIA plus group spaces it gives our young people a space to unapologetically be themselves without fear of judgement or prejudice. For four hours a week they are happy and safe and joyful in their own selves. Without their space many young people would have to hide. 

Youth (Hartlepool Hubs, Hart Gabels):

Freedom is impossible all the time but there are times you can feel it. Freedom is being who you are and living how you want. Freedom is escaping. Freedom is being weird. Freedom is in a peaceful stop Freedom is accepting yourself. 

Alona Ovchar, Ukranian Refugee (Alnwick Playhouse): 

Me (Alona Ovchar, Ukrainian) or my photo tells a story of freedom born from loss and hope. I arrived in the United Kingdom with my sons, fleeing the sounds of war with one simple wish – to protect them from fear and give them the chance to live in peace, to get an education, and build a future where dreaming is safe. We left our home behind, but we did not lose our faith in life, in people, or in the light ahead. We are deeply grateful to the UK for offering us shelter, safety, and the opportunity to begin again. For me, freedom is not the absence of pain, but the quiet ability to hold my children in peace and believe that even the deepest losses can one day become strength. 

Service personnel, meanwhile, embody the paradox of defending national freedoms abroad while confronting the uneven distribution of some of those same freedoms at home, often with limited aftercare for ex-servicemen – highlighting the tension between the ideals they feel sworn to protect and the social, economic, and political inequalities they may encounter within their own society. 

Terry Bonner (RAF Spadeadam – Queens Hall):

“Creativity is an amazing way to lose yourself and find a sense of freedom in difficult times. On my tour of Afghanistan, I was dropped at the airport six hours early because it suited the driver, six more hours I could have had with my kids. That stayed with me, so I drew. We landed in complete blackout, the last half hour in darkness, a bumpy ride with nothing to see, just engines roaring and people being sick. I drew that too. Within hours of arriving there was a rocket attack, so I cartoon-sketched it as ‘fireworks’ welcoming me. Humour and creativity in adversity. By the end of the tour, I had a lot of pictures to keep me grounded.” 

Rob Taylor, (Hartlepool Hubs, Hartlepool Armed Forces and Veterans Breakfast Club):

“We’re all just members of society trying to do something good”. Participants in Hartlepool included The Veterans Breakfast Club, led by a creatively engaged ex-serviceman whose lived experience shapes its ethos. More than a meal, it offers continuity, camaraderie, and a space where stories can be shared without judgement. Rooted in solidarity rather than charity, the club is a practical expression of freedom: a self-organised community where former service personnel gather by choice, support one another, and sustain belonging through everyday acts of care.” 

Freedom Resources 

People’s experiences reveal that freedom is not simply a matter of legal rights or formal recognition; it is deeply entangled with material conditions, care, and structural support. Autonomy is often imagined as the ability to make choices independently, yet for many disabled people, the capacity to exercise choice depends on access to assistive technologies, adapted environments, reliable healthcare, and supportive networks – true autonomy requires resources. 

Beth Samuels (ARC Stockton):

“Freedom to me is having independence and being able to do what I enjoy without limitations. I do face limitations and challenges but that’s not from me personally but the inaccessible world around me. I try to not let this stop me or get in the way, as I’m a very determined person. As both a disabled actor and wheelchair dancer I love nothing more than experiencing the feeling of freedom by embodying different characterisation and stories as well as feel emotions and rhythm through movement. Partaking in these is when I feel the most free. Para dance sport gives me the chance to connect with my body again just in a different way and serves as a creative outlet for expression, breaking down barriers to movement and offering a sense of freedom. Dance is dance whether you’re walking or rolling and can be enjoyed by all.”

Beth Samuels is a northern disabled actor and para wheelchair dancer. Beth professionally acts in TV and film as well as competes in dance competitions across the UK in para dance sport events, representing Team GB.

As part of Churchill’s socially engaged practice, she worked with Berwick Youth Project and fellow friend and photographer Michael Daglish to explore freedom through photography workshops. Initial nerves around the expensive equipment quickly shifted to curiosity as the group searched for symbols of freedom outdoors, finding it in open skies, unlocked gates, movement, and birds – images that suggested ease and possibility.

Working sensitively and with photographic restrictions agreed and in place, she made just eleven images to keep the focus on the young people’s perspectives and experience. In the darkroom, they created photograms from gathered objects such as feathers and leaves, watching images emerge in the safelight glow, a quiet, collective enactment of freedom discovered and made visible.

Johannah Churchill:

Those kids had never handled expensive cameras; you could see by the careful way they were holding them. They had so much to say and listening is everything. We had lots of fun and they photographed Michael so many times! For me this project is a warning against complacency and the things that undermine shared conditions that make freedom possible. Vigilant community and civic engagement is part of sustaining freedom in practice.

The programme culminates in a national photography exhibition curated with Open Eye Gallery and the Socially Engaged Photography Network that launched at London’s Southbank Centre in early 2026 and subsequently touring to arts centres and libraries nationwide, the exhibition brings together photography from all regional projects, 9 of which took place in the Northeast of England. In total, 80 events program commissions feature in the photography across communities and partner museum projects, bringing artistic responses to the theme of freedom in relation to local histories and present-day experiences.

Overall, Our Freedom: Then and Now creates space for creative dialogue about freedom across generations and communities, positioning public cultural spaces as key forums for expression, connection and shared reflection. The portraits do not claim to define freedom but reveal its uneven distribution. They ask what it means to make an image in a context where visibility can both empower and endanger. Liberty for one person is fragile if others are left behind.

Text: Johannah Churchill