Open Eye Gallery won the Environmental Award in Liverpool City Region Culture and Creativity Award-2025!

We are proud to have received the Environmental Award in The Liverpool City Region Culture & Creativity Awards-2025! The Awards recognise and celebrate the incredible contribution that culture and creativity make to the city region.

Environmental Awards celebrates the impact culture and creativity has on the green agenda, including environmental sustainability and contribution to net zero targets. In 2024 Open Eye Gallery held its biennial LOOK programme: LOOK Climate Lab and LOOK Photo Biennial. The programme explores how photography can be a relevant and powerful medium for talking about climate change, bringing together researchers and artists to test their ideas and encouraging our audiences to discuss systematic changes needed for dealing with the climate crisis.

Sarah Fisher, Executive Director at Open Eye Gallery, said: “We are honoured to have won this award, as a lot of our exhibitions, workshops and events focus on a core theme for us, community relationship to nature. LOOK Climate Lab and LOOK Photo Biennial projects explored, for example, the environmental footprint of wars, the co-exostance with non-human living species, and regenerative farming and food security. We are committed to addressing the climate emergency, and we’ll keep sustainability at the core of our values.”

At Open Eye Gallery we are committed to sustainable practices, working to reduce our impact on the environment. We have embedded monitoring and reporting on our carbon usage and updating our knowledge via staff training and active learning with climate focussed groups. We actively engage as members of the Liverpool City Region sustainability network for cultural organisations and fully support Liverpool and Liverpool City Region in their actions towards zero carbon emissions.

Our programming utilises the tremendous power of photography to bring communities together to affect positive social and environmental change. Our national lead for socially engaged photography and our extensive partnerships enable us to work with environmental experts, creative and community activists, providing platforms to champion their work in neighbourhood and public spaces across the north west.

Mayor of the Liverpool City Region Steve Rotheram said:

“Each year, these awards help highlight the incredible and emerging talent that make our region truly stand out as the UK’s cultural and creative capital. Whether it’s catching a play, enjoying a gig, looking on or taking part, culture is at the heart of everything we do.

 

“When we set up these awards, it was to say a huge thank you to the inspiring individuals and businesses that make our area so special. I’m excited for another night of celebration, where we’ll recognise those who enrich our lives every day and continue to put the Liverpool City Region firmly on the map as the epicentre of culture, innovation, and creativity.”

Open Eye Gallery is grateful to all our LOOK partners: Gaia Foundation, Energy House 2.0 Salford, Royal Horticultural Society, The Tree Council, Impressions Gallery, Peloton Liverpool Coop, Wigan Council, The Mersey Forest, Liverpool ONE and many others who bring people and ideas together, explore the complexities of human-nature relationships and make positive changes to live more sustainable and connected lives.