Two years of Open Eye Hub in Wigan: Environment, Empowerment and Engagement

Open Eye Hub was set up in Wigan by Open Eye Gallery in partnership with Wigan Council and Wigan & Leigh College. It’s working across Wigan Borough, North West England and online, dedicated to sharing photography, championing local voices and developing skills across the Wigan Borough. 

From June 2023–March 2025, Open Eye Hub Wigan worked with seven photographers at different stages of their careers, on a mixture of commissions and developing their own practice. These have included explorations of different environments; socially engaged practice with women from SWAP (Supporting Wigan Arrivals Project) and the Global Friends youth group; a schools project with Lowton High School and mentoring of personal projects and support for two fellows – young early career photographers. 

This work was showcased in This Must Be The Place exhibition in the Photohub at Leigh Town Hall.

Exploring the carbon landscape. Environment commission with Mario Popham

Mario Popham has been the lead artist for the Hub, working from a studio at Leigh Spinners Mill. In addition to mentoring the two fellows, he has been developing his ongoing project at Bickershaw, which was exhibited as part of the LOOK Climate Lab 2024 exhibition at Open Eye Gallery. He also exhibited work in the Wigan 50th Anniversary exhibition at Leigh Town Hall, contrasting the current environment with archive photographs of the former colliery on that site.

Mario curated This Must Be The Place Hub exhibition in Leigh, which featured the work of all seven of the photographers working on Hub projects and the work of participants from the socially engaged projects (SWAP, Global Friends and Lowton High School). Mario is now starting to develop his work in the carbon landscape around Lancashire Mining Museum.

I continued my exploration of Bickershaw under the title of Strange Eden while mapping new ways of working with the landscape through the use of coal, archive, and most recently, fire. I have identified new areas into which to expand my practice at the Astley Mining Museum where local heritage meets conservation and is intertwined in the larger human planetary story. The residency has allowed me to root myself in the area as a site of exploration from which to develop my thinking and approach to making work.

Alternative processes around the various bodies of water. Environment commission with Lizzie King

Lizzie King has been developing her practice exploring alternative processes around the various bodies of water in the borough, particularly the canal and flashes at Wigan Flashes. She met with environmental scientists and officers from Lancashire Wildlife Trust, Canal & Rivers Trust and Wigan Greenheart Landscape Recovery Scheme. Her work was featured in the LOOK Climate Lab 2024 exhibition at Open Eye Gallery and This Must Be The Place Open Eye Hub exhibition in 2024.

My environmental residency with Open Eye Hub has been a joy and a time of growth for my practice. It has been an informative time in developing research. Making connections with the Canal Trust and the Wildlife Trust at the beginning was invaluable to beginning to understand the area better through understanding the ways these organisations worked, what species they engaged with, and the ecological factors they felt were important currently in that area. I feel this was integral to the work and allowed me to make work that really was true to the site.

 

The work itself was a real pursuit of research into exploring how we might co-create with other species. For my practice the Himalayan Balsam paper created from the site and how sculptural my photographic work became in response to the landscape and the different species were two key things that have progressed and pushed my practice. These were so exciting. The Himalayan Balsam paper particularly allowed for conversations to arise and it was great to be able to talk about this with the nature organisations and the council as well as everyday people that I met on the site and at the exhibition site.

Socially Engaged Projects: Ciara Leeming & SWAP (Supporting Wigan Arrivals Project)

Ciara Leeming started by exploring and making contacts with communities and areas that may be currently under-represented. She started attending the women’s group run by SWAP, offering different activities including polaroid photography, photo collages and mapping. A big map where women plotted their journey to the UK using pins and thread led to some interesting conversations and was recreated within This Must Be The Place exhibition alongside photographs taken by the women using disposable cameras. 

Through the project Ciara became aware of and supported a female photojournalist from Rwanda, Djamilla Uwere, who has since exhibited her work in the Turnpike Gallery open exhibition, supported Ciara on running the Photobooth workshop and is now on an artist support programme run by Sheba Arts.

The group produced a textile banner with Ciara and textile artist Lou Miller, which will be a lasting legacy for the project.

Ciara reflects on the project in her newsletter:

I’ve been working with the women’s group at SWAP, an asylum seeker support project in Wigan, since January 2024 – on a project commissioned by Open Eye Hub. It’s a lovely group but has been a challenging space to work in, for all kinds of reasons.

 

There are many languages and cultures in the space and I often have to resort to Google Translate. I may see the same faces several weeks, and then not see them again for ages. Sometimes people seem to vanish – their circumstances may change in some way, or they may have been relocated by the Home Office without much notice. Something positive or negative may have happened with their asylum case.

 

Sometimes women are physically present in the space but not up for participating. There is a lot of trauma in the room – often this is related to the journey to the UK as well as whatever has led them to come here. This is not a frequent subject of conversation but it does come up. I’ve met numerous people who have travelled here by small boat or hidden within lorries coming through the Channel Tunnel, and have heard stories about running across national borders and crossing the Sahara Desert in an open lorry. These are resilient people. 

 

There are babies and toddlers around. It’s a drop-in session where people arrive and leave at different times. People may want to join in with my activity, but only have 15 minutes to do so before rushing off to collect a child from nursery. Attending every week has gradually helped me to overcome some of these issues and to build strong relationships.

Youth Empowerment & Diverse Voices: Ruby Ramelize & Global Friends

Ruby Ramelize worked  with the Global Friends Group, an organisation run by Everything Human Rights and the Youth Service in Leigh on a commission which introduced the young people to analogue photography through the use of disposable cameras. They discussed storytelling through photography, composition, lighting and other photography related topics.

The work was exhibited at This Must Be The Place exhibition.

I am happy that Open Eye Gallery are working with the Global Friends, as many of them are fairly vulnerable, global majority children from working class backgrounds, this is a group commonly left out of the art world. It meant a lot for me to be able to go in and hopefully teach them what it’s like to be a self employed, artist, photographer and videographer. I was happy to have the experience to tell them that there is money in the arts, as I know all too often and especially when you come from a family of migrants, the arts is not seen as a financially viable career path.

Photography at school: Andy Yates and students from Lowton High School

Andy Yates did research around Pennington Flash which is close to the school, to help shape the work with the students. During this time he took part in the school’s careers day, giving talks to over 80 students. He also organised the school darkroom, which had never been used, including setting up the equipment. He worked with Year 9 and 10  students and delivered an after school elective. There were over 250 young people involved.

The year 9 class have never done photography as a lesson before and the project will act as an introduction to the subject. Over the course of the summer term, the students have engaged in a series of workshops including cyanotype making and photowalks to improve their camera handling skills. This also included a trip to Pennington Flash. The students are now working on telling their own photo stories of Pennington Flash using the content they have created over the last 2 months.

The project culminated with a curation workshop with Andy, Mario Popham and creative producer Annie O’Neill in the Hub space where Year 9 students selected and installed their cyanotypes within This Must Be The Place exhibition as well as making further cyanotypes on the day.

The Fellowship programme 

The Fellowship programme was designed for those not wishing to continue in formal education following their photography course at Wigan and Leigh College. Fellow Sara Lawlor exhibited both in the Horrocks Gallery at Spinners Mill and This Must Be The Place exhibition, which she also supported as a curatorial assistant. Fellow Mia Joyce was  employed as Curatorial Assistant for the Wigan 50th Exhibition, working with the students from Wigan and Leigh College and selecting images from the archive of local photographer Frank Orrell. She developed her own body of work focusing on the greening of buildings which was exhibited in the Hub exhibition.

Mia said: I’ve also really appreciated the opportunities I’ve had to display my work and connect with other photographers and artists that I wouldn’t usually get. I now have many ideas for future projects and it’s a brilliant program that I’m sure other photographers like me will enjoy.

Open Eye Hub is currently supporting Tree Stories Wigan – new project exploring the history of Wigan through its trees. This heritage initiative, funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, will celebrate communities and local nature through workshops, tree planting, school visits and outdoor photography exhibition.

Text: Annie O’Neill, Maria Gulina