New Faces New Focus

Bringing new perspectives to museum and gallery collections, and celebrating the stories of local communities, New Faces, New Focus is a collaborative touring exhibition by Open Eye Gallery, Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Council and Aberdeenshire Museums Service. The exhibition brings together creative work and collections from across the UK.

In Liverpool, three socially engaged photographers have worked with communities to develop new creative work. Anoosh Ariamehr has engaged with local and refugee communities in Knowsley, Nina Karetska working with the displaced Ukrainian community in Sefton and Abdullrhman Hassona with refugee communities in St Helen's; developed in partnership with Kirkby Gallery, The World of Glass and The Atkinson.

In Armagh, artists Rosalind Lowery and Catherine Willis, alongside mentee artists Maria McStay and Fionnula O’Gorman, have worked with newcomers to the area. Together with Museums’ Curator Sean Barden, they explored the collection and selected objects to co‑create artistic responses that reflect participants’ life journeys.

In Aberdeenshire, socially engaged photographer Nicole Gildea has engaged local refugee and asylum-seeking communities with heritage collections and socially engaged photography. With additional support from mentee photographer Max Creamer, communities 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.

Each residency focuses on the broad theme of journeys – from migration and exile to the milestones, traditions and celebrations on our journeys through life. At its heart, the project 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.

This exhibition is part of Going Places a major new programme of exhibitions touring across the UK.