A new gallery space in the town centre’s heritage action zone launches with Food for Thought, a University of Liverpool-backed exhibition on the Household Support Fund by Claire Walmsley Griffiths.
A new photography gallery opened its doors for the first time on Monday night, adding another creative space to the heart of Blackpool town centre.
Edward Street Gallery, at 8 Edward Street, launched with a preview of Food for Thought, an exhibition made in collaboration with the University of Liverpool and exploring how the Household Support Fund has been used in communities. The fund is a government scheme, administered by local councils, that helps vulnerable, low-income households with essential living costs.
The show features installations and prints by long-term Blackpool Social Club contributor Claire Walmsley Griffiths, whose work focuses on places that have benefited from the fund. Some images were made in partnership with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Leftcoast Creative Places and People, and picture locations including Streetlife, The Grange, The Magic Club and Bispham Pantry. Installations and projections by the photographers Jane MacNeil and Patricia McDonald-Holmes are also on show, and guests at the launch received a free zine of images from the project.
The exhibition grew out of Supporting Households in Crisis, a research project led by Cat Jackson, a research fellow at the University of Liverpool. Funded by the NIHR School for Public Health Research, it is examining how the Household Support Fund is being used across four local authorities in North West England: Liverpool, Blackpool, Knowsley and Manchester. The photographs were informed by visits to food support services and interviews with residents, local organisations and the council.
The research is continuing, and the project team describes the work as social commentary intended as a “conversation starter” about food insecurity locally and nationally. Themes include despair, welfare support, community resilience and lived experience, and the exhibition aims to engage communities, practitioners and policymakers alike.
The gallery says it wants to explore Blackpool’s relationship with photography and socially-engaged practice, and to honour the town’s photographic heritage. Its organisers want to counter negative media portrayals of the town, giving Blackpool space to tell its own story, and plan to programme photographers who show care towards working-class culture in their practice.
Future exhibitions are expected to include work on Generation X women, health and female voices in Blackpool; a conversation with Polly Braden’s Against the Tide youth series and its collaboration with House of Wingz; and images of Hawes Side by learning disabled New Langdale Photographers. The organisers hope to make the space a long-term fixture.
The gallery sits within Blackpool’s high street heritage action zone (HAZ), a partnership between Blackpool council and Historic England that aims to use the town’s heritage to bring new uses to the town centre. The HAZ covers parts of Church Street, Edward Street, Topping Street and Deansgate, and includes a cultural programme to bring new activity to the high street and involve local people in creative activity.
It joins the Old Electric, Aunty Social and Abingdon Street Market as another creative space in the area.
Food for Thought continues from 1pm to 3pm on Tuesdays and Wednesdays until the end of November.
