LOOK Climate Lab aims to open eyes at Liverpool gallery

Liverpool’s Open Eye Gallery is being turned into a lab this month where ideas around the topic of climate change can be explored and tested.

LOOK Climate Lab 2026 will run at the Mann Island venue from January 23 to March 29, bringing together artists, activists and researchers and offering audiences the opportunity to engage with their work.

The biennial LOOK programme explores how photography can be ‘a relevant and powerful medium’ in the conversation about climate.

Projects being highlighted in the 2026 ‘Lab’ come from across the City Region and beyond, and include Paul Harfleet’s Pansy Project; OFFSHOOT - a collaboration between University of Salford Art Collection, RHS Garden Bridgewater and Open Eye Gallery, and TreeStory Wigan, celebrating Wigan's 50th anniversary and helping people share personal stories and connect with the town’s unique natural and industrial heritage. 

In My Nature Connection, photographer Stephanie Wynne has been collaborating with volunteers at Whitby Park Community Garden in Ellesmere Port, exploring the positive impact of nature connections, in a project developed in partnership with Chester Zoo as part of its Networks for Nature programme.

Meanwhile Emergence, part of Liverpool City Region Combined Authority’s cultural events programme, has seen a collaboration between volunteers at Southport’s Victoria Park Butterfly House and visual artist Anna Wijnhoven.

Above: Pansy Project. Top: Lyla, Bridgewater Youth Club.

Veterans’ Oaks is a nationwide, community-led initiative to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War – historically marked as the ‘oak anniversary’ - through the symbolic act of planting oak trees across the United Kingdom, and Seeds of Change is a live project reimagining urban green spaces at the University of Salford.

Meanwhile Roam, River, Roam is a practice-as-research project by Liz Wewiora, working as a photographic artist in residence with different communities located at the points where various rivers meet to explore individuals' relationship to their local river and its surrounding public green spaces.

A programme of workshops, talks and meetings will also be held over the course of LOOK Climate Lab’s Open Eye Gallery run.

Open Eye curator Max Gorbatskyi says: “From memorials to places to hang out with friends, from horticultural perfection to an accidental hedge near your house or a tree that brings back memories, we examine the role plants play in our lives, and how our lives shape theirs.”

LOOK Climate Lab is at the Open Eye Gallery from January 23 to March 29. More details HERE