Friday 19th June, 9.30am – 5pm,
Foyle Studio, MAC, Birmingham
Photography, Connection, and Ecology
Tickets £25.00 / £20.00 (plus booking fee)
Communal Lunch & Lumen Printing workshop included

The symposium is being shaped around the values of the forest, thinking about how these might be embodied in an event of this nature. We are bringing together different disciplines to exchange knowledge and skills, encourage intergenerational perspectives, share a community meal, and create space for collective discussion and connections.

Curated by Clare Hewitt and produced with GRAIN Projects, UWE Bristol, and University of Birmingham.

Speakers include:
Allan Brown
Aliki Braine
Clare Hewitt
Hospital Rooms
Marchelle Farrell
Max Ferguson
Tami Aftab & Tony Aftab 

Clare’s practice explores themes of loneliness, isolation, community, and collaboration. Her project, Everything in the forest is the forest, takes inspiration from the interconnectedness of oak trees, and explores how we, as humans, might learn from the networks of kinship and care found in the natural world around us.

Everything in the forest is the forest premiered as a solo exhibition at Impressions Gallery, Bradford as part of the UK City of Culture programme. It was shown at Peckham 24 (2025), featured in New Scientist (2025) and Photoworks+ (2025), and exhibited at Landskrona Foto Festival, Sweden (2022), before being presented at MAC, Birmingham (2026).

Clare is the co-recipient of the Pete James Collection Prize 2026, alongside art historian and curator Rodrigo Orrantia. She previously received the GRAIN Bursary Award (2019), and her wider practice has been recognised by the Royal Photographic Society’s International Photography Exhibition, Earth Photo’s Climate of Change Award, the British Journal of Photography’s Portrait of Britain, and the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize exhibition.

Tickets:
Tickets £25.00 / £20.00 (plus booking fee)
Communal Lunch & Lumen Printing workshop included

Image credit; Clare Hewitt and participants, Lumen prints