PhotoFutures: Photography and Sustainability

Dates

28 June 2025
Time

1.30pm - 4.00pm
Admission

Free, donations welcome

A round table discussion with Clare Hewitt, Carolyn Morton, Danielle Phelps, and Emily Macaulay on how artists and galleries can work with greater environmental care and consideration to rethink sustainable photobooks and exhibition production.

This is for everyone who shares an interest in photography, art, eco issues, sustainability and helping the environment.

The discussion will broach important questions such as how can we make photographs with neutral or positive environmental impact?

Booking recommended via Eventbrite, or call the gallery on 01274 737843

Free event, donations welcome, suggested £5.

Part of our Eco Events programme, presented in partnership with Creative Earth Eco Fest: Making change through photography and art.

Made possible by Arts Council England (National Lottery Project Funding).

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Event Timings

1.30pm to 1.40pm Welcome and introductions.

1.40pm to 1.50pm Meet the Artist Clare Hewitt film screening.

1.50pm to 2.30pm Presentations from Clare Hewitt, Carolyn Morton, Danielle Phelps and Emily Macaulay who will each talk about their work and contributions to the handmade biodegradable photobook.

2.30pm to 2.45pm Break, including Everything in the forest is the forest book handling session.

2.45pm to 3.30pm Open round table discussion, all contributions welcome.

3.30pm to 3.40pm Everything in the forest is the forest book handling session.

3.40pm to 4.00pm Special talk and tour of the exhibition led by Clare Hewitt.

Finish the afternoon with refreshments, including soft drinks and eco-wine, with a chance to share your thoughts on photography, sustainability and the environment with like-minded others.

If you can’t join us in person please watch PhotoFutures: Photography and Sustainability event LIVE on Instagram @ImpGalleryPhoto.

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Everything in the forest is the forest is a photography exhibition with sustainability and environmental consciousness at its creative heart.

For the past five years, Clare Hewitt has worked at the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research within a circle of twelve 180 year oak trees, which were acorns when photography was first invented.

The exhibition presents fourteen bodies of work, celebrating the trees’ remarkable ability to nurture and communicate. It offers valuable insights on how we can learn and gain from the unity, communities, and relationships found within the forest.

Much of the work has never been seen before and includes long exposure photographs captured over six months to four years within ‘birdbox’ pinhole cameras affixed to the oak trees; three hundred individual oak lumen prints made by exposure to the sun on the forest floor; videos created in subterranean root environments; and photography by workshops participants, working remotely with Hewitt, during the Covid lockdowns.

Artists

Clare Hewitt

Clare Hewitt (b. 1983) is a photographic artist based in Birmingham, UK. After completing a degree in Law at Oxford Brooks University, she went on to study Commercial Photography at Arts University Bournemouth. Her work has been exhibited at venues including Landskrona Foto Festival, the National Portrait Gallery, Open Eye Gallery, and the Royal Photographic Society, amongst others. In 2019, Hewitt was the recipient of the GRAIN Bursary Award. Her clients include New Yorker, Guardian, Photoworks, Oxfam, New Statesman, and The Wire. Hewitt also works as an Archivist and a Senior Lecturer in Photography at University of the West of England, Bristol. https://clarehewitt.co.uk
Carolyn Morton

For 30 years she has worked with people who don’t consider themselves artists, building skills, confidence and connection. Her focus on natural materials nurtures curiosity and wonder to better care for ourselves and the natural world. www.camostudio.org @camocarolynmorton
Danielle Phelps

Danielle is a multidisciplinary artist and workshop facilitator based in Birmingham, working across paper making, printmaking, and animation. Over the past four years, she has developed skills in paper-making, repurposing both organic and paper waste material through independent and collaborative methods. Her process is rooted in traditional handmade techniques enhanced by contemporary materials and tools, allowing for the creation of bespoke artist papers. https://linktr.ee/paper_print_motion Image: © Megan Reddi
Emily Macaulay

Emily Macaulay is the founder of Stanley James Press, a small design company specialising in the design and production of printed goods. The majority of her work involves helping artists, photographers and organisations design printed materials, bespoke books and exhibition spaces. She is passionate about the more unusual and complicated forms of print, creating work that engages audiences and experiments with different ways to produce things. She is also trying to find ways to be more sustainable and is constantly trying to understand the processes involved in the outcomes she produces in order to advise her clients of ways to produce more environmentally considered products. www.stanleyjamespress.com

Borrow and Share Biodegradable Photobook

Mindful of creating a book inspired by the behaviours she observed in the forest, Hewitt has worked collaboratively with artists Carolyn Morton and Danielle Phelps, alongside designer Emily Macaulay of Stanley James Press to make Everything in the forest is the forest, a handmade biodegradable photobook.

The book features a specially commissioned collaborative text by international writers Kerri ní Dochartaigh, Marchelle Farrell and Jessica J. Lee. Throughout summer 2025, the book will circulate nationally via a borrow and share, rather than buy and keep, community-driven distribution system.

News, events and more.

Event Timings

Artists

Clare Hewitt

Carolyn Morton

Danielle Phelps

Emily Macaulay

Borrow and Share Biodegradable Photobook

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