Links to Video Work: Claire Griffiths Vimeo and Link to formal CV

 

Winner British Journal of Photography Vol 7. Portrait of Britain. 100 winning images will be showing up and down the country in a month-long digital screen display in partnership with JCDecaux. 200 shortlisted images will be featured in the Portrait of Britain publication, in partnership with Bluecoat Press.

Dawn, New Langdale Photographer - Blackpool, Lancashire

Dawn is a photographer based in Blackpool, and a member of the New Langdale Photographers, who have been established for nine years. The group photographs twice a week, exploring elements of nature, architecture and the town they live in. I worked with the group for over four years, hosting workshops and creating projects to uncover shared experiences. The photography group for Dawn and her contemporaries is as much about a social experience and seeing friends as it is about taking a picture. This image was created in a portrait session where the group were capturing each other, a new experience as they began to point the camera at each other rather than at their surroundings.

July 2024 - Current Streetlife / Nathan Parker image and written work collaboration. Working with award-winning poet Nathan Parker exploring images in relationship to young peoples experiences at Streetlife Blackpool A youth work charity providing emergency shelter and support to vulnerable and homeless young people aged 16-25 in Blackpool and surrounding area. Publication due out Autumn 2024.


August 2024 - Current https://www.shoutoutloud.org.uk/project/reverberate-2024/ Created by Blackpool Community Darkroom, a community, well-being and photography-based group in Blackpool, this project is inspired by Stott Park Bobbin Mill. The project intends to connect young people in Blackpool to the working-class industrial heritage of Lancashire, and how the town they live in was viewed as a place of fun and recreation away from the often physically challenging and dangerous environment in which they spent their working time. The outcomes of this project will be young person-led and centred on photography/light-sensitive materials and lens-based practice, inspired by the connection to Lancashire’s industrial past.


Grangetopia January 2024 - June 2024 Leftcoast Commission In 2023, artist Samantha Jones started as our Artist in Residence at @TheGrange, working with both Groundworks and the library. As Sam got to know the area, she began to see Grange Park as her happy place, a place where people work together for each other, a place of abundance, beauty, and care. Through the people she met, she uncovered the potential to work towards a collective Grangetopia. A place where a community could dare to enact the impossible – to discover how to create their utopia.

She began collaborating with residents, and they started on a journey together to explore their right to happiness, asking the questions “What makes you happy?” and “Who has the right to happiness?”

To start this exploration, they collaborated with artist Lizza Lane to make the beautiful crowns. The crowns are a visual representation of what brings them personal joy and happiness. They then worked with photographer Claire Griffiths to take photographs both in a studio and in a place that reflects their sense of happiness.

This collaboration aims to grow small revolutions to ensure that well-being for all is not a dream. To have the temerity to declare that we all have the right to be happy, valued, and to a life full of joy and meaning.


January 2024 - Current Blackpool Photoworks Photography Champion. Alongside Henry Iddon, our roles seek to enhance the photography community throughout the town and coast and support community connection intergenerationally. Claire and Henry want to provide space for open conversations, advice, and knowledge on funding to increase confidence and identity for and with Blackpool. Planned activities include working with archives, grassroots collaborations, exhibitions and educational spaces.  https://photoworks.org.uk/programme/photography-champions/blackpool-henry-iddon-and-claire-griffiths/

October 2023 - Current Co-Producer and Practitioner Blackpool Community Darkroom. A shared creative analogue space in association with Aunty Social. Hireable darkroom sessions and community socials developed with feedback from the local community. The space is interested in sustainable practice and how creativity feeds into elements of wellbeing and shared experience.

August 2023 - March 2024 Legacy through a diverse lens. Photography as shared social space in Blackpool An Arts Council England-supported project exploring the mid-century Blackpool Architect John Charles Robinson. For the New Langdale Centre which supports adults with learning disabilities, a marble plaque discovered by their Green Team at the former Library, cited the work of the borough architect, John Charles Robinson. New Langdale photographers are shaping this project supported by staff, & practitioner photographers Claire Walmsley Griffiths, Donna Hannigan & Elizabeth Gomm, creating a series of photographic-led explorations uncovering community stories & documenting the JCR buildings that remain & discovering more about the ones lost. The project invites people who may have stories or archive family pictures of JCR buildings, to share them & become a part living history memory bank. Elevating The New Langdale photographer's creative practice to explore, expand community, & develop their creative identities. The project is further shaped through the Blackpool community with the project offering public talks, photography walks, pop-up exhibitions, and traditional exhibitions at Blackpool Libraries and The Grundy Art Gallery

April 2023 -June 2023 Grundy Art Gallery Blackpool. NEW THINGS Two image files were acquired by Grundy Art Gallery in 2020 with permission from the artist to represent these images in different formats. Here the images are presented as fly posters but were previously presented as part of Grundy Art Gallery’s Forecourt Exhibition Programme. The images document Blackpool in and out of lockdown. Image (i) The Brilliance Lightshow entrance, photographed in Lockdown April 2020. Image (ii) Central Pier Darts Stall photographed on the eve of Lockdown 2, December 2020.


February 2023 - April Exposure Alberta Photography Festival Canada “Silent Protest” Canada, Paris, London, Brighton, Blackpool, Cornwall, Oxford, and Chippenham. It was supportive, gentle, and open; it was listening and learning. It was feminist leadership. “Tend” collective was born. And this is the product of that online shared space. We have since shared images of bodies; broken bones, family archives; intimate moments, flowers; the fields we tend, and other women, dancing or still, taking up room. We may never meet, or share space and time, but we have produced magic. Sharing our own communities, worlds, practice, and art. Artists: Claire Walmsley Griffiths, Fanny Beckman, Francesca Provenzano, Josie Purcell, Kirsten Aubrey, Minna Kokko, Rosy Martin in Collaboration with Verity Welstead, Sophia Alvarez Barnes, Curatorial statement by Ashley MacKenzie.

September 2022 - Hundred Heroines Bootcamp “Silent Protest” Silent Protest. Bootcamp was held in January 2022, the only UK charity dedicated to women and photography. It offered ‘an invaluable opportunity for participants to contribute to raising the profile of women in photography, develop new skills and the chance to be creative’. Claire Walmsley Griffiths Gallery - Hundred Heroines “(Social) space is a (social) product. The space thus produced also serves as a tool of thought and of action in addition to being a means of production it is also a means of control, and hence of domination, of power.” Henri Lefebvre – The (social) Production of Space. The images were taken 4 hours before the opening of a public-facing skate park in Stanley Park in Blackpool, a space created by the skateboard community. I choose not to include the faces of the skateboard community as a resident of Blackpool and as part protest. We are photographed a lot to standardize what poor northern, working-class communities look like. I am instead interested in the space of the park before the anticipation of shared experience. A space for intergenerational, positive social capital for Blackpool. As a documentary photographer – I am interested in the space in between.

July 2022 - Aug 2022 I Am Fledgling in Collaboration with the artist: Jodie Gibson (Artists in Art Schools) CASC Contemporary Art Space Chester. Working with Jodie Gibson who explored the sensation of loss with three volunteers who revisited memory and physical places that encapsulated strong emotions or people with who they were once close. I created a series of 9 images in various settings with permission from the participants, exploring their stories of loss and photographing artist Jodie Gibson as Fledging’. The curation of the shoot lay with the volunteers where each Co-creator decided if they were present in the photograph, or remained solely behind the lens. Additionally, they were invited to include their own personal and meaningful artifacts within the shoot, if desired. Additionally, Claire invited each participant to take hold of the camera and physically take some of the shots within the photoshoot. Participants were lastly responsible for selecting images for inclusion in the upcoming exhibition, collaborating with Claire on edits and visual preferences; intentionally withdrawing control from the Lead Artist, and further nurturing the project’s intentions for power-sharing.

Fledgling - Katie

July 2022 - Stadium for The Future with Idle Women. Photography documentation. During and as part of the UEFA Women’s EURO 2022 football championship in July women from across the UK gathered in fields and underpasses to dance the stadium into existence at site-specific women-only raves. The dances have been specifically curated with women who actively make space/fight/advocate for women. Idle Women is an arts, environment and social justice collaboration ​founded by artists in 2015. Our projects reach for something beyond the horizon, creating transformative spaces for women that can't be cut, closed or taken away. Gallery: https://stadiumfuture.space/gallery.

May 2022 https://issuu.com/openeyegallery/docs/a_spotlight_on...interactive_pdf A Spotlight On'... publication ( from a series of blogs as part of the socially engaged photography network ran by Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool). Forms part University of Salfords reading list for socially engaged photography practice

January 2022 - Current - Photography & Protest RPS 100 Heroines Bootcamp. A series of workshops culminating in ideas and a shared exhibition. how Female Photographers/ Heroines use visual art as a medium for political expression.

January 2022 - Watch This Space - 2x small films portrait. The Grundy Art Gallery QR CODE (i) Exchange in Photography The small slide show depicts a series of portraits of artists and staff from The New Langdale, Blackpool, Lancashire. Created alongside The pARTnership Collaboration 2019 - Present. I wanted the images to capture an exchange that might only be created based on time spent with the participants and artists within The pARTnership how A photographic portrait might only be co-created with trust. As a photographer, we are often custodians of people's stories, a happening, a shared experience. QR CODE (ii) Socially distanced Portraits - Photography workshops in Stanley Park. Session four of a series of Socially engaged and distanced workshops in Blackpool. Implemented with staff and artists from New Langdale Centre in Blackpool. Artists co created images in Blackpool Stanley Park, approaching new people to share how a photographic portrait might be made in a time of social distancing, using their tools of interaction to create exchange and a camera to capture who they met and spoke to that day.

Sept 2021 - Miss Nobodies A book celebrating the Great Women of Great Harwood and Lancashire by Ruth E. Cockburn A book of observations and poetry from Ruth E. Cockburn, Ethel Carnie Holdsworth, and Trudy Howson. With input from conversations with the local women of Great Harwood. The book was created in conjunction with a live show of the same title. Both were commissioned by Spot On Lancashire: Rural Touring Network. Photography by Claire Griffiths.

August 2021 We’re Sew Done Collaboration with CIC Aunty Social/ Knitters with Attitude. Photographs of contributors and textile art strategically placed in public spaces to highlight the harassment and threats of violence that women face every day. These artworks were placed in the location of an incident that had been reported through the Blackpool Social Club form, a Blackpool-based digital magazine.

July 2021 - September Forecourt Commission: #WORKTOWNGHOSTTOWN #WORKTOWNGHOSTTOWN draws influence from the Mass-Observation study of Bolton and Blackpool (1937-40), known as the Worktown Project, in which Blackpool was heavily profiled as a site of mass tourism and pilgrimage for working people. Throughout this period of extended period of intermittent lockdowns photographers have continued to work where and when possible, to document Blackpool; a storied site of mass tourism and pilgrimage at a time of lockdown, social distancing and travel restrictions. FORECOURT COMMISSION: #WORKTOWNGHOSTTOWN | Grundy Art Gallery (thegrundy.org)

June 2021 - youotterknow.camp Entertainer, theatre-maker Harry Clayton-Wright online magazine experience. Magazine feature - Blackpool in lockdown.

June 2021 - December 2021 - Blackpool Grand Theatre and Headstart Photography workshops. A Sense of Place: Culminating in ‘Sanctuary Exhibition at Marine Hall Fleetwood - Wyre Borough Council. Young people co-created images of Blackpool to explore what place and lockdown meant to them as a visual language. Creating conversation and shared experience.

May 2021 - February Arts Council England Award DYCP. Socially and community based photography approaches in Blackpool. Exploring alternative perceptions of Blackpool working with small communities attached in and around new creative space, The Old Electric.

April 2021 - July 2021 Present Bostonway Community Darkroom Mini residency commissioned by Leftcoast Creative Place and People. Development of community darkroom in a small housing estate in South Blackpool. Engaging with residents to explore personal stories through domestic photo albums and taking photographs. Exploration of labels, home, alternative photographic processing culminating in a film shown through the window of The Old Wardens House.

April 2021 - The Upside Community Newspaper As well as featuring mood-lifting news and stories from neighbours, life-shifting support and advice from local organisations, and time-twisting creating challenges, each edition of The Upside also includes a sequence of beautiful, original artworks from artist and illustrator, Cait McEniff, translates the phased return to life beyond lockdown.

April 2021 - Lancashire Photography Festival. The Livingroom Project - Saturday Night Take Away Submission The first Preston-based photography exhibition features exhibitions on walls, hoardings, in shops windows, and on specially built displays. The city-wide exhibition includes sites on Preston Market and on the hoardings of the former BHS building on Fishergate.

March - April 2021 Shutter Release - They Eat Culture/The Living City. Shutter Release is a series of photography sessions designed to create connections to each other in our immediate environment and find space to slow our own thoughts and connect to the present moment. Claire Walmsley-Griffiths: Shutter Release – The Living City (the-living-city.org)

January 2021 - Open Eye Gallery - Spotlight. Collaborative interview with writer and producer Kenn Taylor (kenn-taylor.com) exploring socially engaged photography. Blackpool, community, class, and identity. Open Eye Gallery – A Spotlight On… Claire Walmsley Griffiths

Aug 2020 - January 2021 Images of Transition. The collaborative project partnered with The Magic Youth Club in Blackpool. Photographer Henry Iddon, Youth Worker Buzz Bury, Blackpool City of Learning and Curious Minds. A series of workshops exploring leaving junior school to head to high school in the time of the pandemic with year 6 students in Blackpool. Images of Transition. Bubble Up Claremont - YouTube

June 2020 - Fleur and Arbour Interview online platform that showcases creatives and promotes and supports the work of women photographers interview features Retired Performers series and what it means to be a photographer in Blackpool.

May 2020 - June 2020 Leftcoast - Small Radical Acts - In response to the current physical, political, and economic climate of Lockdown, Leftcoast commissioned a group of 10 artists with an interest in working with people to explore the hypothesis that small acts of change or resistance can be radical as large acts. We have carefully selected five locally-based and five nationally based artists to work together to form a response that we hope will inform the direction of how we work within our local neighbourhoods. The artists are: Luke Beech, Brendan Bunting, Buzz Bury, Rebecca Davies, Amy Pennington, Christopher Samuels, Adam Simpson, Janine Walker, Kaspar Wimperley and Susanne Kudielka Produced by:  Debbie Chan 

May 2020 - July 2020 Grundy Art Gallery - #WorkTownGhostTown -  is influenced by The Mass-Observation study of Bolton and Blackpool (1937-40), known as the Worktown Project, in which Blackpool is heavily profiled as a site of mass tourism and pilgrimage for working people. Throughout the period of lockdown four, Blackpool-based photographers documented Blackpool without and as people began to repopulate the well-known tourist town. Work Town Ghost Town.

May 2020 - Current. Online photography workshop delivery for Youth groups. The Magic Club, Head Start - Resilience Revolution and UR Potential.

November 2019 - Art as Communication / In Conversation Series ii - Documentation and collaboration with artist and facilitator Tina Dempsey and artists of The New Langdale, Blackpool. Exploring visual and photographic creativity prior and through lockdown. Partners: The Grundy Art Gallery, The Centre for Independent Living, Coastal Communities, Venture Arts Manchester. Creation of film Keeping Connected through Art - YouTube

October 2019 Look Photo Festival Biennial Satellite - Open Eye Gallery - Karl Bartoni Portrait - #RetiredPerformers Project Look Photo Festival 2019

October 2019 -January 2020 Crossing Sectors - Open Eye Gallery - Artist Development programme for socially engaged practitioners. A 6-month professional development supporting practitioners to explore how culture can be co-authored with a variety of cross-sector organisations and participants. Partners include NOVUS Prison Education, NHS Merseycare, Community Integrated Care, and photovoice.

2019 August - October 2020 RPS100 Heroines Hub - HIVE Blackpool and Derby. - exhibited alongside 60+ female photographers celebrating diversity among female-identifying photographers.

2019 August - Blackpool Art B&B - Been There Got The Badge. Installation Collaboration with designer Catherine Peters. An interactive installation exploring shared Blackpool histories, language, and experience placed at The Art B&B CIC Hotel. Art B&B

2019 June - Chelsea and Kensington RPS 100Heroines Hub - Representation on the Line: (Un)framing our Identities. - selection of #Retiredperformers series exhibited alongside 60+ female photographers celebrating diversity among female-identifying photographers.

2019 May - October 2019 -The Welcome Collective. Documentary Photography and Blog creation for community-focused activities in Fleetwood and The Marton area of Blackpool. Including theatre, neighbourhood fashion shows, living room music gigs, creative workshops, gardening. Partnered with Leftcoast Creative Places and People programme. Welcome Collective

2019 January - Traces Debi Keable Project Photographic Images Commissioned (Ghost Signs in Blackpool) Hull Central Library Gallery. Small-scale works for gallery exhibition commissioned by Debi Keable for Traces Show in Hull, the work invites audiences to reflect on the changing face of their city."

2018 December - March 2019 BetterStart/NSPCC/TAB Children’s Centre co-creation of photography workshops designed to engage parents and families in areas key areas of Blackpool with less opportunity. Including a pop-up exhibition staged at Health Centre and on-site.

2018 October - Tate Exchange Liverpool - Disparity Collective. Group Collective Pop-up installation. Positions of Power supported by Redeye Photography Residency: Lightbox and Art in Liverpool.

2018 October - #RetiredPerformers Project Installation Exhibition Winter Gardens Blackpool - Grand Vestibule - accompanied with various spaces in Blackpool. Blackpool North Pier, Blackpool Library, Blackpool Museum, Blackpool Tower, Brooks Collectibles, ICW Space.

2018 August - #RetiredPerformers Project Talk on behalf of Heritage Blackpool.

2018 July - Liverpool Biennial Fringe Positions of Power large scale Photography installation shown as part of Redeye Collective Lightbox programme: Disparity Collective. Exploring alternative notions of power with six northern photographers supported by Art in Liverpool.

2018 July -  September 2018 The Interval Blackpool Grundy Art Gallery - #Retiredperformers Celebrating progress to date, The Interval is a snap-shot, mid-way through the project, of some of the stories gathered from the chauffeurs, dancers, performers, and musicians who were active in Blackpool in, and prior to, the 1970s. EXHIBITION including talk.

2018 July - Constellations Liverpool - as part of Liverpool Independent Biennial 2018. Disparity Collective Positions of Power. EXHIBITION.

2018 April – Peckham 24 – Photography Workshop collaboration – EXHIBITION for Peckham 24 curated by Rhiannon Adam, Laura Pannock and Natasha Curanna. Exploring The Peckham Experiment shown at Safehouse.

2018 April – Blackpool Grundy Art Gallery Neither Land Nor Sea. EXHIBITION and Photography talk.

2018  March - Tapestry Exhibition Space – Liverpool. Positions of Power EXHIBITION. Disparity Collective supported by Redeye Photography Network Manchester. Article

2018 February - Blackpool and Fylde College. Supported by Redeye Photographers Network Positions of Power EXHIBITION and talk. Disparity Collective collaboration.

2018 February – September: #Retired Performers Series. Arts Council Awarded Photography Series. Partners: Winter Gardens Blackpool, Leftcoast, Blackpool Library Services, Visit Blackpool. Ongoing photographic and audio public engagement piece staged in high footfall areas celebrating stories of the performance folk of Blackpool.

2017 October - October 2018 – Redeye Manchester Photography Residency – Lightbox. Disparity Photography Collective.

2017 August - We Are Here Because We Are Here. Jeremy Deller - images featured in book publication of the project.

2017 July-present – BetterStart/NSPCC co-creation of photography workshops designed to engage parents and families of Blackpool. Including Blackpool Central Library Exhibition.

 2017 July – Exhibition Small Worlds Festival. Civic Photography.

 2017 July –  We Love To Dance: Sam Jayne Simpson Documentation of public and social dance-based workshops for community groups.

 2016 July 10-14 We Are Here Because We Are Here: Turner Prize Winner Jeremy Deller. Documentation of Battle of Somme project: Images featured on BBC Television Documentary. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b083bk7n

July 2016 – EXHIBITION: Blott Art Studios. Sugar and Spite. Group exhibition based around Punks.

 June 2016 – South Beach Drop-In: Photography workshops and blog creation. Working in collaboration with Jill Reidy to deliver workshops to individuals in low income areas to create confidence and pride in the community supported by Blackpool Council.

 2016 January EXHIBITION: Abingdon Studion – Indeference. Collaboration with Abingdon Studios and artist and Lecturer Jayne Simpson. Images and installation investigating spaces that once were held in high esteem.

2016 – Blackpool Grand Theatre Blackpool. The Tiger Who Came to Tea Project Creation of junior photography workshops as collaboration with Jill Reidy Photographer. Creation of zine.

2016 – Present Better Start/ NSPCC Successfully awarded Better Start Commission for web and promotional literature. Supported by The NSPCC and The National Lottery. Creation of staged and unstaged images for website and hardcopy documents. Photography for issues around physical health in children, Post Natal Depression, Breast Feeding, community engagement https://www.blackpoolbetterstart.org.uk/

2016 - Grundy Art Gallery. Created and delivered workshops for Sensory Systems. Documentation for Ben Cain Exhibition for press and social media.

December 2015 – March 2016 – EXHIBITION: Grundy Art Gallery – Civic Photography. Collaborative photography exhibition exploring civic and community pride.

 July 2015 – EXHIBITION: Phil Winstons Dance Studio – Dance With The Devil. A study of dance and what it means to those who do it. Collaboration with Sam Jayne Simpson: Drawing and Photography

 2015-14 Leftcoast Behind the scenes and documentation at Showzam Circus Festival Behind The Curtain Blog  Leftcoast Banquet Banquet Blog written word and photographic collaboration documenting food-based events throughout The Fylde and Wyre areas culminating in live performance over 2 days.

2015 – Jobs, Friends and Houses. http://jobsfriendshouses.org.uk/ worked with Len Grant to support individuals in abstinence recovery through photography workshops to build confidence and gain new skills. http://jobsfriendshouses.org.uk/

2015 – Present Whipper Snapper:  workshops for aspiring and junior photographers.  childrenscentres.https://whippersnappersphotographyworkshops.wordpress.com awarded funding through Leftcoast Creative People and Places 

2012– present Photography Editor Blackpool Social Club writing and creation of articles and images for creative arts based events for a digital magazine.

Link to formal CV: https://cjgriffithsphoto.carbonmade.com/about