How Impressions Gallery is connecting people through photography during pandemic

For any gallery, the moment when it became clear back in March that they would be shutting their doors to the public for the forseeable future was difficult. But for an artspace like Impressions Gallery in Bradford, that is so embedded in and connected to its community, it was especially hard.

“The thing about Impressions is that it is such a social place – there are so many people who treat it as a second home,” says the gallery’s director Anne McNeill. “That was really difficult, worrying about our older visitors, in particular, who come to our weekly Time for Tea sessions. At the time I had my practical head on – obviously I have to protect the welfare of the visitors and of my team – but it was hard.”

Shortly before closing – in fact, just three days prior to the lockdown – Impressions had been preparing to launch, with their young people’s collective New Focus, a film entitled Forget Me Not, based on and inspired by the exhibition that was running in the gallery at the time, Nalini featuring the work of artist Arpita Shah.

Shah’s photographs explored the connected histories of her mother, grandmother and herself – revealing how their memories, histories and bodies were intertwined across time and space.

“The members of New Focus had asked their parents and grandparents about an object that was important to them and filmed them. We launched the film online instead, with a Q&A afterwards via Twitter. On the back of that, New Focus set up a Zoom meeting with Bradford Council to find a way of carrying on with Forget Me Not and to reach out to older members of the community.

"We came up with Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder – connecting Bradford through photography. People have been invited to share their images and thoughts on their precious objects.” Aside from this McNeill and her curators have been rearranging their exhibition programme as much as they can.

“It is really important to find ways of giving our photographers financial support,” she says. They have also put all their resources online for people to access and are thinking about how things might be after lockdown. “The Arts Council have been incredibly supportive responding so quickly with emergency funding, and Bradford Council have been great.

"Having that financial worry lifted has meant we are in the privileged position of being able to plan. This is a time for reflection. We will all come out of this different and we have to be leading the response. We can’t go back to the way things were before, we need to embrace the changes.”

For more stories from the YP Magazine and The Yorkshire Post features team, visit our Facebook page.

Editor’s note: first and foremost - and rarely have I written down these words with more sincerity - I hope this finds you well.

Almost certainly you are here because you value the quality and the integrity of the journalism produced by The Yorkshire Post’s journalists - almost all of which live alongside you in Yorkshire, spending the wages they earn with Yorkshire businesses - who last year took this title to the industry watchdog’s Most Trusted Newspaper in Britain accolade.

And that is why I must make an urgent request of you: as advertising revenue declines, your support becomes evermore crucial to the maintenance of the journalistic standards expected of The Yorkshire Post. If you can, safely, please buy a paper or take up a subscription. We want to continue to make you proud of Yorkshire’s National Newspaper but we are going to need your help.

Postal subscription copies can be ordered by calling 0330 4030066 or by emailing [email protected]. Vouchers, to be exchanged at retail sales outlets - our newsagents need you, too - can be subscribed to by contacting subscriptions on 0330 1235950 or by visiting www.localsubsplus.co.uk where you should select The Yorkshire Post from the list of titles available.

If you want to help right now, download our tablet app from the App / Play Stores. Every contribution you make helps to provide this county with the best regional journalism in the country.

Sincerely. Thank you.

James Mitchinson

Editor