Grain Photography Hub

20/04/2026

17/04/2026

We are delighted to host a talk by Artist Joy Gregory on the 28th April from 6.00 PM at Birmingham School of Art.

Tickets - £5.00 + Booking Fee
Book - https://www.tickettailor.com/events/grainprojects/2093164

Joy Gregory is an award-winning artist specialising in photography who is known for her work concerning issues of identity politics and 'beauty' culture. A graduate of Manchester Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art she has worked and exhibited widely both in the UK and internationally participating in numerous biennales and festivals.

Born in the UK to Jamaican parents, she has always been intrigued by the impact of European history and colonization on global perceptions of identity, memory, folklore, and traditional knowledge. As a photographer, she employs various media, including video, digital and analogue photography, and Victorian print processes. In 2002, Gregory was awarded the NESTA Fellowship, which provided her with the time and freedom to research a significant project on language endangerment. The first instalment of this series was the video piece titled "Gomera," which premiered at the Sydney Biennale in May 2010.

Her work is featured in both private and public including the Victoria & Albert Museum, UK Government Art Collection, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia and Yale University, New Haven. Her major retrospective Catching Flies with Honey opened at the Whitechapel Gallery, London in October 2025 and is accompanied by a publication of the same name. She is the editor of ‘Shining Lights’, an anthology of Black British Women’s Photography in 1980s and 1990’s published by MACK/Autograph available February 2024

Supported by Arts Council England Birmingham City University

07/04/2026

We are delighted to announce Jeremy Chih-Hao Chuang & Eliza Bennett as the selected artists for the GRAIN 2026 Bursary award.

About Jeremy Chih-Hao Chuang:
Jeremy Chih-Hao Chuang is a Taiwanese artist based in London, UK. Chuang holds a master’s degree at the Royal College of Art. He focuses extensively on the interrelationship between home and self-identity from an autobiographical perspective, which he derived into a subjective language that uses photography to engage in visual contemplation. With his studies and art, he predominately concentrates on the integration of interdisciplinary media, sculpture and installations, specific bodies and spaces with photography.

About Eliza Bennett:
Eliza Bennett is a multi-disciplinary arts practitioner & facilitator, based in Stafford UK. Her work evolves artful methods for communicating a range of sensory impressions by engaging in playful, attentive research within the landscapes and places she is situated. Works often tap into a bodily recognition beyond language, inviting us to consider the affective, enchanted character of the worlds in which we are enmeshed. What arises are material propositions for ways of being, reading and viewing that are attuned to both emergence and loss.

Supported by Arts Council England

10/03/2026

Last chance to book your tickets for this evenings talk with the brilliant Edmund Clark from 6 PM at Birmingham School of Art.

Details and to book - https://www.tickettailor.com/events/grainprojects/2064467

08/03/2026

2026 GRAIN Bursary Opportunity - Deadline Tomorrow (9th March) at 12 Noon.

Two Bursaries will be awarded to UK-based Artists with a Photographic practice to realise ambitious new works made in the West Midlands.

Artists will receive a £2,000 award each with mentoring support from GRAIN Projects to create new work over 8 months.

Now in its fifth edition this opportunity is part of a broader series of professional development opportunities conceived and developed by GRAIN Projects, celebrating 10 years as a platform and champion of photography, supported by Arts Council England and Birmingham City University.

For full details and how to apply - https://grainphotographyhub.co.uk/portfolio-type/2026-bursary-opportunity-x-2/

Image Credit: (c) Clare Hewitt, Grain Bursary Awardee 2019

04/03/2026

Deadline approaching for the 2026 GRAIN Bursary Opportunity

9th March 2026 at 12 noon

Two Bursaries will be awarded to UK-based Artists with a Photographic practice to realise ambitious new works made in the West Midlands.

Artists will receive a £2,000 award each with mentoring support from GRAIN Projects to create new work over 8 months.

Supported by Arts Council England and Birmingham City University.

For full details and how to apply please see the link in bio.

Image Credits, former Bursary Awardees.

- Clare Hewitt, Bursary Award 2019
- Exodus Crooks Bursary Award 2021
- Chris H***e, Bursary Award 2020
- Caitriona Dunnet, Bursary Award 2017
- Ngadi Smart, Bursary Award 2020

04/03/2026

We are delighted to host a talk by photographer Alicia Bruce on the 31st March from 6.00 PM on Zoom.

Tickets - £5.00 + Booking Fee
Book -
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/grainprojects/2093016

Alicia Bruce is an award winning, working-class artist, photographer, community collaborator and activist. Her photography sits between documentary and staged imagery with an interest in local and global communities. She tells humane co-authored stories of people and place often looking through the history of art for visual referencing. Within the communities Bruce collaborates within she is interested in environmental issues, portraiture, human rights, equality, equity, feminism, politics of space, territories and heritage.

Alicia’s recent monograph‘I Burn But I Am Not Consumed’(Daylight Books, 2023) documents sixteen years of Donald Trump’s impact on Menie, a coastal Scottish community from 2006 until present day was internationally acclaimed. The book was co-authored with the residents of Menie.

Her photographs are held in several public collections including National Galleries of Scotland, University of St Andrews, RSA, Martin Parr Foundation, Museum of Contemporary Photography(Chicago) and UK Parliament.

Supported by Arts Council England and Birmingham City University Art Activisms BCU.

03/03/2026

Photographers Talks Programme

Edmund Clark
10th March 2026
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM
Birmingham School of Art, B3 3BX
£5.00 (plus booking fee) - https://www.tickettailor.com/events/grainprojects/2064467

Alicia Bruce
31st March 2026
6.00 PM - 7.30 PM
Zoom
£5.00 (plus booking fee) - https://www.tickettailor.com/events/grainprojects/2093016

Joy Gregory
28th April 2026
6.00 PM - 7.30 PM
Birmingham School of Art, B3 3BX
£5.00 (plus booking fee) - https://www.tickettailor.com/events/grainprojects/2093164

Supported by Arts Council England Birmingham City University

02/03/2026

We are delighted to host a talk by Artist Edmund Clark on the 10th March from 6.00 PM at Birmingham School of Art.

Tickets - £5.00 + Booking Fee
Booking - https://www.tickettailor.com/events/grainprojects/2064467

Edmund Clark, links history, politics and representation through photography, video, documents, found images and installation. Recurring themes are experiences, spaces and systems of control and power in contemporary conflict and other contexts.

Previous subjects include extraordinary rendition and the CIA secret detention programme, detention at the US Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, and UK government anti-terrorism procedures. Clark spent five years as artist-in-residence in HM Prison Grendon, Europe’s only wholly therapeutic prison for violent and sexually violent offenders.

Solo museum exhibitions include the International Center of Photography Museum, New York, the Imperial War Museum, London, and Zephyr Raum für Fotografie, Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen, Mannheim. Awards include the Royal Photographic Society Hood Medal and an Honorary RPS Fellowship, the British Journal of Photography International Photography Award and, with Crofton Black, an ICP Museum Infinity Award and Rencontres d’Arles Photo-Text Book Award. He holds a PhD by Published Work from the University of the Arts London where he is Reader in the Political Image.

Supported by Arts Council England Birmingham City University Art Activisms BCU.

03/02/2026

GRAIN Projects & Pathshala South Asian Media Institute are delighted to announce Turjo Mushfiq & Zillah Bowes as the selected artists for the International Exchange Residency programme.

About Turjo Mushfiq:
Turjo Mushfiq is an artist, educator, and book maker whose practice extends beyond photography, using images as entry points into multidisciplinary explorations. His works reinterpret personal and collective experiences through sculpture, staging, text, and image. Turjo has exhibited at Rencontres d’Arles, Lumix Festival, Dok Festival, and VOLUMES – Art
Publishing Days, among others. He co-curated Bubbles (2022) and served as Associate Curator for Chobi Mela 0 (2021) and Chobi Mela XI (2026). An alumnus of Pathshala South Asian Media Institute and the University of the Arts London, he currently teaches at Pathshala.

About Zillah Bowes:
Zillah Bowes is an artist and filmmaker with a practice across lens-based media, poetry and installation. With a spiritual enquiry around climate change and biodiversity, her work frequently explores the relationship between the individual and the natural environment. She has won the British Journal of Photography International Photography Award, Zealous Amplify: Environment, Aesthetica New Talent Award and was awarded the Future Wales Fellowship 2023-2025. She has participated in programmes with Jerwood, Cove Park, FLAMIN/Film London, g39 and Hypha Studios, and her work has been acquired for collections including Museum Wales and Welsh Parliament.

Supported by British Council British Council Bangladesh 2025/26 Connections Through Culture Grant.