In this hands-on short workshop, in which participants will have an opportunity to work with images from the Shirley Baker collection, Anna will explore the relationship between the curator and their audience. How might this relationship be negotiated differently? Does thinking about 'your' audience limit your own creative impulses and passions? What happens if we approach curating as a situated diaological and collaborative practice? How does it change things? What if you think of yourself as a participatory viewer?

Anna Douglas is an independent curator of exhibitions and projects responding to film, photography, sound, performance, architecture and everyday life. Currently she interested in collections of ‘overlooked’ photographs which she ‘re-animates’ through contemporary curatorial strategies to suggest alternative ways of valuing and interpreting photography that give rise to a wide-range of interpretations. Since 2012, Anna has curated projects responding to the private collection of Shirley Baker, a ‘neglected’, yet prolific, Northern photographer. Commissioned by The Photographers Gallery, London (2015), Anna’s major exhibition and book of Shirley Baker’s photographs restored the photographer’s reputation as one of Britain’s post-war pioneers. The exhibition toured to PhotoEspagne, Madrid (2106) and was re-curated at Manchester Art Gallery in 2017.