02/09/2026
Funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, Freewheelers have collaborated with Surrey History Centre, Professor Alana Harris of King’s College London, and photographic artist Emma Brown to create a collection of nearly 100 tintype portraits.
Modern day Freewheelers portraits are displayed alongside historical asylum patients to ask.
What has changed in the understanding and support of people with mental health challenges and physical and learning disabilities over the last 150 years?
What has stayed the same?
What has been brought to light?
What remains obscured?
Us & Them collides the past and present in an immersive, co-produced heritage and photography exhibition that explores these questions through image-making, and acts of looking.
One hundred and fifty years ago, photography was still in its infancy, yet it played a central role in the diagnosis and categorisation of people who would now be described as having learning disabilities or mental illness. Those same photography techniques used to capture the earliest photographs of people with disabilities have been brought into the modern day for fifty Freewheelers artists. Through the practice of making the image, our Freewheelers have been able to gain fascinating insights into the experience of those from the past.
There is a person behind the picture and it takes us to find them.
📍Us & Them exhibit opens
📅3rd September - 25th September
🕣Every Tuesday - Saturday 9.15am - 4.30pm
🎫 Free Entry
&Them
