AHC researcher launches community-led art exhibition exploring climate change debates

All exhibition events are completely free, require no booking, and are open to members of the public as well as the university community

A new exhibition exploring climate change debates online and tackling misinformation about global warming will launch in Leeds and Manchester this July.

Co-created by Dr Lone Sorensen, Associate Professor of Political Communication at the School of Media and Communication, and locals in the two cities, Faces and Threads aims to capture the emotions and experiences of marginalised communities engaging with online climate controversies.

Workshop participants creating artworks

The free exhibition opens on Thursday 9 July at the Corner Pocket Sculpture Park in Beeston, Leeds, before touring three other community art spaces across both cities until September.

Working alongside artist Parham Ghalamdar and curator Chris Bailkoski of Proforma, Dr Sorensen held creative workshops earlier this year with two grassroots spaces: Longsight Art Space in Manchester and Basement Arts Project in Leeds. Participants who are frequently targeted by online misinformation responded visually to social media content, shaping a layered collective artwork that turns complex digital dynamics into a tangible experience.

With this project, we wanted to give marginalised communities a platform to engage with climate debates on their own terms. The artworks are expressions of the emotions and experiences of people who often feel excluded from conventional debates but at the same time get targeted by toxic online discourse.

The project has been funded by the University of Leeds’ Cultural Institute and connects to a broader AHRC-funded research programme on mediated climate change politics. Each of the four exhibition openings features a dedicated cultural programme designed to make the evenings rich and accessible to all visitors.

Faces and Threads artwork

Exhibition schedule

The indoor events on 10 July and 1 September will showcase the same selection of five short films exploring themes of transmission, memory, and digital platforms:

• Memory Stone (Nikta Mohammadi, 2024): an exploration of migration and folklore on the West Yorkshire moors.
• Thought Broadcasting (Nick Jordan, 2017): a piece focusing on transmission, surveillance, and public signals.
• Truth Performed / Truth Disrupted (Parham Ghalamdar & Dr Lone Sorensen, 2026): a direct creative output of the research, using synthetic voices and AI images to examine political performance.
• PalCoreCore (Dana Dawud, 2023/24): an exploration of online images turned into an act of witnessing.
• Welcome to the Platform Era (antimemoria, 2026): a short film capturing the visual logic of modern platform culture.

Faces and Threads artwork

All exhibition events are completely free, require no booking, and are open to members of the public as well as the university community.