We are delighted to announce that Rebecca Orleans is one of the artists who will be contributing to our upcoming Lisel Haas exhibition at the Library of Birmingham!
Rebecca is a self taught multi disciplinary artist, using the medium of photography to develop her practice.
Happy National Pet Day from our team behind the scenes! 🐱 🐶 ❤️
#NationalPetDay
We are excited to share that Gibson Kochanek are the next artists to join the Lisel Haas project! This collaborative duo founded their studio in 2014 and merge the disciplines of photomontage, illustration, and graphic design to create striking, concept-driven visual work.
The session was led by Jaskirt Dhaliwal-Boora, Clare Hewitt and @jenwilbur.bsky.social.
Thank you to Irina Mackie for documenting the session 🙌
Song: Home-Made Jam by Bobbi Humphrey
A huge thank you to everyone who attended our Lisel Haas archive exploration workshop in collaboration with Luna at the Library of Birmingham on Saturday! We had a really wonderful time sharing our research on Lisel Haas and Grete Bermbach and recieving feedback from the group.
In this two-hour long workshop aimed at women, women-identifying and non-binary photographers in Birmingham and the West Midlands, you will learn about the life and work of Lisel Haas through an exploration of the materials in the archive.
Tomorrow! Join us and Luna to explore the Lisel Haas archive at the Library of Birmingham. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lisel-haas...
We are so excited to announce the second artist who is joining the Lisel Haas project! Laura Chen will create an artistic response to the archive that will be on display as part of our upcoming exhibition at the Library of Birmingham.
Pat Kirkham is a Birmingham-born roller skater who began her skating career at the Tower Ballroom in Ladywood. During her career, she set 4 world records for speed skating. sites.google.com/bertzassocia...
Yasmin Ali is Team Lead of the Battery Energy Management System Development at RWE. We interviewed her about her work as part of our @hyacademyeuproject.bsky.social expert interview series. www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aEV...
Lilo Maclachlan is Head of Chemistry and Head of the English Medium High School at Deutsche Internationale. We interviewed her about her work with Siemens Stiftung as part of our @hyacademyeuproject.bsky.social expert interview series. www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Aju...
Empress Gibbs is a Birmingham roller skater and founder of Skate Buddies, an organisation which brings people and communities together through roller skating. www.bertzassociates.net/blog/empress...
Lisel Haas and Grete Bermbach were two women photographers who fled Nazi perseuction and settled in Birmingham in 1938. Lisel is most well know for her incredible theatre photography, much of which is in the V&A archives. www.bertzassociates.net/projects/lis...
Happy International Women's Day! In celebration, we're sharing some of the amazing women that have featured in our projects #IWD2026
Why purple, white and green? These are the colours of women's suffrage, initially used by the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU), better known as Suffragettes
Welcome to the team Nancy Mein!
We are pleased to have Nancy joining us as Curatorial Assistant on our Lisel Haas project. She will be helping with the planning and co-ordination of our upcoming exhibition, due to open in late July.
Text reads: Anu Gamanagari is an India-born, UK-based visual artist and arts worker whose work explores themes of motherhood, migration, and belonging. Her practice is grounded in the rhythms of everyday life, drawing from personal experiences as a mother, migrant, and musafir (मुसाफिर – traveller) to create intimate portraits of care, identity, and transformation. Working primarily with photography, Anu’s long-form projects centre on the domestic, capturing those closest to her to reflect on shifting roles, intergenerational relationships, and the invisible labour that underpins family and community life. Through this lens, she explores how the rhythms of everyday life create a sense of home, transforming the ordinary into reflections on love, loss, and resilience.
Text reads: Anu was one of the winners of the Portrait of Britain 2024, 2025 and the English Heritage Archive’s Picturing Highstreets commission in 2023. Her work has been exhibited at FORMAT Festival (2025), Midlands Art Centre (Belonging, 2025), RBSA Photography Prize (2023, 2025), and Aspex Gallery (Traces of Being, 2025). She has been shortlisted for the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize (2021, 2023) and shortlisted for the RPS IPE 165. Alongside her practice, Anu curates and manages community-facing projects that amplify overlooked voices, including The Meadows (solo exhibition by Rita Pena, 2025), REFLECTOR (2023–24), My Queer Life (2024), and WomeninPhotoBirmingham (2024).
We are so excited to share that Anu Gamanagari is joining us on the Lisel Haas project! She will create an artistic response to the archive that will be on display as part of our upcoming exhibition at the Library of Birmingham.
Image credit: Marley Starskey Butler
📅 Saturday 14 March
⏰ 11:30 am - 1:30 pm
📍 Wolson Centre at the Library of Birmingham
🎟️ Free, booking required
🔗 www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lisel-haas...
This workshop is supported by funding from The National Archives
Join us and Luna to explore the Lisel Haas archive at the Library of Birmingham! In this workshop aimed at women-identifying and non-binary photographers in Birmingham and the West Midlands, you will learn about the life and work of Lisel Haas through an exploration of the materials in the archive.
This meeting truly showed the importance of keeping LGBTQ+ history alive and how these stories can empower communities today 🤝
You can read about this meeting and about Jen and Iris’ research trip on our website 🔗 sites.google.com/bertzassocia...
Happy LGBTQ+ History Month! We’re proud to contribute queer history by sharing Lisel Haas’ story ❤️🏳️🌈A recent trip to Mönchengladbach taken by @jenwilbur.bsky.social and Iris Bertz allowed them to connect queer past and future by meeting with Queers an der Niers, the LGBTQ+ centre in Haas’ home town.
You can read more about the trip in a new blog written by Jen, available on our website now.
📸 Photos in collage taken by Jen Wilbur, John Akide, and Matthias Stutte
#Blog #LiselHaas #Heritage #Birmingham #Mönchengladbach
sites.google.com/bertzassocia...
New blog out now! 📝 Back in December, as part of our current @artscouncilengland.bsky.social project, our team went to Mönchengladbach to find out more about Lisel Haas and her home town. They met with local arts and heritage professionals, community organisations, and delved into the archive 💬
We would love to encourage all women and girls to take an interest in science-based careers and this interview is a great place to learn more about what a career in hydrogen could look like. You can watch our interview with her on the HyAcademy YouTube channel www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aEV...
Today is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science! Would you like to inspire young women to pursue a career in science?
As part of @hyacademyeuproject.bsky.social we interviewed Yasmin Ali, an influential chemical engineer who has worked in many science-based fields. #WomeninScience
Calling all teachers and educators - we want to hear from you! As part of the @hyacademyeuproject.bsky.social we are working on the creation of learning resources for schools. Please fill out this survey to let us know what resources you'd like in your classroom: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
🎥 Why join #HyAcademy?
Iris Bertz from @bertzassociates.bsky.social Associates explains it perfectly: HyAcademy connects schools, universities and industry to build the skills the hydrogen sector really needs.
#HydrogenEducation #H2Skills
We are pleased to welcome Kaia Bailey to the Bertz Associates team!
As Research Assistant, she will be work on our Lisel Haas project to aide the cataloguing of the collection and write pieces to share the story of the archive.
Want to know more about hydrogen? It's time for Fun Fact Friday!
Did you know that hydrogen is extremely versatile? From industry, power, buildings and transport, it has a wide array of applications and can be used in a myriad of ways.
Learn more with @hyacademyeuproject.bsky.social
Interested in learning more about how a Europe wide project runs behind the scenes? Our Technical Lead Aaron Lad has written a blog about the recent HyAcademy General Assembly in Brussels!
www.bertzassociates.net/blog/the-bru...
