Us & Them – Immersive Photographic Exhibition
3rd – 26th September 2026 (closed Sundays and Mondays)
Tuesday to Saturday 9.15am to 4.30pm plus specific event evenings 7-10pm
“One hundred years ago, that would have been us…”
Looking is complicated. Looking is political. Looking can be uncomfortable. Yet that is exactly what the Freewheelers Theatre and Media Company invite you to do through their provocative new immersive project, Us & Them.
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, the Freewheelers have been able to gain fascinating insights into the experience of those from the past.
Funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, Freewheelers have collaborated with Surrey History Centre, Professor Alana Harris of King’s College London, On The Record, 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.
The Freewheelers are a diverse and creative company of people with disabilities based in Leatherhead, Surrey. For over 30 years they have worked alongside directors, producers, composers, artists and writers, to co-create and produce engaging, thought-provoking, funny, joyous and highly entertaining theatre, dance, film, and music. Their mission is to be a force for change and artistic excellence in the world of Disability Arts. Us & Them represents their next step in achieving this mission.
With the expert assistance of Julian Pooley, archivist and manager of the Surrey History Centre who first rescued the original patient portraits, each Freewheeler selected a “friend” in the archives at Surrey History Centre whose portrait will be displayed alongside their own. The centre is home to one of the largest and oldest collections of diagnostic photographs and medical treatment records relating to people with learning disabilities. Many of these records document patients of the Epsom Cluster of asylums, residents of institutions local to the Freewheelers.
Although historical medical terminology such as “idiot”, “hysteric”, and “imbecile” has been replaced by “learning disabled”, and institutionalisation has given way to person-centred care, Us & Them asks us to consider the short expanse of time that separates the use of terms like ‘imbecile’ from ‘person with learning disabilities’. By composing their own portraits, today’s Freewheelers give voice and visibility to their silent “friends in the archive”, bringing into focus the humanity often erased by the diagnostic gaze.
There is a person behind the picture, and it takes Us to find Them.
Access
This event is fully accessible and does not need to be booked. But if you are visiting with a group, if you let us know in advance we can better support access needs.
Us & Them is a collaboratively produced project engaging partners beyond the Freewheelers theatre company. They would like to thank:
Emma Brown, Wet Plate Collodion Photographer,
Professor Alana Harris, Historical Consultant,
Julian Pooley, Archivist and Manager of Surrey History Centre,
Stefan Pollak, Documentary Filmmaker,
Laura Khan Mitchison, Oral Historian, Film Producer, and Exhibition Consultant,
Dr Elena Marchevska, Evaluator
Gary S. Thomas, Media Tutor,
Dr Josh Sadler, Curator
