FACT Liverpool

🫶 If you work with young people and are interested in creative storytelling, join artist Sahjan Kooner and FACT's Learning Team for an informal tour, chat, and complimentary pastry in the new exhibition (darkforest) The Zone of Ghosts.

🫶 This is a great chance for fellow learning teams, academics, artists, and educators working with storytelling, to talk to the artist about how they created worlds, stories, and games with young people.

🗓️ Thu 18 June / 10:00
🎟️ Free → fact.co.uk/whats-on

📸 Rob Battersby

🩵 This weekend, explore three free exhibitions by Rachel Maclean, ONLY SLIME, and Sahjan Kooner at FACT!

✨ In our foyer gallery, ONLY SLIME presents AFTERLIFE, inviting you to embody characters through motion capture and journey between fantasy computer-game worlds in search of a higher purpose.

✨ Rachel Maclean's They've Got Your Eyes is a response to the ongoing AI arms race, connecting it to the Industrial Revolution and the havoc wrought in the blind pursuit of ‘progress’.

✨ Guided by the belief that imagination is our most important form of technology, Sahjan Kooner's (darkforest) The Zone of Ghosts invites us into a world created in collaboration with young people aged 12-19 from Liverpool and Leigh.

⭐️ Free entry
🗓️ Wednesday - Saturday 11-6
📍 FACT Liverpool

📸 1-2 Kieran Irvine, 3 Rob Battersby

Now Open! 🌲 Guided by the belief that imagination is our most important form of technology, Sahjan Kooner's (darkforest) The Zone of Ghosts invites us into a world created in collaboration with young people aged 12-19 from Liverpool and Leigh.

🌲 Within the gallery, a dark forest grows, and imagined artefacts made by the young people sit within the walls of an infinity-symbol-shaped structure. On one side, a digital and tabletop game can be played, and on the other, a campfire creates space to reflect and imagine how different futures might be made.

⭐️ Free entry
🗓️ Wednesday - Saturday 11-6
📍 FACT Liverpool

〰️

(darkforest) The Zone of Ghosts by Sahjan Kooner is commissioned by FACT Liverpool and made in collaboration with young people from Global Friends, Unity Youth and Young Inspectors, with funding from , Eleanor Rathbone Charitable Trust, the DWF Foundation, and the Chrimes Family Charitable Trust.

The Zone of Ghosts digital game was developed by Poppy Curran Jones, with board game design by , and is produced by and FACT Liverpool. This project is part of New Perspectives, a partnership between Wigan Museums, Global Friends and FACT Liverpool with funding from Art Fund.

📸

🏳️‍🌈 Join us on Wed 2 June for an exciting selection of films from the Iris Prize LGBTQ+ Film Festival! First up will be award winners and audience favourites from the 2025 edition of the festival, followed by a double bill showing that love has always been our greatest act of defiance.

Full line up of short films below 👇

Y TOLLDY / Dir. Dan Thomas
When Emyr visits his hometown with his partner, a decade after vowing not to return, a chance meeting with his old school bully turns into a terrifying battle against forces they cannot explain.

BLACKOUT / Dir. Chris Urch
When a young man living in a high-rise is disturbed by domestic violence in the flat next door, he comes to realise that violence isn’t always on the outside – sometimes it’s with us all along.

ONE DAY THIS KID / Dir: Alexander Farah
As told through a deftly composed array of small yet pivotal moments, a first-generation Afghan Canadian man takes steps toward establishing an identity of his own while always conscious of his father’s shadow.

NEVER NEVER NEVER / Dir. John Sheedy
In a quaint Welsh fishing village, a young Shirley Bassey impersonator and a fisherman are swept into a secret romance, battling the tides of family and tradition as they search for the courage to claim their own happiness.

TWO PEOPLE EXCHANGING SALIVA / Dir. Natalie Musteata & Alexandre Singh
In a farcical world where kissing is punishable by death, a personal shopper threatens the status quo.

JACKIE / Dir. Emily Sargent
A documentary about the life of Jackie Forster; a groundbreaking, outrageous — and largely unknown — LGBT+ rights campaigner whose underground donor s***m operation helped the first q***r women to have children.

🗓️ Wed 2 Jun, 19:00
🎟️£8-10 ➡️ fact.co.uk/whats-on

Our activity sheets are the perfect family-friendly introduction to our exhibitions! ✨

Pick one up for free on your next visit.

🏳️‍🌈 3000 Le****ns Go To York 🏳️‍🌈

This documentary covers one thrilling decade, when thousands of women flocked to the York Le***an Arts Festival (YLAF) each autumn, to meet their favourite authors, buy books, hear top female artists live on stage and dance the night away at the ‘disco of a thousand lesbians.’

Featuring interviews with famous writers Val McDermid, Sarah Waters and Jackie Kay, 3000 Le****ns Go To York is a real celebration of the historical significance of this iconic festival!

🗓️ Wed 3 Jun, 19:00
🎟️£8-10 ➡️ fact.co.uk/whats-on

We're excited to welcome back the Iris Prize LGBTQ+ Film Festival for two film screenings in June! Here's what's on ↓

⭐️ IRIS 2025 BEST BITS + WHEN LOVE BROKE THE LAW
Tue 2 Jun / 19:00 / £8-10
From a haunted tollhouse to a high-rise reckoning, the short films in IRIS 2025 BEST BITS are award winners and audience favourites from the 2025 Iris Prize LGBTQ+ Film Festival.
WHEN LOVE BROKE THE LAW is a double bill showing that love has always been our greatest act of defiance. These films celebrate desire, protest, and the power of those who refused to live by anyone else’s rules.

⭐️ 3000 LE****NS GO TO YORK
Wed 3 Jun / 19:00 / £8-10
This documentary covers one thrilling decade, when thousands of women flocked to the York Le***an Arts Festival each autumn, to meet their favourite authors, buy books, hear top female artists live on stage and dance the night away at the ‘disco of a thousand lesbians.’

〰️

Stills:
1) Never Never Never, dir. John Sheedy
2) Two People Exchanging Saliva, dir. Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh
3) Blackout, dir. Chris Urch
4) 3000 Le****ns Go To York, dir. Rachel Dax

COMMUNITY CINEMA: OUR PLANET, THE PEOPLE, MY BLOOD

Join us for a special screening of the documentary Our Planet, The People, My Blood, featuring a Q&A with the filmmakers and Atomic Veterans.

This documentary brings to light the little known impact of the world’s nuclear testing programmes, and how they have impacted different communities.

🗓️ Mon 18 May / 19:00
🎟️ £15 / 50% of proceeds go to LABRATS → fact.co.uk/film/our-planet-the-people-my-blood