Kaylee Francis and Zoe Murphy

Wednesday 18th February 2026, 12.00 - 2.00 PM

Held at Elsyium Gallery, Swansea

Kaylee Francis and Zoe Murphy

About the artists:

Zoe Murphy is a Swansea-based creative, writer, performance poet, and dance teacher whose work champions working-class representation and accessibility in the arts. She is the founder and Director of Out Loud Arts Collective CIC, a community-focused organisation dedicated to inclusive creative opportunities, and the host of the Out Loud podcast, where she elevates underrepresented voices and stories from artists and changemakers. Zoe’s writing and poetry explore community, identity, and cultural expression, and she continues to perform, publish, and mentor through creative workshops, dance teaching, and spoken word practice.

Kaylee Francis is a photographer from Swansea, South Wales, whose work challenges the stereotyping of working-class communities. She explores how photography and activism can resist misrepresentation and promote agency. Her practice aims to critique the media’s use of clichéd imagery and narratives, highlighting their impact not just on public perception, but on how communities understand themselves.

Session details:

Francis and Murphy will discuss how working-class lives are represented in photography and who actually gets access to the tools, spaces, and opportunities to make work in the first place. While the arts are often presented as inclusive, structural barriers like class, cost, geography, and cultural gatekeeping continue to shape who gets seen and whose stories are told. Photography has long documented working-class communities, often through images made by outsiders, raising questions about authorship, power, and visibility. By looking at representation and access together, this talk explores what it means for working-class photographers to tell their own stories and how photography might move toward more meaningful equity and accountability.

*Funded by The Welsh Government, St David’s Day fund