The Regeneration Gallery was set up by Sheffield based artist Eric Winnert at the beginning of 2007. The gallery's aim is to commission, produce and promote art that deals exclusively with Sheffield's city centre regeneration at the beginning of the 21st century; by using the people and the city to talk about the people and the city.
Eric Winnert moved to Sheffield in 2002 after completing a BA Photography course at the University of Derby. In 2003 he joined the team at Cupola Contemporary Art in Sheffield learning how to organise and promote art to a professional level, as well as learning how to frame art to a high quality.
Eric's primary concern for his art is to explore the relationship man has with his environment; how we shape it and how in turn it shapes us. In 2004 as part of Open Up Sheffield, he set up a photographic exhibition of the housing estate Park Hill held in one of the flats. Its aim was to create a dialogue with the public about what makes Park Hill what it is. In 2005 Eric curated a group exhibition to coincide with Spectator T, Art Sheffield 05. Titled Urban Invasion and held in a disused building that was being reclaimed as an inner city social centre, it looked at the decay and regeneration of the city. From 2005-06 Eric studied on the MA Photography course at the University of Sunderland, in which he produced a body of photographic work that looked at the community involvement of the seminal housing estate, Byker in Newcastle.