The archive has a particular focus on Cockpit Gallery Holborn exhibition programme, with some material also relating to touring shows. This material includes posters, prints, invoices and cuttings. There is also some documentation of events, including transparencies and negatives of installation and buildings.

The gallery's shows covered a wide range of social and political issues from educational, activist and artistic perspectives, with a broad educational and community mindset.

It was part of a broader development of photographic practices in the 1970s and 1980s, concerning issues of social emancipation and representation. Some of the exhibitions were co-curated with participants or with other community groups or with school students who were encouraged to take portraits of each other, or self-portraits.

In other exhibitions, the gallery invited established photographers to show their work who were also dealing with issues of representation, such as Armet Francis, Anita Corbin, and Jo Spence.

Notable projects include:
'100 Months of Women’s Liberation with Spare Rib', 1980
'Julie Mimmack: The Cage is Fixed', 1981
'Promises, Promises': An exhibition based on Henry Grant's Photographs, 1984
'Our Way of Rockin',' 1984
'Armet Francis: The Black Triangle', 1985
'Staying on: A photographic exhibition about staying on at school', 1985
'Homeworking: Time for Change', 1985
'On Yer Bikes Boys', 1986
'The Picture of Health?' A touring exhibition by Jessica Evans, Rosy Martin, Maggie Murray, Jo Spence, Yana [?Jana] Stajno, 1986
'Aurat Shakti: Asian Women Living in the Country,' Cockpit Gallery Holborn, 3 - 26 Mar 1986
Jo Spence, Photography Workshop, 'Beyond the Family Album... Public and Private Images', 1987
Rosy Martin and the Women’s Design Service, 'It’s Not All Swings and Roundabouts', 1989.