At the beginning of May 2020, People's Bureau (Eva Sajovic and Rebecca Davies), along with writer Sarah Butler and film maker Shona Hamilton put out a call for artists to respond to the questions
What is home?
What might the future of living look like?
What is the role of the artist in today's political, economic and social context?
Please join the successful artists, Nicola Privato, Julene Robinson, Ryan Skelton, Luzmira Zerpa and Omar Rocha, Katrina Wilde and Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos to share the outcomes of their at-home-artist-residencies. A rich mix of music, poetry, performance and visual art, performed live online on May 15th 2020.
This Is A Call – Online Event
Date: Saturday 16th May 2020, 18:30
Location: Zoom https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82975137128
At the beginning of May, Peoples’ Bureau (Eva Sajovic and Rebecca Davies), along with writer Sarah Butler and film maker Shona Hamilton put out a call for artists to respond to the questions
· What is the role of the artist in today's political, economic and social context?
· What is home?
· What might the future of living look like?
We are using funding from the AHRC best Research in film award, given to our latest project, UnEarthing Elephant, a film exploring and celebrating the value of the much maligned Elephant and Castle shopping centre, to support this initiative.
Please join the successful artists, Nicola Privato, Julene Robinson, Ryan Skelton, Luzmira Zerpa and Omar Rocha, and Katrina Wilde to share the outcomes of their at-home-artist-residencies. A rich mix of music, poetry, performance and visual art. The works will be punctuated by work from Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos. You are invited to join us on zoom at 18:30. We look forward to seeing you there.
Please note that the performance will be recorded and turned into a moving image art piece for exhibition purposes at a later point. Please mute your audio and turn on speaker view.
You can choose to switch your video on or off. If you do not want to be identified please change your name.
Artist Katrina Wilde will be delivering a durational performance/workshop during the performance. If you would like to take part please prepare:
· A needle
· Some thread
· Something that needs mending that you've been putting off doing
ARTISTS STATEMENTS:
Andreas / picpoet
PASSAGE
Three Moving-Poems about Home
Combining footage mainly from my flat in London and three texts I wrote drawing on the themes of home, return, touch, fear, skills, future, circularity, facade and depth, sharing, and connecting - all themes emerging from the work of the resident artists at This Is A Call - I composed three moving-poems that tried to capture the feelings of enclosure, the openness of a potentially different future, the sacrifices entailed and the need to share and touch I have been experiencing during the first couple of months of the Covid-19 global lockdown.
Julene
Against the backdrop of isolation and Covid-19 Robinson is interrogating home.Home in the intangible. Home beyond what can sometimes feel like unpleasantconfinement. Home in repetition. Home in Returning.
Home as memoriesready to be evoked. Home: A Meditation is a quiet contemplation and a strolldown memory lane hoping to find home somewhere along the way.
Katrina
As an artist, I'm interested in the democratisation of the arts &crafts, slow processes and creating deeper connections with our textilesthrough making & mending. The residency has provided me the opportunity toconnect with other textile artists through skill exchanges; embodied, shared knowledgepassed on to each other, facilitating a more holistic, peer-to-peer system oflearning.
Luzmira
We live in asociety that is obsessed with social media. With the current lockdown thisobsession has been exacerbated. People need to connect. All kind ofpractices are going streaming live online reaching local and global audiences.I observe that the time and resources invested in digital connection neglectthe immediate human surroundings.
As anartist, I am committed to exploring the integrity of connections, and withinthis, the meaning of boundaries and frontiers. Using my presence, my body, myvoice and other sounds in my immediate surroundings, human connections areignited. We need a human connection that can never be replaced by digitalmeans.
Nicola
Theway we live as communities is changing, it always does in a continuousdialectic between past and present, will and possibility, need andavailability. And it happens dramatically sometimes. In fact here we are again,discussing and striking and fighting whether the chalk sign on the floor shouldbe closer to "me" or to "them". A little more here and I'lllose my rights, a little more there and many more will die. Can I leave home?Who do I put at risk? What about personal freedom? And we discuss, day afterday, in our germ proof virtual Agora. What we seem not to realize isthat our new spaces are for profit, private areas, and the dynamics of ourdiscussions are not under our control.
It'sa generational issue, I think. We all feel powerless: everybody can be heard,but we want to be listened. We all feel precarious. We want to imagine afuture, but the present is pervasive, it tweets and blinks with flows ofemotions we can't scroll from our virtual wall. Or at least I feel this way.
So,I started to imagine how this messy flow of numbers representing datarepresenting words representing people could possibly make sense. Like zoomingout to see a bigger picture, not the sociologist's one, but the biased,subjective, flawed picture of the artist.
Mypractice was in improvised music, working to broaden the limits of traditionalimprovisation through the inclusion of interactive elements. I decided to lookfor those elements on the web.
Data-mining,the least poetic of things, was what helped me realize the emotional potentialof the link between art, data and social media. Every day small robots in theform of short scripts of code dive theinternet, looking for what we like (so we buy), what we fear (so we can bemanipulated), who we are in touch with (so we can be controlled). We're givingthose informations away in order to connect with each other, and I got curiouswether I could use the tools that target us, to bring through my work a glimpseof the connection we aim for.
Thesource I used for this project isTwitter. With a bot, I download tweets being posted in real time fromall over the world, containing three specific keywords related to the currentsuspended state: “Touch, Fear, Free”. Every time a tweet is downloaded, thekeyword is displayed, and triggers a musical event on a synthesizer. The resutis a sort of new collective improvisation, where unwilling Twitter users fromall over the world connect beyond the limits and rules of the virtual platformthey're into.
There'sa manipulative element in this work which I'd like to point out: The threewords are received by the system in the order they appear, but by choosingwhich ones to employ, their sounds and meanings radically shift allowing thecomposition to develop, but also displaying different and sometimes oppositemeanings. Sometimes the how is the what.
Omar
My work involves a lively conversation in themanifestation of the way of the present, through body movements to expresspaint strokes as understanding on time cycles.
The residency ignites in me a dialogue of extensionof home itself, as a spectator and participant of the art piece, jaunting intourban design, music and art to share new experiences of identity on thestreet.
Ryan
What is home? - “TakeCare”
My mother works asreceptionist for an eye optician but in my eyes she’s an actress. Throughoutall my life she has been to me the prima donna, the matriarch, the feministwithout ever saying she was one. My mother was born and is still based in Yorkand part of her theatrical skill set is her comical, legendary, at timesvolcanic set of quotes in the Yorkshire dialect - especially related to herfanatical love of cleaning her home.
I’m currently basedwith her at my family’s home in York since lockdown began after fleeing London.Friends have asked me “How do you navigate being with your family 247?”. Yes Ireply there are difficulties of being back home when you are in your midtwenties and are a past art student graduate - trade as an artist is preciousand at times a deeply unsettling path, self doubt in questioning yourself dailyis my art really worth it? Especially when questioned by parents who aren't inthe creative industries. But that never stopped my mother. She has always beenrooting for my projects, for my poetry, the most fey of the arts to astereotypical eye.
The performance ofpoetry is extremely enthralling and deeply uncommercial. A hobby. But I’vealways been fascinated by the ineffable power the spoken word can have onothers. An antidote to capitalism. Last year I did a poetry performance on myroof terrace that was for the public, for free and it was a wonderfulexperience. It taught me a lot. My performance for “This is a Call” isimprovised and is dedicated to my mother and her mother.
A call to question.
A call to object.
A call to say no. Enough.
There are other ways of living.
There are other other ways of moving forward.
Call-outfor five at-home-artist-residencies
We are Peoples Bureau (Eva Sajovic and Rebecca Davies), writer Sarah Butlerand film maker Shona Hamilton, who have worked together in Elephant and Castle, South London, since 2007. Our latest project, Unearthing Elephant -a film exploring and celebrating the value of the much maligned Elephant and Castle shopping centre – won the AHRC best early career film award in 2017. Part of the award was a small pot of funding to continue to develop ourfilm-making practice.
We are using this funding to invite five artists to take part in short at-home residencies during the current lockdown, the results of which will be performed online and made into a short film – continuing our participatory/collaborative approach to filmmaking, which defined our processin creating Unearthing Elephant. We will collectively support the selected applicants (should they wish) as part of their residency.
The project is not aboutCovid-19, but is happening because of and in the context of the pandemic. We are interested in artists who want to address one or more of the following questions:
· Whatis the role of the artist in today's political, economic and social context?
· What is home?
· What might the future of living look like?
We are asking each artist to:
· Make a new piece of work in response to one or more of the above questions
· Take part in a live, online performance/sharing of their work, which will also become part of a short film and shared after the event.
We are offering a £400 fee to each artist and expect eachartist to spend approximately 4 half days making work and a further half day on the event and any post-production queries, etc.
Timetable:
Call out Friday 24th April
Deadline for applications Friday 1st May
Successful artists informed Tuesday 5th May
Residencies completed by Tuesday 12th May
Final online event Saturday 16th May (evening)
Please send a brief statement (300 words max) to peoplesbureau.elephant@gmail.com by 12.00 Friday 1st May, detailing your interest in the call out and how you would approach the residency.
THE FUTURE OF LIVING
Tate Exchange, Tate Modern, Saturday 2nd and Sunday 3rd November 2019.
Peoples' Bureau in partnership with 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning
What is the future of living in times of great uncertainty? As the ecological emergency deepens and with our democracy in crisis, this timely programme of events considers 'power' in terms of energy and resources as well as asking: What is our role as citizens and artists to hold power to account? How can we contribute to systemic change, find and employ our own power, and create collaborative solutions? Or in other words, how can we think about the future of making in order to survive and thrive?
Peoples’ Bureau in partnership with 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning are co-organising a two-day event in collaboration with Land in Our Names (LION), Lancashire’s Anti-Fracking Nanas, and artists Alexis Calvas, Helen Brewer, Catherine Long, and Jane Lawson. Over the weekend, we will gather as artists, environmental protesters, land reparation activists, decolonial community organisers and academics to activate the space. We will take a practical, conceptual and theoretical look at re-skilling, sustainable and collaborative practice, material use, ancestral knowledge, and system changes. Through building, crafting, workshopping and conversing together, we will consider what are the materials and skills needed for resilient future of living.
Saturday 2nd Nov programme: 12.00 - 17.00
The campaigning 'UK Nanas' came into existence in the summer of 2014 as fracking sites began to appear across the UK. From a first act of ‘taking a field’ and staying for three weeks to alert neighbours of the location for another fracking site, they then went on to deliver public meetings, attend protests, take part in non-violent direct actions and encourage residents to self-empower and join in actions to defend their own communities. Delivering the unwelcome truth about the threat that continued fossil fuel extraction brings - is made more palatable by doing it with tea, cake and warm humanity. The worldwide and UK anti-fracking movement is hugely diverse with strong representation from older people and women. The Nanas continue to evolve as the campaign to protect our natural environment grows more urgent.
12.30 - 14:00
Building Community with the Anti-Fracking Nanas
Join the Nanas in a workshop exploring how we pull together as communities beyond our differences and make the most of all in the community who together bring a wealth of experience and knowledge.
12.30 - 17.00
Together We Sow with artist Amy Mordan
Open collaborative embroidery project. Working together employing needlework skills from different cultures.
Without overarching design, without end goal, we enjoy the communion of being together. Showing our creativity to each other and seeing what this open process of making can be.
14:00 - 17:00
Making Protest
With a 3pm tea and cake session at the ‘Gate Camp’
Join artists and activists in making furniture, banners and bunting for the on-going protest site at Preston New Road. There will be multiple activities to take part in over the course of the day, including:
- 'Build a Bench': Help build a bench to be decorated and assembled from recycled material. The previous (stolen) bench had been donated by locals to the camp and was an iconic piece of furniture used by politicians, activists and visitors to the site. At one point the bench was used to block the entrance to the fracking site and arrested!
- 'Knitting, ribboning and bunting': Bring out your inner 'Nana' as we create streams of fabric and colour used to reclaim community and tie messages of solidarity together.
- 'Banner-making': Paint, sew or glue your slogans, and help to visualise the DIY community that continues to fight against fracking and support communities in resistance.
Materials will be provided.
18:30 - 20:30
Dinner with La Bolina Global Eco-village Network in Spain for a conversation about community-making, hearing about their experience (closed event by invitation only)
Sunday 3rd Nov programme: 12.00 - 17.00
Land In Our Names (LION) is a new grassroots, black-led collective that organises around environmental and land justice issues, particularly as they relate to black people in England. We research, campaign, and educate for the development of black-led inclusive farms, gardens, and public green spaces, using a reparative land justice framework. Who are our elders that have farmed the land in this country? The insidious thing about british colonialism is it’s so violently indirect. When this country was an empire the sun never set on...we literally fed this country. Just because it wasn’t directly on this land, doesn’t mean we don’t have a right to this land.
This day takes place in the protest structure made by the anti-fracking Nanas the previous day. As well as a programme led by LION, we will hold workshops and events by the London Alternative Photography Collective and artists Catherine Long and Jane Lawson.
12:00 - 13:00
Welcome by LION
12.00 - 17:00
Re-skilling workshop on spinning wool. Artist Catherine Long will show you the ancient skill of carding and spinning fleece into woollen yarn. This activity enacts sociologist Richard Sennett’s concept in Together: the Ritual and Pleasures of Cooperation (2012) that in our current competitive society we need to re-learn skills in cooperation and how using the model of the workshop and traditional crafting can help us regain the art of being together.
12.30 - 17.00
Together We Sow with artist Amy Mordan
Open collaborative embroidery project. Working together employing needlework skills from different cultures.
Without overarching design, without end goal, we enjoy the communion of being together. Showing our creativity to each other and seeing what this open process of making can be.
12:30 - 13:00
This is Not a Solution book launch by The London Alternative Photography Collective
13:30 - 14:00
- Opening of the space by Dee Woods - ancestral blessing
- LION Introduction - Presentation, Q&A
13:30 - 15:00
Detoxifying Your Art Practice: peer-to-peer mapping session sharing the dirt on the way we currently work with toxic practices and noxious ideas, before collectively problem solving towards sustainable ways of making.
14:00 - 14:30
- Film Screening - ‘Zaree’a’, ‘Seeds Share - In Memory of Esiah Levy’
- 2 Film screenings followed by discussion
14:45 - 15:20
- Seed Swap/Seed Bank demonstration and discussion facilitated by Hallie Debebe-Dessalegne (Public are encouraged to bring their seeds if they wish)
15:30 - 16:00
- Tea Meditation
15:30 - 17:00
Radical Mycology workshop with artist and grower Jane Lawson. An introduction to Radical Mycology, a social movement based on working with mushrooms and other fungi for personal, societal and ecological resilience.
BIOGRAPHIES of collaborators
AMY MCDONNELL is a curator, researcher and environmental campaigner whose practice engages with contemporary themes of collectivity, collaborative exhibition making and political participation. McDonnell completed a PhD at Chelsea College of Arts in 2017 and then worked as a Parliamentary Assistant at the European Parliament. She is currently working with practices of direct democracy as socially-engaged art practice such as the recent project Home(lessness): A Citizens’ Action in Southwark (2019) supported by the South London Gallery, University of Westminster and the Sortition Foundation. She is a member of the Extinction Rebellion Citizens’ Assembly Working Group.
CATHERINE LONG is a visual artist with a background in contemporary dance. She’s holds a PhD on feminist video art practices awarded by Chelsea College of Arts, University of the Arts London. Her work uses video, dance, painting and sculpture to explore the materiality of the body from a feminist perspective. This interest in corporeality extends to the qualities of materials and how movement and gesture interact with them.
She is the co-founder of Practice in Dialogue and has co-curated and exhibited in In Whose Eyes? at Beaconsfield (2018), We all have a problem with representation at The Showroom (2016) and Feminist Practices in Dialogue at the ICA (2015).
DEE WOODS is a food and farming action-ist and campaigner, and co-founder of Granville Community Kitchen in South Kilburn. A previous BBC Food and Farming Awards winner, Dee sits on the GLA London Food Board, the steering group of People Food Power and is a co-editor of A People's Food Policy. She is an Honorary Research Fellow at CAWR, Coventry University, member of the Food Ethics Council and co-chair of the Independent Food Aid Network, IFAN
EVA SAJOVIC is a socially engaged artist photographer. In her work Sajovic explores the drivers of global displacement such as regeneration, poverty, trafficking, culture and climate change. Her practice covers two strands Participatory social action projects and Photographic social portraiture, where she collaborates closely with the subject to construct the image.
In 2014, with the support of Tate Modern, Eva co-founded the People’s Bureau, a platform facilitating skill exchange that has since become Tate Exchange Associate. She is an Associate Lecturer at UAL’s Central Saint Martins and Theory Lecturer at Chelsea College of Art.
HANNAH FLETCHER is a photographic artist and co-director of London Alternative Photography Collective. Her work is rooted in the challenge of intertwining the organic into the photographic medium. She does this while simultaneously exploring environmentally and ecologically-focused issues. Most recently, she has initiated The Sustainable Darkroom; an on going series of residencies, publications, workshops and talks that address the environmental impact of working with analogue photographic processes. The project brings together artists, photographers, scientists, researchers, technicians and teachers to enquire, research, develop and share approaches to fostering a more sustainable darkroom practice.
HALLIE DEBEBE-DESALEGNE is an organic horticulturalist and seed saver, currently working at Garden Organic's Heritage Seed Library. She has had a passion for growing food since she could hold her first trowel! Using ecological principles as to promote biodiversity and empower our communities drive her love for sustainable horticulture.
HELEN BREWER is an activist and architectural researcher. Her work is concerned with the cultivation of knowledge in resistance spaces, the construction of solidarity infrastructure, and a critical spatial analysis of border-spaces and their architectural apparatus. She is conducting a CHASE-AHRC funded PhD at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London and is a researcher at Topological Atlas.
JANE LAWSON is an artist based in Manchester. Her practice is informed and influenced by her previous experiences as a researcher into corporate ethics at Ethical Consumer magazine in Manchester, co-founder of radical art/design collective UHC, and helping to organise the first three UK Climate Camps. She makes diagrams to help her understand the economic, historical, geographic and biological processes and structures that shape human society and our impact on the world, such as the global financial system, the Earth’s climatic history, the road to Brexit and the effects of technology on democracy. She also attempts to embody alternatives to the dominant cultural narrative which claims that the present economic system, although flawed, is our only realistic option.
JOSINA CALLISTE is a health professional, activist and co-founder of Land in Our Names (LION). She has got her hands dirty in various farming and permaculture projects in London, Portugal and the USA. She loves nature walks and dreams of starting an organic farm with communalism at its heart.
MATTIE LOYCE is an interdisciplinary curator, creative producer and consultant from San Francisco, CA currently based in London, UK. Mattie focuses her work on engaging socio-political content and community building across disciplines and geographies. Focusing on platforming and amplifying the voices of artists of the African Diaspora, artists of colour and queer artists, she has worked across the United States, United Kingdom, and Brasil.
O̩LÁ AYÒRINDÉ (subscript on my name is important, let me know if you’re unable to find the characters) is a land-activist and co-founder of Land in Our Names (LION). Inspired by his experiences as a land-steward in rural England and south-western Nigeria, he actively encourages people through his work to think about their relationship to the land in radical and imaginative ways.
• • •
The Future Of Living
a residency in Park Royal
The Peoples Bureau (PB) has been ‘in residency’ at Park Royal since May 2018, commissioned by Create London (and with the support of OPDC) with the aim to engage with the community around issues related to urban change in the area. Following a period of meetings, walks and discussions with the locals we have decided to focus onthe question of the Role of Participatory Art Practice and interrogate it together with the locals and invited guests from the Collective* where we took up a resident flat for a period of a week.
We understand the role of art is to provide a space for agonism, mediation and collaboration that can facilitate:
· representation through which citizens can express themselves and bring into visibility their ways of seeing and
· a pluralist space from which a dialogical encounter can be facilitated.
There were three particular questions we wanted to discuss:
1. How to communicate/represent this way of working through image/visual as an artist/designer?
Unpicking graphic/visual communication and Socially Engaged Practice.
(With our guests from Europa, Create London and local resident Ewa Cwirko-Godycka.)
2. How this work is best communicated/represented democratically- by the collaborating community?
'really what should happen is that people should be able to control the means of communication themselves...community controlled communications networks, that's the long term objective'. (Kelly, O., 1984)
(With our guests: local resident Theresa Magee and artist NeilCummings.
3. How this work is communicated/represented by media and translated by audience?
(With our guests: local resident Amanda Souter, community filmmaker Andy Porter and activist Robin Browne.)
The daily encounters (17 – 19 September) started with a lunch in the communal kitchen on the 8th floor, followed up by a live broadcast of our conversation in one of the spaces of the Collective. We also took our guests on a tour of the building: the library, the spa, the pub, the roof terrace, the cinema.
Some of the resulting materials were presented as an installation as part of the Open House Weekend (21 and 22 September). A publication will follow later in the year. You can access sound recordings of the three conversations recorded (and live broadcasted) by the artist Lucia Scazzocchio on soundcloud following the links below.
*a co-living space in Park Royal that offers ‘a convenient and fulfilling lifestyle' experience.
Artistic forms of production for resistance
10 June, 12 -6pm, Tate Exchange, Tate Modern.
Hosted by Peoples Bureau, this day will be dedicated to exploring the role and ethics of working in socially engaged art practice related to urban change and displacement.
‘What are the new forms of production that allow for new forms of resistance and envisage the possibility of a revitalization of the emancipatory project to which artistic practices can make a decisive contribution (…) Every critical gesture is quickly recuperated and neutralized by the forces of corporate capitalism.’ (Mouffe, 2013)
This event will mark the start of Eva and Rebecca’s critical evaluation of 9 years working collaboratively and will form part of a reflective manual, which they hope will serve as an instruction of and toolkit for a model of best practice.
We invite you to join us with your questions which will help form part of a public discussion (1 - 2.30pm) led by Eva and Rebecca (Peoples Bureau) with Ele Belfiore (Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Loughborough University who has published extensively on the belief in the transformative power and the presumed ‘social impacts’ of the arts) who will share lunch round a table with other invited socially engaged artists and practitioners.
The discussion will take place around Join – a table designed and installed by artist Michael Giambrone.
The day will include an installation of work made during Peoples Bureau’s Unearthing project at Tate Exchange (Taking place in 2017 in collaboration with Shane Waltener and Stave Hill Eco Park) which was recently reworked as part of a residency at Danielle Arnaud Gallery.
There will be performances by Zoe Gilmour (3pm) and Shane Waltener (2.30 - 4pm) . A soundscape will be delivered by sound artist Lee Berwick (4pm onwards).
About Peoples Bureau
Peoples Bureau is a programme of artistic actions that enable community representation and empowerment, delivered by artists Eva Sajovic and Rebecca Davies.
Peoples Bureau was set up in 2014 and based at the Elephant and Castle shopping centre - one of the most contested sites in the capital, currently undergoing a vast development that has been and will continue to permanently displace thousands of people who live and work here. Peoples Bureau collects and makes visible the diversity of cultures, skills, networks and resourcefulness present in an area (eg long-term in Elephant&Castle). Peoples Bureau occupies a unique position in the context of community art, by engaging with a multitude of stakeholders including local residents, the developers, universities, Southwark Council, art institutions, activists and the media, thus creating a vibrant platform for contestation, negotiation and representation.
Through skill exchanges and other interactions, Sajovic and Davies act as community catalysts, activating individuals, communities and local organisations. Their collaborative practice has seen them work with Whitechapel Gallery, LCC, Chelsea College of Art, Tate Modern. Peoples Bureau is a Tate Exchange Associate.
In Elephant&Castle they have worked with over 20 local groups, regularly and actively engaging with over 200 local residents from Latin American, Bangladeshi and British communities. The project has been piloted at the Bootle Library in Liverpool and is currently working in Park Royal as part of a commission from Create.
Rebecca and Eva, with writer Sarah Butler recently completed the film ‘Unearthing Elephant’ which won the Research In Film award at the AHRC film awards, 2017.
***
Mouffe, C (2013) Agonistics. Thinking the world politically London/New York: Verso
***
Lee Berwick is a London based sound artist who is interested in space, energy and the physicality of sound.
As the 90’s turned to the 0’s Lee recorded all along the Thames, documenting a river and city different to the one we inhabit today.
Lee’s performance will dig through this forgotten strata of London’s sound history..
The London eye goes up, the Bankside landing stage outside what is now the Tate modern comes down and ships unload at the last London dockyard.
Taking the ceramic. A skill in stages, shared by Sue at Bootle Library #peoplesbureau #humanlibrary
Holding the ceramic. A skill in stages, shared by Sue at Bootle Library #peoplesbureau #humanlibrary
Bowls for At the Human Library Bootle, Liverpool
Produced in collaboration with the people from Bootle the two bowls are going into the kiln tomorrow.
Celebratory event: Tuesday 1 May, 1-3PM. Bootle Library, Liverpool.
All Welcome!
Our project at Bootle Library, Liverpool written up in the Big Issue
In the summer 2017 we have been commissioned by curator Maria Brewster to make work for The Human Library at Bootle library, Liverpool.
The participatory project work that started around skill exchange led into a more in depth engagement with clay and photography, looking to bring the two together and always with community, conversation and sharing at its core.
Thank you The Big Issue for the write up.
Unearthing Elephant WINS the prestigious Research in Film Awards by AHRC.
Launched in 2015, the Research in Film Awards celebrate short films, up to 30 minutes long, that have been made about the arts and humanities and their influence on our lives.
Judges for the 2017 Research in Film Awards include Richard Davidson-Houston of Channel 4 Television, Lindsay Mackie Co-founder of Film Club and Matthew Reisz from Times Higher Education.
A special awards ceremony was held at BAFTA, on Thursday 9 November, where the winner of each of the categories was announced. Writer and broadcaster, Danny Leigh was hosting the event.
The winning films will be shared on the Arts and Humanities Research Council website and YouTube channel.
To follow the fortunes of the shortlisted films on Twitter via the hashtag #RIFA2017.
WATCH THE FILM HERE: https://vimeo.com/222385394
Elephant's Trumpet ISSUE 1 out in print and online (soon).
Pick up your copy whilst there are still a few left - fromt he Elephant&Castle shopping centre.
We have started working on ISSUE 2 - to come out mid December.
People's Bureau at Tate Late
taking part at Tate Late at Tate Modern, 29 September 2017, 6 - 10PM
Come along and join in sharing/exchange of skills and lots of fun:
People's Bureau commissioned by At The Library project in Bootle
starting on the 25th September. Please come along and share/exchange your skill and learn something new over a cup of tea and chat.
Screening the UnEarthing Elephant film @ Arts Admin, 27 September, 7.30PM
Unearthing ELEPHANT screened at:
Mini -Festival Amsterdam, 17 June 2017 (organised by Failed Architecture);
Comment from the organisers:
We had a great night Saturday and the screening was well attended despite the hot weather. We watched the film with about 50 people and had a brief discussion afterwards, among others on the 'porosity' of such a space (in a positive sense), but also on the almost deliberate neglect of such spaces by authorities and real estate owners. FA team member Tim Verlaan made an interesting comparison with the Hoogh Caterijne in Utrecht, built in 1962, both a shopping mall and the city's main transport hub (https://vuartandculture.com/2017/01/11/making-the-invisible-visible/).