March 2009
Lots of stuff happened in March with workshops with young people in the UK culminating in Open Labs in Walsall and Birmingham. Galleries of images from some of the activities are posted below.
48 Hour Dialogue - Laundry Creative Laboratory
Monday 9th March - Saturday 14th March, based at Walsall Youth Arts.
Monday 23rd March - Saturday 28th March, based at Bosnia Herzegovina UK Network, Birmingham.
Working with the help of a team of young cultural animators from IKP, we held an Open Lab with two different organisations – one who deal exclusively with arts media and young people, and one who have a broader community development remit. Our purpose was to explore a specific geographic area over a 48 hour period and engage in dialogue with local people – a form of action research – addressing questions of identity and cultural heritage. Together we then made an installation in the specific venue, transforming it and hosting an open event/seminar at the weekend to gather reactions and responses. The team were responsible for devising the content of the open event in such a way that visitors/audience could interact and engage with it to provoke and stimulate further dialogue and comment.
Both organisations posed a series of key questions as starting point to explore. In Walsall, outreach activities included sock puppet conversations with young people in the town centre, using t-shirts to make comments on, collaborative story writing and visits to local organisations. In Birmingham, outreach activities were undertaken in the city centre and along the Stratford road in the vicinity of Bosnia House. Sessions were undertaken with the Bosnian supplementary school, with self-portrait photography and video work.
From the contacts made, we plan to organise a ’round table’ event at both organisations. This is a small group of individuals (preferably who do not normally come into contact with each other) who are invited to a discussion on the topic of intercultural dialogue - this is devised as an artistic event and each round table has a slightly different format - it may involve food, or entertainment, it may be performative or it may be discursive. The point is not to have an agenda for the session, and let conversations unfold. The ensuing dialogue is recorded and elements used to both stimulate our work and in workshops.
Bosnia House gallery posted here...
Thanks to Jon and Claudette at Walsall Youth Arts. Thanks to Alan Cheeseman at Chameleon Gallery for assistance in hosting the Saturday event. Thanks also to Helen Jones, curator at New Art Gallery.
Thanks to Anes Ceric at Bosnia Herzegovina UK Network.
