Alaa is a London-based visual artist, designer and creative facilitator. Whilst maintaining her own creative practice through editorial work and exhibitions, she has also worked with various creative and educational organisations as a facilitator delivering creative workshops with children and adults. Throughout her various roles her work always seeks to emphasise the value of using creativity as a pedagogical process to address and explore larger issues such as identity, faith and race. Alaa is the arts editor of Khidr Collective, a multidisciplinary artist collective creating platforms and spaces for young Muslim creatives, where she is heavily involved in the visual production of the annual Khidr Zine and online platform.
Read MoreI am a Liverpool based working-class writer. I have been based for three years, two days a week in L13 as a project manager at MyClubmoor in order to engage with the community and lead on varied arts-based projects, this has massively informed my writing. I have written and staged 10 plays. Kitty: Queen of the Washhouse was written during my time at the community hub and the experiences there had an impact on the piece which focused on the importance of community and activism for social change. I have also written over 250 articles for online magazine 10mh.net and I lead history walking tours around Liverpool. During Lockdown I crafted a workshop series called ‘Creative Quarantine,’ where the residents of L13 decided on words/themes to creatively engage with and through telephone tutorials produced artwork. I am currently working on a novel of the Kitty story.
https://www.artsgroupie.org/
Read MoreCatherine Cartwright is a visual artist and printmaker also working with artist books and moving image. Catherine's work is often socio-political and she has worked with many different community groups over the past 12 years co-creating art together. Catherine is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Exeter and the University of West of England, funded by SSWDTP (AHRC). Her research examines trauma-informed artist practice; the power dynamics and ethical issues that arise when making art with others. Catherine's research partner is Devon Rape Crisis and Sexual Abuse Services. She has a particular interest in using art, printmaking and collage for example, as creative research methodologies.
Read MoreJemma is a socially engaged artist working in multiple mediums including textiles, illustration and print. The main focus of her practice is co production with communities. She has a particular interest in arts for health as well as using the arts for social change. She works in partnership with communities and organisations to produce work, and particularly value the input of people who would not normally consider themselves artists. She is always looking out for new ways to engage individuals and communities with creative practices which will enhance their wellbeing, give them a positive experience and give them a stake in their communities.
Read MoreJohn Wild is a London based artist who works across performance, sound, text, code, electronics and machine learning to carry out speculative research into the utopian and dystopian futures imminent within digital technology.
Read MoreBorn and raised in rural southern Germany in the 1980s, Tamara Stoll has been living and working in London for the past 15 years. A friend once observed “You are not a street photographer, you take photographs of streets.” Tamara's interest is in the street as social space and the individuals and groups shaping it. She sees public spaces and their communities, often transcultural in nature, increasingly threatened by gentrification and marginalisation. Working collectively and collaboratively is as important to her as documenting public space in the city of today. Tamara's practice is characterised by community engagement; linking documentary photography with social exchanges and dialogue. These activities feed into public interventions, workshops, events, community records, exhibitions and publishing.
Read MoreGabriella Gay is a mother, trained teacher, vintage dealer, page-stage poet and creative producer; she is regularly commissioned to perform, write, organise events and facilitate workshops for organisations such as Stoke Pride, The NHS, The Mitchell Arts Centre, Appetite Stoke, Junction 15, BBC Radio, Stoke Libraries, Partners in Creative Learning. She is born in Trinidad, raised in London, but has lived in Staffordshire for over 10 years. She is the founder of Stoke’s Roaming Poets and Kwanzaa Collective UK *. She was the local writer in residence for Nationwide voices (2017) and was shortlisted to be the first poet laureate of Stoke-on-Trent (2018). Gabriella has made numerus TV and radio appearances and her work features in shows, exhibitions, advertisements and official videos. She is interested amplifying the voices of overlooked people and places.
Read MoreTinsel Edwards (b1979) is an artist based in Glasgow. She originates from the Midlands and studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths College London. Tinsel lived in London for 19 years before moving to Scotland in 2017. Predominantly a painter, Tinsel’s practice also extends to printmaking, working with found materials, installation and public art stunts. Tinsel’s art responds to a wide variety of contemporary social and political issues whilst also referencing her everyday experience. Her paintings offer biting social commentary entwined with humour, emotion and honest autobiographical narrative.
www.tinseledwards.com
Read MoreZain Dada is a writer, cultural producer, researcher and award-winning film-maker. He is the co-founder of Khidr Collective Zine - a zine platforming the work of British Muslims.’ Zain has also worked on the intersection of the arts, community and research. From co-programming events at community centres due to be demolished to turning facts about obscure council redevelopment plans into powerful, human stories that stir people’s imaginations.
Read MoreOrmston House is a meeting place for the arts in the heart of Limerick City, Ireland. Our programme is co-designed with citizens to promote access and inclusion resulting in community partnerships, multi-annual projects and cultural events that are responsive to the city and its context. We have developed a participatory model to connect local wisdom with diverse approaches to artistic practice.
Read Moreas a social practice that creates platforms to share both visual and verbal experiences alongside her in observations of living. In her work we see an artist who selects slices of humanity who sifts them through a playful lens of medicinal humour with an invitation to join in.
http://dvaughangallery.com/
Read MoreSocially engaged visual artist, examining the artist’s role as a catalyst for change, through interventions, installations and playful disruptions. Working in a variety of media, including performance, Liz’s practice explores the way art can be experienced and tests the notion of art as a participatory outcome and/or collaborative event. A Fine Art graduate from Central Saint Martins, Liz’s work has been selected for exhibition by Yinka Shonibare’s Guest Projects, Whitstable Biennale Satellite, Moving Image Margate, SheFest, Wandsworth Arts Fringe festival & Art Licks London Festival.
Read MoreNatalia Ludmila (b. Mexico City, Mexico) is an artist who works at the intersection of painting, drawing, video and sound. Her practice is studio-based research centered on the problematising of mass media generated images. Focusing on those produced to depict conflict situations of a sociopolitical nature. In order to question forms of representation and the construction of false or biased narratives. In her research, Ludmila looks for the possibility of different and multiple readings. Articulated through as diverse views and experiences as there are viewers.
Read MoreStudio Polpo is a social enterprise arts, architecture and research organisation based in Sheffield. We work primarily with artists and the third sector to both initiate and collaborate on projects, often with a focus on giving new agency & tools to those involved. Much of our work is interdisciplinary and involves scientists, community organisations and other arts practitioners – we are excited by the dialogues between disciplines and learning generated by new encounters.
Our work is often playful, open and exploratory in nature, making visible processes and networks involved and sharing our outcomes to ensure that ideas spread, change and grow. We make and build, as well as research and publish.
Read MoreJill Kennedy-McNeill is an artist based in London. Much of her work is about occupying space, ownership, belonging and the social and political tensions that exist around these ideas. Working across a broad range of media, the outcomes of her work often explore our physical and emotional relationships with private, public and virtual spaces, while considering how these definitions are not absolute and often collide.
Read MoreAnna Horton Cremin uses games and play to bring people together in new and unexpected ways. She uses playful interventions to talk about complex issues including what we want our future world to be like. Her practice is currently looking at how the first playgrounds were created: built by children out of the materials they found in the destruction and dereliction of WWII. These acts of building and playing started the adventure playground movement, allowing children to take risks and create their own environments. She is using these methods to explore themes around climate change and the natural envrioment. Through Anna’s practice, she wants to encourage audiences to take risks by building their own play spaces, giving chances for people to imagine alternative futures together. Anna Horton Cremin (b.1991) is an artist living and working in Manchester. She completed her BA in Fine Art at Birmingham City University in 2013. Recent commissions include; Park Portals, Rediscovering Salford, 2020; Outside In, Rule of Threes, Bootle, 2020; Games Generator (Forest of Imagination, Bath, Make My Day, Morecambe Bay and Love Parks Week and Festival of Manchester, 2019); Third Room Residency, Left Coast (Blackpool, 2019); Good Game, (Ampersand Projects, Birmingham 2018); She has been selected for Social Art Summit (Sheffield 2018); Artist Jamboree (Devon, 2018) and Creative 50 (Manchester International Festival 2017). She is resident at Pervasive Media Studio, Bristol. As part of my recent collaborative duo One Five West (with Sophie Bullock) we were commissioned for Wild Worlds Festival, Chester Zoo, 2018. We were also selected for the Arts+Tech creative practice accelerator, one of three £1m national pilots, set up by ACE & Innovate UK. Collaborative exhibitions include ‘WARP Festival’, The Whitworth, 2016 ‘Hello Shenzhen’, the V&A 2016 & ‘DigiLabs’, University of Manchester 2016. We were selected for ‘New Talent Residency’ at Pervasive Media Studio, 2016.
Read MoreMae Aguinaldo (Manila, Philippines) taps into material cultures and their stories of adaptations, traditions and processes. Several of the art projects that the artist has produced have been in Southeast Asian cities, which have strengthened the collaborative and cooperative aspect of her art-making. One-on-one story-making sessions, DIY fashion workshops, found-object sculpture promoting sustainable tourism, online scholarship projects on art and on Philippine culture – these are among the artist's recent works.
http://wearmesa.blogspot.com/
Read MoreCarmen Wong is an artist-researcher and curiously hungry nomad who works with the performativity of food as symbolic, social, plastic, and mnemonic material. She thinks a lot about decolonizing food cultures, practices of diverse economies, and is a beginner in quiet anarchy, wild-swimming, and qi-gong. Carmen is also a co-Director of CAMP, a co-animator of JARSQUAD (https://jarsquad.com), and is co-nurturing a Care As Commons reading group with SAN SW members.
Read MoreKaajal Modi (she/they) is a multidisciplinary designer with a background in political visual communication, social and partipatory design and community-led food activism based on principles of critical care and mutual aid. Kaajal is currently conducting a practice-based PhD at the Digital Cultures Research Centre at UWE, Bristol, co-supervised through the Science Communication Unit. Their practice draws from collaborative design, speculative design, science communication and participatory art in order to build emergent methodologies that are inclusive, playful and exploratory. Through their research, they work with food fermentation practices in the kitchen as a way to explore our understandings of metabolic ecologies as extended through our bodies and our environments. They belive that by learning from and working with the knowledge, practices and cultural cosmologies of marginalised communities, in collaboration with the holders of that knowledge, we might find new ways of thinking climate futures where we all flourish.
Read MoreWendy's work in community arts provision spans a 30 year period as an arts practitioner managing projects and facilitating workshops within a culturally diverse area of London. Wendy also taught courses in adult community learning for 8 years. Wendy's arts practice incorporates social and visual methodology examining the value of local histories and lived experience of people through storytelling. Projects often involve an initial extensive research approach and involve collaboration with the public, other disciplines or artists. Dialogue is central to Wendy's working process, realised through attendance at community meetings, volunteering or incidental conversations with individuals. This allows her to identify where artistic activity can be beneficial and develop appropriate creative strategies. Current work is embedded in themes of housing, community activism and critiques of arts-led regeneration.
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