Affiliate Artist collaborations 2021
March 2021
On 8 March the CUSP Project was launched, which saw performances of our Affiliate Organisations Noyam African Dance Institute and Ignite Theatre. More information about that event can be found here.
Ken Gordon and Sadie Ryan produced a guests series on our podcast channel, called What Community Means to You. The five episodes were released during March and April. You can listen to them here.
April 2021
On 23 April we opened our first ever virtual exhibition, Colouring Outside the Lines, displaying work from ALL of our Affiliate Artists. It is an absolute treat for the soul and we are immensely grateful to all the artists for allowing us to put this together. The exhibition is open until August 2021.
May 2021
This year we managed to bring back our Spring School: The Arts of Integrating, albeit in an online format. We extended the event to two weeks, giving people to catch up on missed sessions and to combine the event with other commitments. An overview of the Affiliate Artists who featured in the line-up:
Erdem Avşar - Dramatic writing techniques for non-native English speakers
Paria Goodarzi and Francisco Llinas Casas - Dialogues of Light
Martha Orbach - To build a home
Salma Zulfiqar - ARTconnects - Corona Revolution
Hannah Rose Thomas and Jennifer Sturrock - Creative Attention
Effie Samara - Plato and Love: Two theories of distress
Gameli Tordzro, Elizabeth Oluwatuyi, Ellen Bonsu, Naa Densua Tordzro - A Conversation on African Portraiture and Textile and Music Making as Expression of African Dignity in Spaces of Distress
Ken Gordon and Nazek Ramadan - Refugee Voices Scotland live podcast interview
I.D. Campbell, Alison Phipps, Dr Shawki Al-Dubaee, Dr Alaa Hamdon, Nikki Moran - At-risk Academic Refugees: A Portrait
Clare Robertson and Naa Densua Tordzro - Communicating healing, resonance and well-being through music, voice, textiles and symbols
Robert McNeil MBE and I.D. Campbell - Artists on Conflict
On the 10th of May, Clare Robertson featured in UNESCO RILA: the sounds of integration podcast episode 8.
June 2021
On 5 June we released the live podcast recording made at the Spring School (see above), of Ken Gordon interviewing Nazek Ramadan from Migrant Voice. Listen to the episode here.
On 11 June we managed to have our first live event (in hybrid format) at the University Chapel, where Hannah Rose Thomas opened her exhibition Tears of Gold. On 17 June the exhibition was closed again with a silent closing observance.
On 22 June we hosted a Sofa Café on Gender and Integration and were joined by Affiliate Artist Erdem Avşar.
August 2021
Excerpts of Martha Orbach's double session at the Spring School were released as a podcast episode, also featuring Naa Densua Tordzro. Martha's session was entitled To Build a Home and looked at questions such as: What does it take to make a home? How do we go about it? What are the objects which are critical for your homemaking?
Read the full Spring School programme here.
On 30 August, we released a podcast episode of the Spring School session by I.D. Campbell and Robert McNeil. Their session Artists on Conflict was one of the highlights of the event and the episode if well worth listening to.
September 2021
September saw the Explorathon and the Festival of Social Sciences coming to Glasgow. Pieter van der Houwen, Paria Goodarzi and Francisco Llinas-Casas worked on a series of workshops together with UofG colleague Gabriella Rodolico, about the emotional impact of nature seen through the lenses of Virtual Reality (VR) and revealed through the power of expressive art. You can view some of the outputs on their interactive blog here: https://doi.org/10.25416/NTR.16689208.v3
Later that month, at our virtual global forum Unsettled Objects: post-colonial perceptions of belonging, exhile and home, 28-30 September, jointly organised with Glasgow Museums, Francesca Zappia presented her work. Abstract:
Objects on an Enlightening Mission. The casts of French abolitionist Victor Schœlcher
This presentation looks at how casts have been used to disseminate Enlightenment values throughout France’s colonies during the nineteenth century. Taking as an example some casts related to French abolitionist Victor Schœlcher (1804-1893) – a series produced by the Louvre’s casting workshop now in the collections of the Musée Schoelcher, as well as copies of Louis-Ernest Barrias (1845-1905)’s Monument to Victor Schœlcher (1896) – we will examine how these casts have been used to disseminate Western knowledge and “progressive” ideas in a somehow paternalistic attitude. The mechanisms of colonialism will be also revealed through the work Forever (2015) by French Guyana artist Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc (1977), which investigates the representation of the abolition of slavery in Barrias’ monument.
The discussion that will follow the presentation aims at disrupting the narrative of the Enlightenment project by questioning the very nature of the belonging of these casts to these countries, which can be equally considered as a cultural graft and a witness of these territories’ history.
The contribution is based on curatorial research undertaken within the collections of the Centre national des arts plastiques and published in the book Les Flâneuses (Cnap / Shelter Press: 2021).
For the full programme, please click here.
October 2021
On 9/10 October, Naa Densua Tordzro was up at the Scottish Crannog Centre in Kenmore, Scotland, to contribute to their Celtic Autumn Story Weaving Weekend as part of the Scottish International Storytelling Festival. She was sharing Ghanaian weaving songs and knowledge of West-African fabric and Adinkra symbols.
You can listen to music and stories from the weekend at the Crannog Centre in two podcast episodes we released later that month. Naa Densua features in both of them.
Listen to part one.
Listen to part two.
November 2021
In November you can listen to Naa Densua Tordzro again, as she speaks at the opening ceremony of virtual global forum Unsettled Objects: post-colonial perceptions of belonging, exile and home, jointly organised with Glasgow Museums 28-30 September 2021.
From 12-20 November, artists Paria Goodarzi and Francisco Llinas-Casas were artists in residence at the Dear Green Bothy, the University's platform for hosting creative and critical responses to the climate crisis in the run up to COP26, where they created the Feel Field: Sound & Vision Walks at the Climate Portal, an immersive art experience exploring the connection between movement, migration and climate justice. More information can be found here.