Connect Dudley Reading & Exhibition Launch

Last Wednesday we held a Reading to mark the Launch of the Connect Dudley Exhibition. It was a pleasure to have some workshop participants with us in the audience and to hear their reactions to the poems. Before the exhibition all the participants received copies of their own poems but hadn’t heard the others. Our source material was deeply personal and it was a true honour to work with the letters produced over 8 weeks of workshops during Lockdown 1.

It also served as a reminder to all about how challenging that time was. Such restriction imposed on our lives (and with good reason), a global narrative, the ins and outs of everyone as they experienced living diminished lives and loss and all the time an undercurrent of gratitude for still being here. For community. For the rallying of strangers.

The UK is currently in the 3rd Lockdown with the hope of gradual reopening over the next few months.

This project began in 2020 with Rick Sanders, it was his idea to bring the community together through writing. The bid was successful and Creative Black Country commissioned the work. A series of online workshops with a Lockdown related prompt were facilitated by Rick. The participants wrote letters to their future selves. The idea was to keep them and open them a year later. In the light of the fact we are still in Lockdown, those envelopes may remain sealed for a little longer! The letters created during this project also work as a social record of that time.

Rick wanted to connect people with an Artform too, so the 8 letters were used to compose bespoke poems as a gift for each participant. The original exhibition idea was to be held in real life. The project has been cleverly adapted to make it feasible during this 3rd lockdown. And as a result has reached over 300 people!

Rick and I were interviewed by CoLab last summer about the process and the outcomes. CoLab also interviewed the participants and lots of their feedback appears in the reported evaluation of the project and on the Launch video and exhibition posters. I was so glad to have this opportunity to work within such a rich community project. It has been a pleasure from start to finish.

I enjoyed the Q&A last Wednesday night, it was great to hear Rick Sanders talk about the other elements of the project. A video is available from Creative Black Country channel where you can find out more about the fantastic work they do.

Thanks to Creative Black Country and Kerry O’Coy.

If you are local to Dudley there is more to come so keep your eyes peeled and in the meantime, take a socially distanced /correctly protected walk to the High Street and have a read or a listen (QR codes – thanks to Overhear) for yourselves. There are 10 poems, so this display will change at some point over the next month or so.

RELATED LINKS:

CoLab Dudley

Connect Dudley Launch Event

Flashback – An Exhibition in London

Last year’s missing bits in Flashback posts.

By the summer I had secured a project I could work on (even in the state I was in) and I started to think about new writing. It had been a while, my Stanza meeting efforts were old poems saved in files on the laptop. I wanted to write again, the urge came a long while before the possibility – and like any writer I know one of the best ways to guarantee work is to find a deadline and write to it.

So I started looking for opportunities and found a call out for the Asking For It project curated by Chloë Clarke and Gabby Ellison. 

We are the ‘Asking for it’ exhibition. Our aim is to create a place for people to share and feel and come together over adversity. Through expression of art – in a variety of mediums such as film, photography, poetry, art and sound – the exhibition will take the viewer on a journey from the beginning to recovery and survival.

The exhibition not only looks at the experiences of the survivor but the societal judgements and miseducation around the topic of sexual abuse/violence. We believe that art is a powerful tool to express and empower artists and viewers, while educating those who have not experienced this.

I made a poetry film and submitted some poems. My poetry was accepted.

Unfortunately I was not able to read at the gallery opening as my physical health made it impossible to travel to London.

Private Gallery Exhibition Opening and Performances 23rd October.

 

It was a brave and successful exhibition. Here are some more photos from the opening night.

A good project to be part of.

Hanbury Hall Poets

Annually DAN (Droitwich Arts Network) artists exhibit their work in the Long Gallery at Hanbury Hall, for the past few years (long before I was a poet), teams of poets have descended on the NT property to write ekphrastic poetry. For the past 2 years I have had the pleasure of organising that side of the event alongside the Chair of DAN and several committee members.

© 2018 www.droitwichartsnetwork.org

Earlier this month I had an exciting meeting with the DAN Chair, Helen Karakashian at Park’s Cafe. Several new elements have been included this year:

1. Poets are being asked to display framed poems to sit amongst the artworks.
2. Whilst at the Exhibition there will be (we hope) a designated area where poets can scribe initial thoughts and leave them for visitors to read.

This year the exhibition is also running for a week longer than before. Last year there were over 3350 visitors.

Just like last year the poets will then meet with the artists to celebrate at Park’s Cafe in December at a special reading which will be open to the public, where there will be a screening of the art which inspired our words.

 

http://www.droitwichartsnetwork.org/hanbury-hall-exhibition-2018

The DAN Exhibition at Hanbury Hall will be open to the public from the 10th October.

 

My Poems from Hanbury Hall DAN Exhibitions:

2015 – Fragile Houses Published by V. Press (2016)

Little Blue Hut 

Not Yet Home

 

2017 – Moxie Cheltenham Poetry Festival Anthology Pittville Press

Cyclonic 

 

PoARTry at Artistree COMING SOON!

PoARTry is the brainchild of Rick Sanders who created a project last year (June 2017) at The Art Yard in Cradley Heath between artists and poets.

Pairs collaborated and created new works which became an exhibition.

PoArtry is a mash up of poetry and art work. The exhibition is the collaboration of artists and poets from across the Midlands, reacting and creating art and poetry in response to each other’s art.

The exhibition runs for the month of July, and many pieces will be on sale in the show. The exhibition is free to enter and the gallery opening times are 10am – 5pm Monday – Friday. Please contact the Art Yard for details.

 © Grace Dore

Fast forward a year to March 2018 and Rick organised his next PoARTy project in Ledbury with the Artistree Gallery.

Budding creatives met on the 8th March at the gallery. After some initial introductions and the over-arching project explained we were paired up – football pools style. I was lucky to be paired with Molly Bythell, a talented graduate who creates oil paintings that dramatically tell their own story. An easy canvas for me as a poet.

Two months later and after collaborating we have completed an exhibition of 3 works each. Two new paintings inspired by my poems and about 20 new poems. Three of which will be exhibited and some have found their own way into my next manuscript (fingers crossed they make the cut). It has been fabulous working with Molly.

A few days after the work deadline, Leena Batchelor and myself have found ourselves organising the Launch/Reading Event for PoARTry.

 

More details are coming soon – it will be July – it will be in the evening and it will be fantastic and FREE.

The event will be a chance to hear pairings talk about the artistic collaboration, the process of work and hear some of the poems.  It will be a celebration – a PoART Party & you will have a chance to see a fantastic exhibition, you could even become a proud new owner of the work.

 

 

Art Down, Words Up

Polly Stretton & I read our DAN Art Exhibition poems at the end Celebration this week.
I am now busy working with Rosie Philpott preparing our Poetry Event for Parks Cafe, 14th November.

Poet Laureate

On Monday 30th October Polly Stretton and I read our Hanbury Hall DAN poems at the end celebration of the exhibition. 

The Droitwich Arts Network produce an annual exhibition in the Long Gallery at Hanbury Hall. Previous years have seen involvement from the poetry community. Fragile Houses features two poems I wrote from this project back in 2014.

Peter Hawkins (Vice Chair) added an extra element this year. A competition to find a winning poem, the prize – a reading at the closing celebration. Polly Stretton won with her poem ‘Curves’, I tagged along to support Polly, celebrate success with the artists and to sneak one of my poems in too. 

We had an enjoyable lunch time with lots of mingling. I met the NT organisers I had emailed about the possibility of our poems. They confirmed an exhibition in 2018.

As if all this wasn’t enough… I discovered…

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Poetry Exhibition COMING SOON

Poet Laureate

© Caroline Price

Following the successful Poetry Workshop at the Jinney Ring last month, the next part of this exciting project is underway.

Exploring the Sculpture Trail with our tour guide Events Manager Carolyn Baldwin, was exciting. I loved watching the poets making notes, dwardling over sculptures they admired and generally creating a buzz along the trail.

Then came the workshop, kindly we were given the Workshop Room as the Great British Summer had not been too kind to the wedding marquee.

I thoroughly enjoyed facilitating the Sculpture Trail Workshop. It was my first workshop in 12 years and I do not think that was obvious. I have received positive feedback and am still glowing – especially now I have had the privilge of reading the poems.

Which brings me smoothly onto my next point…

Our Sculpture Trail poems are soon to be on display in the Restaurant at The…

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What’s The Agenda – The MAC 21st-23rd March

Last Wednesday I wrote 21 Haikus for What’s the Agenda – a project organised and facilitated by Hayley Frances for the MAC.
The deadline for submissions was the 20th.

I missed the workshop because I couldn’t get tickets from the website, due to an error in the sign up form. I contacted Hayley directly and followed the tasks covered by the workshop.

When I saw the submission details advertised it read – isolation in a digital world – yet the workshop dealt with heritage as well as loneliness. Freewriting tasks I wrote about loneliness and how times have changed – in past generations people lived close to their families or stayed with their families. The world today is open globally, many children move away, across country or continents.
The network support isn’t instantly there – if you are lucky and able you make friends and these become your new family.
The pressures of 21st century living on young people and the changing world they are growing up in can cause all sorts of issues.

I then read up on Hikikomori, including some personal accounts and articles. From here I started freewriting Haikus. I wrote 7 in my lunch break at work, the next 14 flowed out of me in the afternoon, after work and before heading out to perform at Confab Cabaret.

I emailed Hayley and she has used them. Not sure if she used all 21 but they form part of the Agenda weekend exhibition down at the

Diverse Dancers: I

I am performing (alongside many other local talents) tomorrow at the opening of this Gallery event – writing the poems at the moment… it will be my 2nd gallery opening and I am looking forward to it!

Photogiraffe Live Art

Najma Hush’s, Diverse Dancers is the title given to a  large and ever expanding compilation of photographs, primarily concerned with the multiplicity of varying dance traditions, unique to a variety of different cultures and subcultures.

This collection has been produced with a keen interest in the grace of dancer’s movements and seeks to reveal the eloquence of each pose, jump, spin and lift.  As this project expands and develops, Hush seeks to come closer to interpreting and presenting the exceptional language of bodies that never lie.

Diverse Dancers Part I:
An Exhibition for Exhibitionists, with Art, Poetry and Music.

Presently, a small and miscellaneous selection from this collection is exhibiting at ORT Cafe, Birmingham, UK (19^th Feb-5^th Mar 2014).

Look out for the next post on Diverse Dancers, where you can view the photographs from the open exhibition night and get better acquainted with all the amazing performers who will come…

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