Thursday 6th May
2pm
Online Event
This event discusses lobbying, what it means to get behind critical issues, and what our sector should be fighting for.
The #ArtIsEssential campaign has effectively brought the visual arts sector together. As an art form, we don’t operate like theatre or music where the industry is vast and gets behind just one issue. We don’t have an industry standards membership to lobby and vocally advocate with high profile artists fighting the cause. #ArtIsEssential is hopefully just the beginning of a collaborative national eco-system for the visual arts, a unified message and future-facing.
This event discusses lobbying, what it means to get behind critical issues, and what our sector should be fighting for. Imagining Our Future together is not a manifesto – the event puts forward fundamental problems that we need to resolve collectively.
Join us this May to hear from an amazing line up of speakers who will situate our future together. Topics that will be covered include; the role of lobbying, neurodiversity and access, race and imperialism, the civic responsibility of arts and cultural organisations, practice of care and how to listen.
Key speakers include:
- Briana Pegado – Creative Director, Fringe of Colour
- Migrants In Culture
- Kerry Campbell, freelance Curator and previous Artistic Director at Mansions of the Future.
- Hypericum: A Code of Practice
- Gaylene Gould, Founder of the Space to Come
- Paula Orrell, event Chair, Director CVAN
There will be a BSL interpreter and live captioning will be available for this event. All speakers will audio describe themselves and state their pronouns. Please email info@cvan.art if you have any questions about our access arrangements.
Speaker Profiles
Briana Pegado FRSA is the founder of the Edinburgh Student Arts Festival (ESAF), an award winning social enterprise that provided a platform for emerging artists and creatives facing barriers to the creative industries across Scotland. She is currently Chair of YWCA Scotland – the Young Women’s Movement, an intergenerational movement that supports young women’s leadership. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Art, member of the governing body of the University of York, and on the National Partnership for Culture. Intersectionality, feminist, queer, and sustainable development lenses all inform her work.
Migrants In Culture is a network of migrants organising to create the conditions of safety, agency and solidarity in the culture sector for migrants, people of colour and all others impacted by the UK’s immigration regime.
Kerry Campbell is a Sheffield based independent contemporary art curator, consultant and researcher with demonstrable experience developing cultural strategies, programmes, exhibitions and events regionally as well as transforming and diversifying local arts engagement and leading teams with dynamism and sensitivity.
Her curatorial practice is informed by interests in; the civic responsibility of arts and cultural organisations, methodologies of co-authorship and understanding the complex relationships between social class, structural inequality and representation.
Most recently Campbell was the Artistic Director at Mansions of the Future – an expansive three-year Art’s Council Ambitions for Excellence funded arts and cultural organisation and international public programme in Lincoln. During her tenure she led a team celebrate local culture, foster partnership working and refine a thoughtful and dynamic approach to commissioning which was inherently social, site-specific, and collaborative.
Hypericum: A Code of Practice Obsidian Coast have announced the beginning of Hypericum: A Code of Practice, a research project developing a collectively produced, ever-evolving code of practice for feminist, antiracist, anticolonial and environmentally sustainable arts organising. The project is led by a newly formed working group of UK based arts workers and small-scale organisations: Angela Chan, Divya Osbon, Anjali Prashar-Savoie, Jamila Prowse, La Sala and Obsidian Coast.
Gaylene Gould is a Creative Director, broadcaster and writer who designs interactive art projects and spaces that generously connect us with ourselves, each other and the world. She explores the healing and growth potential of sharing space, stories, ideas and knowledge through her artistic, writing and consultancy practice. She believes the transcendent moments that art and culture creates can change how we are in the world. Her projects have been commissioned by and performed at the Tate, V&A, Arts Catalyst, Vivid Projects, Selfridges, h club, Moderna Museet Sweden and BAM, New York. Her new creative company is The Space to Come.
Paula Orrell is an independent curator and consultant, Network Manager at Visual Arts South West and Director at CVAN. She previously worked as Relationship Manager, Visual Arts for Arts Council England in the South West. Paula is passionate about supporting the creation of exceptional visual arts and the development of emerging and established visual artists. She has developed a wealth of national and international experience to support that passion, including in Plymouth as a Curator and Artistic Director, and in New Zealand as Artistic Director and Principal Curator of the Centre for Contemporary Art Toi Moroki in Christchurch.
Art ecology and community are central to her work, as well as a socially engaged approach. Paula Orrell has recently been nominated the new Chair of the Governance Board of Coventry Biennial. The 3rd Coventry Biennial will take place in 2021 as a part of UK City of Culture.
