News

Friction Arts have launched a new project called ‘Stir’ and have put a callout for contributors to this new project that shares the joys and complexities of the identities of women of mixed heritage.

What is Stir?

Stir is a platform created by Friction Arts, for women of mixed heritage, to share the joys and complexities of their identities and the journeys that shaped them. As part of a wider community journalism project in Digbeth, Friction Arts is capturing the voices of people telling us their stories of heritage, community activism and migration, which will feature in Birmingham Public Library’s archive. Friction Arts will also be working in collaboration with an award winning female portrait artist to create a series of extraordinary Stir visual portraits reflecting these extraordinary women and their lives.

How will Stir work?

During March Lead Artist Sarah Kaur will lead a series of one to one interviews inviting Stir participants to share how they experience their multiple ethnicities, and how these experiences shaped their identities. These interviews will last around 1 hr and can take place in the home, or at our studio ‘The Edge’.

Stir participants will also be offered the opportunity to take part in a group Zoom meeting to share their ideas for the series of portraits that will accompany the stories – contributing thinking around themes, sets and costumes.

In early April, a small group of Stir participants will meet at our Studio at the Edge to have their portrait realised by an award winning female portrait artist, to create a series of extraordinary visual portraits sensitively reflecting the complexities of mixed heritage identity.

About Friction Arts

Friction Arts has a history of over thirty years working creatively across Birmingham with experience in oral history across different digital formats including Augmented Reality, video, recordings, montage and animation. We are passionate about heritage, interviewing, oral histories and gathering awkward as well as historic stories.

How to get involved in Stir

If you are a woman of mixed heritage with a story rooted in identity to share, we’d really love to hear from you. Please contact Sarah@FrictionArts.com by midday, 27th February 2022 to arrange an informal chat about getting involved with Stir.

Birmingham Centre for Arts Therapies are offering online training and supervision for arts professionals working in arts and health in Birmingham.

These FREE sessions are aimed at supporting your own mental wellbeing whilst delivering activities in challenging circumstances.

For more information, there is a short video available on YouTube.

Further information can be found at http://www.bcat.info.

To book, please contact dawndurrant@bcat.info.

Application Deadline – Monday 31st January, 5pm

The Gap Arts are looking for an emerging/early career arts administrator to join our small creative team at a really important and exciting moment in The GAP’s journey.

We need an ambitious, motivated and caring individual to support our core team of artists during this transformational moment. The appointed Arts Administrator will play a crucial role in the successful delivery of our cultural programmes by ensuring the smooth running of the organisation’s daily operations. As a new role, the successful candidate will take responsibility for designing and implementing new administrative systems, working closely with the core team to identify how best to support our activities. We are also offering a package of training to further the successful candidate’s development, which will be tailored to their specific interests and needs.

​This role has been created to the support the development of arts leaders who identify as being from an ethnic or cultural minority, as LGBTQI+ and/or disabled.

For full job description and how to apply, visit https://www.thegapartsproject.co.uk/artsadminjob

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Ort Gallery have announced a new partnership with two emerging curators.

We are excited to announce that we have partnered with the International Curators Forum (ICF)  to appoint 2 emerging curators to work with us and selected artists on a new project called ‘Emergence(y)’ during 2022. Following the turbulent year of 2020 and the ongoing covid crisis, the curators will explore the themes of Emergence, Care and/or Warmth. They will bring their own research interests and working methodology with them and they will also decide how they want to work together or what they want to create, whether that be an exhibition, an event, something online, a partnership with another gallery, or any other format of their choosing. 
 

Orphée Kashala is a Birmingham based curator. His curatorial practice promotes care, inclusion, empathy, equality and understanding by telling stories that explore and challenge our collective perception of the human experience.

Since 2020, Orphée has taken on the role of Creative Producer at Maokwo(a Belgrade Theatre springboard organisation based in Coventry) as part of the young leadership programme for emerging young artists from migrant backgrounds. Currently, Maokwo have partnered with the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, where Orphée is co-curating an exhibition exploring key national collections, co-organising artists’ lead workshops, developing project ideas and curatorial skills, whilst also co-creating a new provision for artists in Coventry. In September 2021, he curated his first exhibition titled “Survivor’s Guilt” for the Coventry Migrant Centre, as part of Coventry City of Culture; which was an exploration of the bittersweet memories and lived realities of African migrants living in the UK via photography, videography, installation and poetry.

Sarah Francis is a Leeds based Artist Curator who focuses on bringing under-recognised artists and narratives to the public, using empathy and warmth to build self-confidence in creatives left behind by the mainstream system. Fascinated by complex possibilities lying dormant in ‘familiar’ environments, setting a challenging dialogue between cultural identity and the inner worlds which we as artists manifest within our work. This conceptual framework draws parallels between artists from differing socio-cultural worlds, whose work follows similar lines in metaphysical realms. Francis’ interpretation of the curator is that of a caretaker of other worlds, working in collaboration as the tour guide and storyteller, bringing these converging manifestations to our physical spaces.

Francis’ artwork centres around her neurodiverse and queer identity, building her own language and worlds to explore and understand ‘how I made me’; a reference to an early body of work that investigated her inner trauma and re-articulation of her current self. Her work has been shortlisted for the Saatchi Gallery’s Art of Giving Prize, selected by Richard Billingham for Curator’s Choice Noise Young Talent 2009, and recognised in Aesthetica’s 100 Best Contemporary Artists in Europe. In addition to her work, Sarah Francis is the Founder and Director of Aire Place Studios, Leeds.

18-24 and on Universal Credit? Work with us!

It’s a really exciting time at Curiosity at the moment, as we start creating and building partnerships across the Black Country and Birmingham, and so we’re looking for three new Kickstart trainees!

We need :

💥 2x Creative Projects and Events Assistants

💥 1x Trainee Performer (with Cloud Cuckoo Land Theatre)

The roles are for 25 hours per week, and are at the National Minimum Wage. Find out more about us, Cloud Cuckoo Land and what’s on offer at our website below – and ask your job coach to refer you. The deadline for applications is the Monday 24th January, so apply now!

Spread the word!

The Play House is recruiting for a new artistic director to take the company on the exciting next step in its journey. They are seeking someone creative, ambitious and determined with a track record of directing, devising and producing education and/or community programmes/performances.

The Play House Theatre in Education Company creates unique and thrilling participatory work delivered in schools and community settings with the aim of creating meaningful participation for every child. Putting young people at the centre of their work, they look to expand children’s aspirations and inspire their curiosity no matter what theme or story they are exploring.  

Deadline for Applications: 12pm, Wednesday 19th January 

Further information: Recruitment packs (including recorded and large print copies) can be found here theplayhouse.org.uk/post/artistic-director-opportunity 

Award winning company Women & Theatre seeks a highly motivated, experienced individual to join our Artistic team.

Part-time – 28 hours per week including some evenings and weekends

12 month fixed term contract, with the potential for extension

Salary: £25,000 (Pro Rata)

Women & Theatre is an award-winning theatre company with over 35 years’ experience of working with diverse groups to create exciting drama projects about things that matter. Working in a range of contexts across arts, health and community sectors, our work is united by core values of inclusion and empowerment, giving a voice to those who are not usually heard. We deliver drama activity including workshops, performances and participatory drama projects in a range of settings including theatres, hospitals and community centres. The company also works digitally; delivering creative workshops and projects via platforms like Zoom, and engaging with digital audiences through films and podcasts.

The Lead Artist Practitioner will support the delivery of W&T’s Artistic Vision, working alongside W&T’s core team as well as freelance artists. The role will include some project delivery during evenings and weekends.

The successful candidate will have experience of working with W&T target communities, workshop facilitation, directing, theatre making and project management.

If you have the relevant experience and are interested in working in a friendly, supportive environment, please download an application pack below.

Closing date: 12 noon, Thursday 13 January 2022

First Interviews: W/c 24 January 2022

Women & Theatre welcomes applications from all sections of the community. We are particularly interested in increasing the diversity of our team and welcome applications from people of non-white British backgrounds and disabled people who are currently under-represented in our core team.

OPUS (Outdoor Places, Unusual Spaces) are wanting to engage with Community Connectors as part of plans to develop festival sites across Birmingham as part of the Commonwealth Games. A fee of £2,000 is available.

We’re creating front rooms to enjoy the Commonwealth Games across Birmingham. If you’d like to help make this happen, we’re looking for community-based organisations to collaborate with to develop the Birmingham 2022 Neighbourhood Festival Sites.

We have a particular interest in speaking to groups from these areas / who work in these areas:

• Castle Vale
• Edgbaston
• Handsworth
• Sparkhill
• Ward End
• Yardley

To find out more information, join us at our briefing session on Zoom on Thursday 9^th December 2022 at 2pm. Please register via Eventbrite HERE: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/b2022-neighbourhood-festival-sites-community-connectors-briefing-session-registration-217530468487

For more information `about the opportunity and to submit your expression of interest, visit www.opusartsevents.co.uk or e-mail Diandra@opuseartsevents.co.uk.

To celebrate the upcoming 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, six Birmingham schools are working collaboratively in partnership with six schools from Trinidad and Tobago on a project that explores and celebrates the connections and links between our two Commonwealth countries.

The Birmingham cluster of schools are Billesley Primary School, Raddlebarn Primary School, Kings Heath Boys’ Secondary, St Bernard’s Catholic Primary School, Highters Heath Primary and Woodthorpe Junior an Infants School.

For our project, we are seeking to commission a printmaker or visual artist to work with a cohort of pupils from each school towards creating a fine art exhibition, and a launch event, that will celebrate Trinidad and Tobago culture. We envisage our chosen artist to be able to facilitate and focus on a different process or medium with each school, for example, textiles, lino, dry point, mono print, different painting processes, collage, or digital art techniques.

Each school will adopt one of the following themes from Trinidad and Tobago to explore and then present through visual art:

• – Geography
• – Language
• – History
• – Food
• – Climate/ Biodiversity
• – Music
• – Culture and Carnival
• – Sport

By collaborating with the artist, the pupils in each school will contribute to an exhibition that will tell a story of Trinidad and Tobago culture through visual art. The artist will liaise with all stakeholders, and together with the teachers, work towards bringing a high-quality, gallery style, final exhibition together in the summer.

Successful applicants will be accomplished in their professional practice and clearly be able to demonstrate projects within formal education. The total commission is for £5000 (to include travel) at a daily rate of £200 per day. This equates to 4 x days with each of the six schools, a half day to attend planning meetings in January (at least 1 meeting in person with all schools attending) and a further half day for the final event itself. It is anticipated that the schools will be able to supply art materials and/or order anything in that they do not have in stock.

To be considered, applicants must hold an Enhanced DBS Certificate (with barring) or be willing to undergo a new check at their own cost (approx. £50). If you are interested in applying, please email your CV, images of your professional work and work with schools (max email size 7MB) and a paragraph that clearly outlines your skills and your response the brief, to Angie Watson on a.watson@billesleyschool.co.uk by no later than 5th January 2022 at 5pm.

The Birmingham Allotment Project is an exciting new project by General Public exploring the heritage of allotments in Birmingham from the 1960s to the present day.

Working closely with Birmingham and District Allotment Confederation, allotment associations and plot-holders city-wide, the project will present an alternative social history of Birmingham via its allotment culture. Birmingham has 113 allotment sites, more than any other local authority, and this project aims to inspire, engage and encourage people to learn about allotments, their history and their place in the city today. The project includes:

• A major exhibition at the Library of Birmingham from October to December 2023.
• Working closely with six local schools to train young people in making oral histories.
• Volunteering opportunities: training in how to make oral histories and the chance to help shape the project.
• Recording memories and stories: 45 oral histories with plot holders and members of allotment associations.
• Creation of a website, publication and Birmingham allotment archive.
• An education pack.
• A touring exhibition visiting allotment sites.

GET INVOLVED

Please get in touch if you are interested in being included in the project!

Your contributions could feature in:

• A project book and website.
• An exhibition at the Library of Birmingham in 2023.
• The project archive.