Monday, 10 June 2019 at 2:00 pm – Monday, 10 June 2019 at 5:00 pm

Workshop with Giocherenda

Date: Monday 10th June 2019

Time: 2pm - 5pm

Location: Righton Open Space 

Tickets: Free - Places are limited. If you'd like to participate please email Patti Costantin at p.costantin@mmu.ac.uk

The workshop is preceded by a discussion around the themes of migration, storytelling and the role that art can play in the lives of refugees and asylum seekers.

Giocherenda is a group of young refugees who came to Palermo (Italy) from various African Countries. In Palermo, they have found a place where they can freely live and dream. The name Giocherenda comes from the African language Pular – solidarity, interdependence and strength that stem from people getting together. It resembles the Italian world ‘giocare’ (to play), which inspired the collective to create games that are able to generate narrations, remember traditions and share personal memories. Find out more here.

Participants include:

  • Ibrahim Ture and Mustafa Conteh - Giocherenda
  • Jenna Ashton and The Travelling Heritage Bureau: Ekua Bayunu, Gloria Saya, Kani Kamil, Anya Mikolajczyk, Mei Yuk Wong and Firoozeh Fozouni. Find out more here.
  • Avril Loveless, volunteer and trustee of the charity Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group that gave birth to Refugee Tales project. Find out more here.
  • Prof. Alice Kettle

Professor Alice Kettle

Alice Kettle is a contemporary textile/fibre artist based in the UK. She has established a unique area of practice by her use of a craft medium, consistently and on an unparalleled scale. Her stitched works, many the size of huge figurative tapestries, exploit the textures and effects made possible through the harnessing of a mechanical process to intuitive and creative ends. She is a Professor in Textile Arts at Manchester School of Art at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Thread Bearing Witness

This events locates itself within the framework of Thread Bearing Witness (the Whitworth, Manchester Sept 2018 –April 2019).

A major two venue project presenting new monumental textile works considering refugee displacement and movement. It includes significant new works by Alice Kettle & collaborative works with refugees from Dunkirk, North West & South England made through contribution and co-creation. It develops creative practice, creativity as resilience and supports and explores the intangible cultural heritage skills of refugee women, children and unaccompanied minors. It embraces personal testimonies and textiles role from the domestic to the spectacular to create a legacy of understanding and a chronicle of shared making. Migration is the defining issue of our time. How each individual, group, industry and family choose to respond to this subject will shape the foundations of our future communities. Simultaneously, Alice is working on a local level to connect personally with individual women and children refugees and asylum seekers, asking them to work with her to contribute to and inform new monumental stitched artworks. These artworks are inspired by the strength, resilience, and hospitality of refugees and asylum seekers whom she and her family have worked with. The Digital Women’s Archive North CIC (DWAN) is linking to the project the Travelling Heritage Bureau which will address both the need to ensure the participation of women artists in contributing to arts archives, and the additional complexities of displacement for undertaking arts archive development. Textiles offers a powerful medium through which to explore themes of cultural heritage, journeys and displacement. Embroidery is a domestic practice representing home-making, it is steeped in the history of trade routes with its global connections to production and pattern. The exhibition will use thread to examine the interconnected social world we live within.

For more information, please contact:

Patti Costantin · p.costantin@mmu.ac.uk

RAH! - Research in Arts and Humanities