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HOME Celebrating 30 years if intercultural understanding through the arts |
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CASE STUDIES Liverpool 2008
© Shilpa Gupta Visiting Arts has played a long-standing role in the facilitation of intercultural arts opportunities in Liverpool and the North West. Working in partnership with organisations across the city, we have enabled the first UK presentation of international artists through exhibitions, performances, commissions and collaborations. In 2002, 2004 and 2006 Visiting Arts supported the international platform at the Liverpool Biennial. Presented artists include Juan Fernando Herrán (Bogotá), Iftikhar and Elizabeth Dadi, and Shilpa Gupta. Iftikhar and Elizabeth Dadi draw on global media, advertising, and the visual culture of South Asia to create works that comment on the construction of national, ethnic and religious identities. The capacity of global electronic media to commodify every aspect of culture provides reference points and a universally recognisable visual language. Shilpa Gupta, a web artist from Mumbai, created a personalised online religious blessing to raise important questions about consumerism, spirituality and modern life. Gupta uses cutting-edge technology to explore fundamental issues that affect all of us: the environment, globalisation, war, religion, human rights. The Cultural Attachés programme is a series of talks, seminars and visits for the UK cultural diplomatic community which highlight specific initiatives and new developments in UK arts and culture. These opportunities make vital links between UK arts organisations and Cultural Ministries around the world helping to unlock resources, share information about emerging and established artists and develop partnerships. In September 2004, Visiting Arts took a group of 18 delegates to the opening of the Liverpool Biennial organised in association with Liverpool Culture Company. The group met key arts contacts and visited the city’s major visual arts organisations including Tate Liverpool, Bluecoat Art Centre, Open Eye Gallery and FACT. A further cultural attachés visit to the opening of Liverpool, European Capital of Culture will take place in early 2008. During European Capital of Culture 2008, Visiting Arts will run a series of initiatives in Liverpool to provide opportunities for intercultural exchange. In 2007, we supported the development of a key project in Liverpool’s Cities on the Edge programme. Coming and Going , a transnational project led by Quarantine and produced by FKuk, makes links between artists, academics, activists and communities in Liverpool and four other European ‘cities on the edge’: Istanbul, Marseille, Napoli and Gdansk. The first phase of this project examines points of commonality and divergences in artistic encounters around themes such as migrant cultures within European cities. The research produced will culminate in an event staged in Liverpool’s docklands. As part of the Colombia-England International Fellowship programme 2007/08, a photography residency will be held for a Colombian artist jointly hosted by Open Eye Gallery and Metal Liverpool. This Ministry of Culture Colombia, British Council, Arts Council England and Visiting Arts initiative provides exchange opportunities for artists engaged in contemporary practice and builds sustainable links between Colombia and England. The successful artist will spend three months in Liverpool networking, developing ideas, undertaking research, giving artists talks and engaging with local artists. Alongside networking events for UK producers and curators to engage with their international counterparts, and supporting the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue 2008, Visiting Arts will facilitate a number of collaborations involving international artists. Creative Collaborations in 2007 encourages new connections between African and UK artists working with education and community participants in intercultural arts projects. Supported by Visiting Arts in partnership with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), two of the collaborations will involve residencies in Liverpool during European Capital of Culture 2008. Akaraaka will create an opportunity for young people, dance enthusiasts and professionals to explore Intercultural dialogues: The body in African dance. The project will consist of residencies in Liverpool and London, sharings of creative and traditional dance, post-show discussions and a seminar at which practitioners involved in dance, disability issues and intercultural practice will meet and discuss issues raised by the work of the company. Senegalese integrated dance company Compagnie Takku Ligguey will create work with young people (both disabled and non-disabled), community groups, and dance professionals who will devise work for public sharing. The second residency at Kensington and Chelsea College, London will include a seminar to introduce practitioners of African and integrated dance in the UK to the visiting artists. Students at Kensington and Chelsea will show their work during this seminar. The residencies will involve dance classes in which the participants will learn various African dance forms. The group will use the movement learnt as a starting point for their own devised work and participate in daily discussion and reflection sessions recorded by a documentary film maker. Africa Oye will collaborate with Hip Hop artists utilising urban music, traditional Africa roots and the “free mike” tradition in a two-week music and language project involving young people and school children in Liverpool and Merseyside. Senegalese rap group Daara J, UK-based Black Twang (UK/Jamaica) and Young Gof (UK/Nigeria) will collaborate with participants from Liverpool Community College during the first week culminating in a public sharing attended by artists participating in the free mike project. A further public performance will take place at The Magnet Club in Liverpool. In the second week, Somalian hip hop artist K’naan joins the collaboration together with participants from Liverpool’s communities with roots in the Horn of Africa. K’Naan will profile the Islamic influences in his music. The project brings together creative voices from East and West Africa together with African and Caribbean diaspora artists with young people from diverse communities in the North West of the UK through unique collaboration. The project will have a legacy of knowledge, music, language and intercultural understanding.
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