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The third segment of Formations, our year-long programme delivered in partnership with Nottingham Trent University’s Postcolonial Studies Centre, includes events in January and February under the thematic banner – Formation: Memorials, focusing on the memorialisation of people, places, and histories, through statues and monuments and through writing. We will consider memorialisation in locations including the UK, US, and Pakistan, consider renowned figures and the politics of the statues and other public monuments commemorating them, and invite you to join us for conversations, poetry readings, and writing workshops.

Resilience Writing: Creative Writing Workshop with Postcolonial Studies Centre writer-in-residence Eve Makis

Join a writing session with Eve Makis exploring identity and the meaning of resilience, taking inspiration from seminal works by Maya Angelou. All levels welcome.

All participants will get the chance of having their work edited and included on a spoken word album bringing their written work to life.

Eve Makis is the author of four novels, a life-writing guide and an award-winning screenplay. She’s recipient of the Young Booksellers International Book of the Year Award and the Aurora Mardiganian Gold Medal, her works shortlisted for the East Midlands Book Award and the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. She teaches fiction on the MA in creative writing at Nottingham Trent University where she is writer in residence for the Postcolonial Studies Centre.

Annum Salman: Sense Me, Remembering Incomplete Identities of the Past

Annum Salman is a spoken word poet from Pakistan, who has undertaken her Creative Writing MA in Surrey and is currently residing in Karachi. Her book shares her experiences as Pakistani Muslim woman and a foreigner tackling mental health issues, sexism and racism. In line with the theme of memorials, Annum will be joining us live from Pakistan to read from her collection Sense Me and discuss identity, tackling racism and sexism, and her relationship with the UK and Pakistan as a Muslim woman. She will be introduced and in conversation with Ramisha Rafique, postgraduate research student at NTU.

Roundtable: Slavery and Public History in the UK and US – A Conversation with Dr Jessica Moody and Professor Stephen Small

Slavery and Public History in the UK and US – A Conversation with Dr Jessica Moody and Professor Stephen Small. Chaired by Dr Jenny Woodley, with Purnachandra Naik.

The histories of both the UK and the USA are inextricably bound up with histories of enslavement and of the enslaved. And yet, both countries have failed to fully recognise or interrogate these pasts. Over recent months activists and campaigners have forced a reckoning with the symbols of this history, from the toppling of the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol, to the fall of numerous Confederate statutes in the United States. They have made headline news and provoked debate about what should be done with monuments to enslavers and what should fill the gaps in our public history.

This online event will bring together two leading scholars of public history and collective memories of slavery. Jessica Moody and Stephen Small will join us for a conversation about histories of slavery and their place in contemporary Britain and the USA.

Writing Statues: Creative Writing Workshop with Postcolonial Studies Centre writer-in-residence Eve Makis

Creative writing workshop inspired by controversial statues. What would a statue say if it could talk? Would it be indignant about its removal? Curse its creator? What stories could it tell you? What late night assignations has it witnessed? Come along and make things up. Express yourself about public art in a creative way.

All participants will get the chance of having their work edited and included on a spoken word album bringing their written work to life.

In the second instalment of our year-long Formations programme, delivered in partnership with Nottingham Trent University’s Postcolonial Studies Centre, we are pleased to announce our November and December events, under the thematic banner – Formation: Land, focusing on land, agriculture, landscape, and place. We will consider dispossession, migration, and ways the human and land interact, and we invite you to think about recent innovative writing about how humans are connected with the living environment and our heritage.

Valentina De Riso, ‘Indigenous-settler Relations in Canada and Land-Based Reconciliation in Lee Maracle’s Celia’s Song’

Focusing on the context of Indigenous-settler relations in Canada, this talk considers the ways in which settler-colonialism damages the land and peoples’ relationships to it through exploitation and policies of assimilation, dispossession, and forced relocation aimed at erasing Indigenous identity. Drawing from Lee Maracle’s novel, Celia’s Song, and from Indigenous philosophies of relationality that posit a complex system of relations between peoples and more-than-human beings (animal, plants, ecosystems), Valentina explores how restoring sustainable relationships to the Earth is crucial for establishing and maintaining peaceful relationships between Indigenous peoples and settlers in Canada.

Book launch: Jenni Ramone, Postcolonial Literatures in the Local Literary Marketplace: Located Reading

Interviewed by Bethan Evans, AHRC Midlands 4 Cities funded doctoral candidate at NTU.

In this event, Jenni discusses the significance of reading for understanding place (Cuba, Nigeria, the UK, and India), and some of the fascinating publishing and reading locations explored in the book. You can purchase a copy of the book here.

Landscape Writing: Creative Writing Workshop with NTU’s Postcolonial Studies Centre writer-in-residence Eve Makis

Join a session with Eve Makis exploring urban and rural landscape writing. Learn how to evoke a landscape using your senses, taking inspiration from the works of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Elif Shafak. All levels welcome.

Eve Makis is the author of four novels, a life-writing guide, and an award-winning screenplay. She teaches fiction on the MA Creative Writing course at Nottingham Trent University, where she is writer in residence for the Postcolonial Studies Centre.

All participants will get the chance to have their work edited and included in a planned NTU anthology.

Longing to Belong: student-led conference on ‘Belonging’

Join us for a conference curated by a collective of second year NTU English students, centred around Elizabeth-Jane Burnett’s The Grassling.

The title of the conference, ‘Longing to Belong’, raises questions surrounding our relationship with the term ‘belonging’. It focuses on writers from the diaspora, as we believe that their relationship with belonging is a unique and under-represented experience. Featuring three guest speakers; Eve Makis, Panya Banjoko and Helen Cousins.

From Brixton to Jamaica with the acclaimed novelist Alex Wheatle – in conversation with Eve Makis

Eve Makis will be interviewing Alex Wheatle about his recently published YA fiction book, The Cane Warriors.

A prolific writer, Alex has had success in many forms including lyrics, poetry, short stories, plays and novel writing for adults and children. His work has been influenced by Brixton, where he grew up, his Jamaican heritage, and his experiences of living in the Shirley Oaks Children’s Home. He developed a hearty reading habit during his time in prison after the Brixton riots and has never looked back. Alex’s latest Young Adult novel, The Cane Warriors, published to critical acclaim in October, is based on the true story of a slave uprising on a sugar cane plantation in Jamaica in the 1700s. In 2008, Alex was awarded an MBE for services to literature and later won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize for his book, Crongton Knights.

Alex’s life story was filmed as part of the mini-series, Small Axe, created and directed by Steve McQueen (director of Twelve Years a Slave) and shown on BBC One last Sunday.

To launch our year-long Formations programme, delivered in partnership with Nottingham Trent University’s Postcolonial Studies Centre, we are pleased to announce our October events, under the thematic banner – Formation: History, Critical Responses to Black History Month.

SNCC’s Stories: Book launch and interview with Sharon Monteith

Join us for an interview with Sharon Monteith, Distinguished Professor of American Literature and Cultural History at NTU, as she tells us more about SNCC’s Stories: The African American Freedom Movement in the Civil Rights South (University of Georgia Press, October 2020).

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee would have commemorated 60 years since its founding in 2020 in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis. This book coincides with that anniversary and uncovers the organisation’s narrative culture and activist literary history. Join Sharon Monteith in conversation about SNCC and her book with Panya Banjoko, poet, director of Nottingham Black Archive and NTU doctoral researcher.

Resilience Writing: Creative Writing Workshop with NTU’s Postcolonial Studies Centre writer-in-residence Eve Makis

Join a writing session with Eve Makis exploring identity and the meaning of resilience, taking inspiration from seminal works by Maya Angelou. All levels welcome.

All participants will get the chance of having their work edited and included in a planned NTU anthology.

Dr Leila Kamali talk: John Edgar Wideman: African American History-Making and Uses of Visual Art

Dr Leila Kamali invites audiences to learn about her major film and education project relating to the work of the great African American writer John Edgar Wideman. In this event, Leila discusses Wideman’s work in relation to decolonisation, exploring the ways that the visual images in his writing signal his construction of a decolonising gaze.

Dr Leila Kamali is a literary scholar with specialisms in African American literature, Black British literature, diaspora, transnationalism and cultural memory. Her research investigates the relationship between memory, trauma, language, and tradition, in order to discover ways in which literature resists contemporary forms of racism and builds new forms of citizenship.

Nottingham Black Archive was founded in 2009 by Panya Banjoko with the aim of researching, collecting and preserving Black history, heritage and culture in Nottingham, from the earliest time to the present day. The collection consists of artefacts donated by the community and interviews collected through project work. Today, the archive holds a growing collection of oral histories, photographs, articles, and books dating back to the 1940s.

In 2012, Nottingham Black Archive began to document the experiences of those who came from the Caribbean to England during the Windrush period. Journeys to Nottingham is a collection of narratives, photographs, and ephemera from people who travelled from the Caribbean to Nottingham during the Windrush era. It is a snapshot of why they came, what they did, and where they worked on their arrival to the city.

Beyond the materials featured in this exhibition, there are full oral history interviews which are housed within Nottingham Black Archive and serve as a record to mark the journeys of people from the Caribbean to England.

Panya Banjoko is a UK-based writer and poet whose work has been published in various anthologies. Banjoko is currently completing a PhD at Nottingham Trent University that focuses on Politics in Poetry and the Role of African Caribbean Writers and Networks in the 1970s and 80s. She has performed widely, including at the 2012 Olympic Games, coordinates a Black Writers network, and is a patron for Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature.

Installation view. Courtesy of the Nottingham Black Archive. Photo: Julian Lister.

With the launch of the CAMPUS Independent Study Programme, we will be hosting a series of talks by the CAMPUS faculty exploring alternative modes of education, decolonial practices, Black studies, and anti-fascist movements.

Elvira Dyangani Ose’s internationally acclaimed curatorial work is committed to the histories and legacies of colonialism in contemporary African art.

Elvira Dyangani Ose was recently appointed Director of The Showroom. Dyangani Ose was Senior Curator at Creative Time, a New York-based non-profit public arts organisation. Currently a lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, Dyangani Ose is a member of the Thought Council at the Fondazione Prada and is an independent curator. She was Curator of the eighth edition of the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary art (GIBCA 2015) and Curator, International Art at Tate Modern (2011 – 2014). She also recently joined Tate Modern’s Advisory Council.

CAMPUS Independent Study Programme

CAMPUS is a year-long and city-wide independent study programme in curatorial, visual and cultural studies, based on collaborative knowledge production and innovative research practices. It is a free-to-attend programme of monthly closed-door gatherings and free public talks. Taking place in different locations in Nottingham (Nottingham Contemporary, Primary, Bonington Gallery, Backlit), CAMPUS welcomes participants from different backgrounds who wish to engage in conversations about contemporary debates and further explore interdisciplinary practices. CAMPUS is a space of encounter between researchers, practitioners, activists, scholars, institutions and organisations.

Installation view. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Julian Lister.

Dick Jewell, Jewell, 2010. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Julian Lister.

Dick Jewell, iPhone flower Portraits, 2019. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Julian Lister.

Uniting 250 artists from 25 countries over 7 days, UK Young Artist (UKYA) City Takeover (Now UK New Artists) will span multiple venues across Nottingham, immersing visitors in an array of extraordinary, innovative and contemporary work, from visual arts to performance; music; applied arts; literature; digital arts and moving image.

One of the largest biennials of national and international artists in the world, UKYA City Takeover will be discerning and cutting-edge. Presenting an exemplar survey show of contemporary art, performance and music being made today. Expect to encounter art and performance in cultural spaces as well as unusual places. From caves to cafes; markets to museums; studios to the streets – the City Takeover weaves a rich tapestry of venues across Nottingham.

Nottingham Trent University is delighted to invite Dick Jewell to speak as part of the 2019 Fine Art Live Lecture Series.

Working across film, photography and photo-collage, Jewell has inhabited both gallery and commercial contexts, exhibiting his work internationally at institutions including the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam) and Serpentine Gallery (London), as well as producing music videos and promos for musicians including Neneh Cherry and Massive Attack

Growing up in Croydon Jewell spent much of his youth “lugging around an Olympus OM-1 Motor Drive, taking portraits of strangers at any opportunity” going on to publishing his first book Found Photos in 1978, the same year he completed his MA in Printmaking at the Royal College of Art.

In anticipation of Jewell’s most significant solo show Now & Then (opening January), take a read of this article on his career as an artist/filmmmaker by Dazed & Confused.

Art Dates is a new series of social art gallery-based events hosted by SHEAfriq, a Nottingham-based creative collective of woman creatives of African descent. SHEAfriq aims to provide a relaxed and casual environment for art lovers and non-art lovers alike to interact and engage in fruitful conversation about art, followed by a creative activity over drinks.

For this session of Art Dates, we invite you to join us for the last days of Bonington Gallery’s exhibition The Accumulation of Things (curated by Adam Murray) with Joy Labinjo, one of the exhibiting artists and Saziso Phiri from SHEAfriq. They will discuss the exploration of culture and identity through art, how race and representation came to be key themes in Joy’s work, and her highlights to date as a young award-winning artist. The conversation will be followed by a Q+A and short creative activity over light refreshments.

Joy Labinjo (born 1994) is a painter living and working in Newcastle. Joy’s paintings draw on her British-Nigerian heritage and examine the complex relationship between identity, race and culture. In 2018, Labinjo was awarded with the Woon Foundation Art Prize, considered to be one of most generous prizes in the art world.

Saziso Phiri is a cultural producer and independent curator living and working in Nottingham. In 2015 she founded The Anti Gallery, a pop-up art gallery inspired by urban culture often exhibiting and engaging art in alternative gallery environments. Saziso has been a member of SHEAfriq since 2017.

THE ACCUMULATION OF THINGS

The Accumulation of Things is an exhibition curated by Adam Murray, bringing together seven artists whose work deals with shared interests of experience, circumstance and the familiar. Personal histories both real and imagined are examined through painting, photography and sculpture.

Video Days takes its title from the 90s skateboard video by Blind Skateboards. Produced in 1991 by American skateboarder and filmmaker, Spike Jonze, the iconic video depicts street and park skating in the US, and is considered one of the most influential skate videos of its time.

For the duration of 25 days the gallery will be transformed into an open cinema. Running daily, Video Days presents a different film or series of short films each day from different decades and genres. The films screened share several common themes, most prevalent is their relationship to the built environment.

The films on display do not come with a British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). We therefore advise that some of the films shown may contain scenes of nudity, discrimination, violence, drugs, imitable behaviour, and language unsuitable for young or vulnerable viewers. If you have any questions prior to visiting the gallery, please get in touch.

WEEK FIVE SCREENINGS

Preceded by a single screening of Ashley Holmes’ Everybody Hustling, 2017. Followed by Q+A hosted by Jonathan P. Watts, visiting Lecturer, BA (Hons) Photography.

Richard Paul, All that is Solid, 2018, (13 mins), shown in 3D.
Looped all day.

A 13-minute video by Richard Paul in which a narrator describes an unspecified city, the materials constituting its construction, and the myths connected to these material elements. Close-up images of crystals, stone and metals float gently in space before the viewer, captured using stereographic photography, rendering them in three dimensions, almost touchable. Meanwhile, a dulcet voice describes wheels rolling over iron pyrite streets, how quartz governs a subterranean electronics systems and how concrete is constructed into towers and geometric barriers. The title of the work is taken from The Communist Manifesto, where Marx and Engels proffer all that is solid, melts into air. As a substance is ingested to induce a hallucination or dream state, the cityscape warps, as does the consciousness of the narrator, who dreams of further, more fantastic materials.