This online roundtable is a pre-conference event on Dalit magazines with editors and subject experts from West Bengal and Maharashtra. It is being organised in association with the Network on Dalit and Adivasi Literature and Bonington Gallery as part of our Formations Series.
Conceptualised to draw the attention of researchers working in this field within and outside India, the roundtable will be moderated by Dr Nicole Thiara and Prof Judith Misrahi-Barak.
Funded by the Research Seed Grant Scheme, GITAM (Deemed to be University), the project on Dalit Literature in Marathi and Bangla Little Magazines intends to critically engage with the underrepresented area of Dalit Periodicals within the broad research field of Dalit Studies. It aims to trace and collect periodicals published in Bangla and Marathi (1950-2000) and look into their publication process, circulation and readership.
Besides, it aims to build a digital repository of Bangla and Marathi periodicals to facilitate easier access, a historiographic narrative on the evolution of Dalit literary periodicals in Marathi and Bangla and encourage translations of Dalit writings published in these periodicals.
As part of the outreach programme, a three-day conference is being organised in GITAM, Hyderabad, titled “Vernacular Periodicals and Dalit Writing: Production, Circulation and Reception” from 1st March to 3rd March 2023 in association with the Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore. This conference aims to bring together editors, subject experts, early career scholars and graduate students to initiate a conversation across Indian languages and to reflect upon the vernacular Dalit periodicals critically.
The discussion will primarily focus on:
1) the possibility and scope of research in the area of vernacular periodicals and Dalit writing,
2) the challenges in such research and
3) the significance of such research.
A retired central government employee, Dhurjati Naskar, is an essayist, poet, and novelist from South 24 Parganas of West Bengal. He has been involved in editing periodicals since the early 1970s. Some of the periodicals edited by him are: Bangla Maati (Soil of Bengal), Dakkhin Barasat Sahitya Patra (South Barasat Literary Magazine), Baridhati, Dakhina Path, Baruipur Sambad (Barupipur News), Bharatiya Pundra Samachar (Indian Pundra News) and Pundra-Poundra Badhav. These periodicals, predominantly literary, also published essays concerning the history, ethnonational and folk traditions of the Poundra community. He is a member of Bangla Dalit Sahitya Sangstha (Kolkata), West Bengal Dalit Sahitya Sabha and a founding member of Dr Bhusan Chandra Naskar Archive. He has been a recipient of the West Bengal Sahitya Akademy Award in the year 2019.
Prof. Sipra Mukherjee teaches English at West Bengal State University. Her areas of interest are religion, caste, folklore and orality. She has been a visiting fellow at the department of English University of Hyderabad, School of Cultural Texts and Records, Jadavpur University. She has received many national and international research and travel grants. Some of them are – ICSSR research grant for a research project on ‘Interpreting Folklore: Understanding the relationship between folklore, religion and caste in East India’, 2013-2015; a Research Grant from the University Grant Commission, India, ‘Faiths in the Margins’, 2009; Luce Grant from Comparative Religion Programme, on Religion and Human Security: Negotiating the Power of Religious Non-State Actors, University of Washington, 2008. Besides her research on the intersection between caste and religion, she has been an avid translator. Her translated works include the Autobiography of Dalit writer Manoranjan Byapari, Interrogating My Chandal Life, 2018, and Under My Black Skin Flows a Red River: Translations of Dalit Writings for Bengal, 2021, which she co-edited along with Prof. Debi Chatterjee. She is also a member of Ebong Alap, a voluntary non-profit society which works with youth to encourage critical thought.
Dr Asit Biswas is an Associate Professor of English in West Bengal Education Service, currently posted at P.R. Thakur Government College, Thakurnagar, West Bengal. He completed his PhD research on the film adaptation of western texts in Bengali films from the University of Gour Banga, Malda, West Bengal. He has published seventeen research papers, six Dalit short stories, two Dalit plays and some poems in Bengali. He is the co-editor of the book Shotoborsher Bangla Dalit Sahitya; Dalit Poems, Dalit Literary Horizon (translation of Manohar Mouli Biswas’s book, Dalit Sahityer Digboloy), Songs and Dialogues from Bengal in English Translation and Dalit Protest Unbridled: Two Dozen Plays of Raju Das. He also published the book Pardon Not: Marichjhampi Massacre, a translation of the novel Kshama Nei by Nakul Mallik. Recently his translation of Kalyani Thakur’s novella Andhar Bil O Kichhu Manush (Andhar Bil and Some People) has been published by Zubaan. At present, he is translating a Bangla epic.
Urmila Pawar is a widely known Indian (Marathi) writer. She has been active in the Dalit and feminist movements in India since her early life. She was a part of the Marathi Dalit feminist magazine Aamhi Maitarni which was published during the 90s. She has eleven publications to her credit including the popular Marathi short story collection translated into English as Mother Wit by Prof. Veena Deo (Hamline University, USA), published by Zuban. Her Autobiographical narrative Aydaan translated into English as The Weave of My Life: A Dalit Woman’s Memoirs by Prof. Maya Pandit remains most popular even today (it has been translated into other Indian languages as well – Hindi, Kannada and Tamil). Many of her short stories have been prescribed in the syllabus framework of Indian universities as well as universities abroad (Colombia University, USA).
A bilingual poet, translator, editor, critic and columnist, Dr Chandrakant Patil writes in Marathi and Hindi and occasionally in English. He has several publications – collections of Marathi poems such as Nissandarbh, Ittambhoot, Bayaka ani Itar Kvita, and a collection of Hindi poems Apni Bhasha Ke Sameep to mention a few. Besides, he has also published six critical essay collections and twenty-five collections in Marathi and Hindi translations. He is popularly known for his active engagement in the Little Magazine Movement in Maharashtra during the 1960s and 1970s. He acted as one of the editors and publishers of the highly discussed little magazine Wacha. Besides, he was also one of the founder members of Wacha Prakashan that published the first collections of avant-garde poets of Marathi, such as Bhalchandra Nemade, Manohar Oak, Satish Kalasekar, Dilip Chitre etc. He has been a recipient of national and state-level awards for his various contributions – Sahitya Akademi Translation award (1991), Uttar Pradesh Hindi Sahitya Akademi (1994), Bhasha Vruddhi Sammaan, Govt. Of Maharashtra (2022).
Prof. Dilip Chavan is an academic scholar and a professor of English at SRTM University, Nanded, Maharashtra. His doctoral work, Language Politics under Colonialism: Caste, Class and Language Pedagogy in Western India, was published as a book by Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars in 2013. He writes in Marathi and has published nine books on contemporary social issues such as language, caste, class, imperialism, and women’s education. Some of his notable works are – Phule-Shahu-Ambedkar ani Jativyawastha Ant (1998); Shikshan: Jatvargiya Vastav ani Samatavadi Paryay (1999); Stree Shikshanacha Sangharsha (2007); Dr Ambedkar ani Bhartiya Shikshanatil Jatisanghrsha (2003); Samrajyavad: Bhasha ani Sanskriti (2010); Corona ani Stree-Purush Vishamatecha Prashna (2022). He also has a keen interest in translations from English to the Marathi language (he is working on the Marathi translation of Braj Ranjan Mani’s book Debrahminising History). Besides, he has been a part of the widely read fortnightly ‘Pariwartanacha Watsaru’ as its executive editor. He has been associated with academic institutions, such as the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), Mysore.
A graduate from the University of Hyderabad, Dr Sayantan Mondal is currently an Asst. Professor in the department of English at GITAM, Hyderabad (Deemed to be University). His areas of interest are Reading-Print readership, Nineteenth-Century Literature, Dalit Studies and Translation. Sayantan has been an Erasmus Mundus Fellow at the University of Oxford during 2015-16. He has received the University of Heidelberg Travel Grant 2015 and the University Grants Commission Travel grant 2016. Presently, he is working on a research project titled “Mapping Vernacular Network of Ideas and Recovering the Ephemeral: Dalit Literature in Marathi and Bangla Little Magazines”, along with Dr Jondhale Rahul Hiraman. This project aims to trace Bangla and Marathi Periodicals and the exchange of ideas on the caste question. Some of his published works are – Of Caste-Class and Dalit Writing, 2015; An Introduction to the World of Monoranjan Byapari, 2015; Language and its People: A Comparative insight into the Kurdish and Rohingya Genocide, 2019; Prantik theke Dalit: Nandonikatar Rajniti o Dalit Chetona (From Marginalised to Dalit: Politics of Aesthetics and Dalit Consciousness), 2022; Migration and Cultural Identity: An Introduction, 2022.
Having received a doctorate in English (Cultural Studies) from The English and Foreign Languages University (EFL-U), Hyderabad, Dr Jondhale Rahul Hiraman is an assistant professor of English at GITAM (Deemed to be University), Hyderabad campus. His doctoral research, Religious Conversion and Dalit Experience: A Study of the Meanings of Conversion among the Neo-Buddhists, emphasises the phenomenon of Dalit conversion to Buddhism and studies the conversion movement in Nanded district (Marathwada region, Maharashtra) through collecting and analysing historical records – pamphlets, posters, record books etc. He is a recipient of a prestigious Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, doctoral fellowship for his doctoral research. He has been publishing in the area of Dalit Studies/literature on issues such as caste, colonial intervention into the caste question, Dalit identity and culture etc. Currently, he is involved in a research project, “Mapping Vernacular Network of Ideas and Recovering the Ephemeral: Dalit Literature in Marathi and Bangla Little Magazines”, along with Dr Sayantan Mondal.
Join us for a screening of Ningwasum by Subash Thebe Limbu followed by an in-conversation with Subash, Nicole Thiara and Joshua Lockwood-Moran.
Ningwasum is a Yakthung science fiction documentary film work narrated by Miksam, a time traveller from a future Indigenous Nation. The film follows two time travellers, Miksam and Mingsoma, played by Subin Limbu and Shanta Nepali respectively, in the Himalayas weaving indigenous folk stories, culture, climate change and science fiction. The film explores notions of time, space and memory, and how realities and the sense of now could be different for different communities.
Drawing from Adivasi Futurism and inspired by Afrofuturism and Indigenous Futurism, Ningwasum imagines a future from an Indigenous perspective where they have agency, technology, sovereignty and also their indigenous knowledge, culture, ethics and storytelling still intact.
The event will take place online on YouTube. The film is 45 minutes long, and the in-conversation will take place directly after the screening.
The Celebrating Adivasi and Dalit Arts and Literature Festival (CADALFEST) is the first international festival series dedicated to the writing and performance arts by writers whose work creatively resists caste discrimination and social exclusion in India: Dalit Adivasi Text.
This event as part of the festival series in collaboration with Formations and Bonington Gallery.
Subash Thebe Limbu is a Yakthung (Limbu) artist from what we currently know as eastern Nepal. He works with sound, film, music, performance, painting and podcasts.
Subash has an MA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins (2016), a BA in Fine Art from Middlesex University (2011), and an Intermediate in Fine Art from Lalit Kala Campus, Kathmandu.
His works are inspired by socio-political issues, resistance and science/speculative fiction. Indigeneity, climate change, and Adivasi Futurism are recurring themes in his works.
He is based in Newa Nation (Kathmandu) and London.
Visit Subash’s website and Instagram.
Nicole Thiara is Co-Director of Nottingham Trent University’s Postcolonial Studies Centre and Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded Research Network Series ‘Writing, Analysing, Translating Dalit Literature’ and its Follow-on Grant ‘On Page and on Stage: Celebrating Dalit and Adivasi Literatures and Performing Arts’. She teaches postcolonial and contemporary literature at Nottingham Trent University, UK. Her area of research is Dalit and diasporic South Asian literature and her current research project is the representation of modernity in Dalit literature.
Joshua Lockwood-Moran is a curator and artist. He joined Bonington Gallery in 2018 as Assistant Curator, and also is co-director of TG gallery, based in Primary and sits on the MIMA advisory group. Joshua led on the Andrew Logan: The Joy of Sculpture exhibition at Bonington Gallery in 2021 and previously worked as a freelance curator, working on exhibitions in a number of artist-led spaces and institutions. These include All Men by Nature Desire to Know at Bonington Gallery (2017); Viewpoints at The Collection and Usher Gallery, Lincoln (2015) and The 8 Artistic Principles, Attic, Nottingham (2014).
This event will take place at Bonington Gallery.
This event has now sold out, please email boningtongallery@ntu.ac.uk to be added to the reserve list
What truths are your poems telling? If not for the reality of your poems, what truths would never be spoken at all? In Poetry as Ferocity Workshop: Writing Your Truth with Radical Honesty, we’ll chart a course for radical honesty in verse, seeking to grow stronger roots for your poems to anchor themselves.
Focusing on work by female Caribbean poets Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné and Safiya Sinclair, we draw on their powerful subversion in writing. Using innovative exercises, we unlock the most potent ways to tell the truth our poems require.
Poets have always been political agitators, defenders of the right to wield uncomfortable truths. What truths do you bring to the table, ready and roaring to be told?
NOTE: This workshop is open to people aged 18 and over. This workshop involves discussion of potentially triggering content and strong language.
Shivanee Ramlochan is an Indo-Trinidadian poet, critic, and essayist, whose first poetry collection, Everyone Knows I Am a Haunting (2017), was shortlisted for the 2018 Forward Prize. Ramlochan’s next work, the creative non-fiction Unkillable, is forthcoming from Noemi Press in Autumn 2023. Shivanee is the Book Reviews Editor for Caribbean Beat Magazine and works closely with Bocas Lit Fest, the Caribbean’s largest literary festival.
Audio/visual invites conversations about the significance and impact of visual communication (art, design, imagery, media, advertising, maps) and audio communication through music, but also the impact of language choice, and conversation. Events in this segment foreground meaning conveyed by music and art, and invite attention to global artists working in experimental ways with sound and the visual arts.
The Formations programme is an online series of free, public events led by the Postcolonial Studies Centre at Nottingham Trent University in collaboration with Bonington Gallery. The series foregrounds the work of underrepresented writers, academics, artists, intellectuals and activists worldwide who address inequalities of all kinds, often bringing people from different places and working practices together for important conversations.
Friday 6 May 2022, 7 – 8 pm
Ever wondered how you might increase your understanding of cinema? This one-off workshop will offer you the chance to examine films and their content more clearly, giving you the tools to analyse movies and their messages. Including plenty of clips, case studies, and discussion, we will deconstruct imagery, character and visual metaphor affording you the opportunity to appreciate Hollywood and beyond with a deeper understanding of the film making craft.
This workshop is online via Microsoft Teams, spaces are limited.
Wednesday 11 May 2022, 7 – 8 pm
In this online event, artist Kate McMillan will be talking about various projects exploring the postcolonial legacies of former penal colonies, prison islands alongside the ongoing use of extraterritorial detention by countries such as Australia and the United States. We will be talking about of the notion of ‘listening with my feet’ – listening as a decolonial tool on contested ground, and the influence of indigenous thinking on McMillan growing up in Australia. We will also explore McMillan’s collaborative work with Cat Hope considering ways in which systemic silencing of those both displaced and detained as part of colonial and neocolonial modes of government might be listened to differently.
Watch this event on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.
Wednesday 15 June 2022, 7 – 8.30 pm
Join us for an evening of music with The Venus Bushfires, interluded with a conversation with Bethan Evans.
The Venus Bushfires is a creative collective of one and many, of which Helen Epega is the only constant member. The Nigerian-British singer-songwriter, composer and performance artist explores the ethereal sounds of the ‘hang’, the power of the talking drum and the quirks of children’s toys cross-fertilising multiple visual and musical styles.
This event will take place at Bonington Gallery.
Watch this event on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.
Friday 24 June 2022, 7 – 8 pm
Join us to hear Leone Ross read from her latest novel, This One Sky Day, in discussion with Bethan Evans.
Leone Ross is a novelist, short story writer, editor/copy-editor, and reviewer of fiction. She was born in Coventry England, and when she was six years old migrated with her mother to Jamaica, where she was raised and educated. After graduating from the University of the West Indies in 1990, Ross returned to England to complete a Master’s degree in International Journalism at City University, in London, where she now lives. Ross’s writing is genre-bending and world-tilting, revelling in the magical realist and surrealist.
10 randomly selected people signed up to the event will receive a free copy of This One Sky Day. This event will be online via YouTube Live.
Watch this event on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.
Following a call for papers last year, we are delighted to announce that the Building Bridges Conference will take place from the 4 – 7 April 2022. The conference is part of the Formations programme run by researchers from the Postcolonial Study Centre at Nottingham Trent University and Bonington Gallery.
Hosting a wide range of presenters from across the globe, papers explore contemporary topical issues of decolonisation and its socio-political structures. The conference is open to discussions and deconstructions of long-held dominant ideologies and narratives which function to sustain the invisibility of colonial and empirical legacies in the contemporary world. Building Bridges aims to highlight alternative ways of thinking about the world and alternative forms of political practices. By thinking critically about the need to unbuild, to deconstruct, and to destabilise the kind of connections and structures that uphold Eurocentric and colonial frames of reference as ‘universal’, we seek to upend stories of encounter and demonstrate the pervasive influence of conquest narratives in the present day. We are delighted to confirm that our keynote speakers are Professor Avtar Brah and Dr Sophie Chao.
The conference will feature a reading from Leone Ross, from her new novel This One Sky Day. The reading will be followed by a Q&A session with the writer, discussing her writing process and her thoughts on creative form in a postcolonial world.
Take a look at the full conference programme.
9.45 – 11 am
This presentation will be a both theoretical and political engagement with concepts such as ‘Decolonial’ and ‘Intersectionality’ and how these concepts assume new meanings through their articulation. It will attend to particular instances in and through which they have mapped the social ground of feminist and egalitarian imaginaries.
Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.
12 – 1.30 pm
Participants: Marietta Kosma, Daniel Yaw Fiaveh, Ndiweteko Jennifer Nghishitende and Lede E Miki Pohshna
Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.
2.30 – 4 pm
Participants: Isabel Arce Zelada, Rajbir Samal & Binod Mishra, Ghosun Baaqeel and Victoria V. Chang
Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.
8.45 – 10 am
In this talk, Dr Chao will draw on her collaborative research with Samoan scholar and Lefaoali’i (High Talking Chief) Dion Enari to explore how transdisciplinary, experimental, and decolonial imaginaries can help us better understand and address environmental destruction and social injustice in an epoch of planetary undoing. Such imaginaries must account for the perspectives, interests, and existences of both human and beyond-human communities of life.
Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.
11 am – 12.30 pm
Participants: Shifana P A & Dr Asha Susan Jacob, Md Alamgir Hossain, Bianca Cherechés and Chithira James & Dr Reju George Mathew
Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.
1.30 – 3 pm
Participants: Badakynti Nylla Iangngap, Catherine Price, Dr Md Abu Shahid Abdullah and Swapnit Pradhan & Dr Nagendra Kumar
Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.
9.45 – 11.30 am
Participants: Atilio Barreda II, Nabeela Musthafa, Dr Opeloge Ah Sam and Sara Bdeir
Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.
12.30 – 2 pm
Participants: Shifana P A & Dr Asha Susan Jacob, Md Alamgir Hossain, Bianca Cherechés and Chithira James & Dr Reju George Mathew
Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.
11.15 am – 12.30 pm
Leone Ross will read from her new novel, This One Sky Day, and will talk to Bethan Evans and the audience about her writing process and decolonisation.
Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.
1.30 – 3 pm
Participants: Carolina Buffoli, Marine Berthiot, Dr Rachel Gregory Fox and Dr Yasmin Rioux
Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.
For more information visit the Building Bridges conference website and follow Building Bridges on Twitter.
on Twitter @buildbridgesntu.
Destiny Ekaragha once said that Black British filmmakers were not expected to make films about ordinary family stories and everyday things – like love. This segment foregrounds the transformative nature of the everyday feeling of love in art, writing, and research, while it also helps us to think about how the concept of love is defined, understood, and restricted, if love is understood and represented in limited ways. The free, online events in this segment consider the expression, meaning, contexts, and impact of love by exploring the work of artists, writers and thinkers, emphasising questions of gender, sexuality, race, and culture.
The segment begins with a conversation between Eve Makis and Young Adult fiction writer Nicola Garrard, whose novel about love and canal journeys 29 Locks was recently published by HopeRoad, one of the publishers that we work with very often at the Postcolonial Studies Centre. Later in the segment, we are very excited to welcome Ferdinand Dennis to NTU. His on-campus event with Black Writing in Britain students and book signing will be recorded for a special film event for Formations. Other events in the segment include Formations ‘visits’ to Becky Cullen’s WRAP (Writing, Reading and Pleasure) to join her event with writer Musa Okwonga. In addition, Tom Lockwood-Moran hosts a fascinating book reading and discussion event on the Power of Queer Caribbean Love with Indo-Trinidadian poet Shivanee Ramlochan.
The Formations programme is an online series of free, public events led by the Postcolonial Studies Centre at Nottingham Trent University in collaboration with Bonington Gallery. The series foregrounds the work of underrepresented writers, academics, artists, intellectuals and activists worldwide who address inequalities of all kinds, often bringing people from different places and working practices together for important conversations.
Tuesday 1 February 2022, 6.30 – 7.30 pm
This free event is a must for anyone who reads Young Adult fiction or has an interest in writing for young people. Nicola Garrard will be talking about her Young Adult novel, 29 Locks, an unflinching depiction of urban teen life in London. The book was shortlisted in the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize and the Mslexia Children’s Novel Competition. She will be reading from the book and answering audience questions. Hosted by Eve Makis.
You can purchase Nicola Garrard’s newly published novel online.
Watch on Bonington Gallery’s YouTube channel.
Wednesday 9 February 2022, 1 – 2 pm
Formations is joining NTU’s English Research Seminar series to welcome researcher Jennifer Leetsch who will talk about her recently published book, Love and Space in Contemporary African Diasporic Women’s Writing.
The book combines careful literary analyses with in-depth discussions of cultural and socio-historical contexts by considering the world-making powers of the old novel form in the third millennium as well as the formative effect of new digital media.
Email Jenni Ramone to reserve your free place. You’ll be sent a link to the Teams meeting and further instructions on how to join.
Wednesday 16 February 2022, 6 – 7.30 pm
Bonington Gallery and NTU’s Postcolonial Studies Centre warmly invite all queer lovers, and allied others, to a belated valentine date: diving the depths with Indo-Trinidadian poet Shivanee Ramlochan. The evening will include readings from Ramlochan’s striking first collection, Everyone Knows I am a Haunting (2017), plus exclusive new writing, and a discussion contextualising queerness and literary Caribbeanness, with NTU literary researcher Thomas Lockwood-Moran (Midlands4Cities-funded doctoral candidate). This discussion seeks to invoke public engagement, which will be heartily welcomed, to empower an exploration of queer love —love of others and crucial self-love. Never avoiding the harsh global realities of oppression and its traumas experienced by queer persons, always multiplied for queer persons of colour, this event will consider the literary throb of Ramlochan’s queer heart as a stalwart shield against colonial oppressions past, present and into the future.
The first 20 Eventbrite sign-ups for this event will receive a free copy of Ramlochan’s stunning poetic spectre Everyone Knows I am a Haunting (2017).
All Eventbrite sign-ups will receive a 20% discount code for Ramlochan’s poetry collection via Pepal Tree Press.
Watch on Bonington Gallery’s YouTube channel.
Wednesday 23 February 2022, 6.30 – 8 pm
Let us find the ways in which fresh perspectives can make love intimate or silly, surprising or sexy, romantic or sarcastic in our writing. In this generative workshop we will be looking at examples of contemporary poetry and flash fiction that will dispel any clichés and energise rehashed ideas you may have on the subject. You will be given prompts to write your unique pieces.
Open to all skill levels.
Tuesday 5 April 2022, 6.30 – 8 pm
Back by popular demand, Nora Nadjarian will be leading a second workshop on how to write about ‘love’. As before, you will be encouraged to approach the subject in fresh and surprising ways, and given prompts to write your unique pieces. The generative workshop will give insight into contemporary poetry and short fiction and energise rehashed ideas you may have on the subject of “love”.
Open to all skill levels, and limited to 20 participants.
Saturday 19 March, 10:30 am – 12 noon
Following Rita’s hugely popular [online] doll-making workshop in 2021, we are very pleased to welcome Rita back to deliver an in person workshop. In this workshop, you can make your own Empowerment Doll using a range of common materials. Advance registration is required and all materials will be provided on the day. The workshop is open to all, and may be of particular interest to young people age 8-12; younger children supported by an adult; or adults and older children with an interest in dollmaking, textiles, fabrics, or art. All children under 16 must be accompanied by a parent/guardian.
Places are limited to 20 participants.
Thursday 24 March 2022, 6 – 7.30 pm
In this free, livestreamed event, Formations audiences will be able to watch critically acclaimed author Ferdinand Dennis‘ visit to NTU English students from the ‘Black Writing in Britain’ module. Ferdinand will read from his newly published collection of short stories, The Black and White Museum, and discuss his work, life, and career.
From Ferdinand Dennis, the critically acclaimed author of the novel Duppy Conqueror, comes The Black and White Museum, a collection of both highly personal and universal short stories. These at their heart reveal the emotional drama of faded love, the loss of individual and shared memory and the wistful longing for home. His stories powerfully portray the black presence in post-Windrush London, with its hurtling gentrification and everyday racism. Ferdinand’s characters gain wisdom and maturity with age but become powerless, as they are less able to change the course of their lives. For some there is the temptation of a return “home” but home, like London, has also moved on and is not the paradise of their memories.
Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.
Tuesday 29 March 2022, 7 – 8.30 pm
Musa Okwonga joins Dr Becky Cullen for a discussion about his path from an Eton scholarship, Oxford and the Law, to being a Berlin-based writer with a passion for football. Musa will also be talking about poetry, music, and his fabulous new novel In the End, It Was All About Love. Published by Rough Trade, the book is our WRAP spring title and February’s Notts TV Book Club choice. They’ll also be talking about Musa’s football blog and podcast Stadio and Striking Out, his book collaboration with Arsenal legend Ian Wright
Watch WRAP Live with Musa Okwonga on YouTube.
The Formations programme is led by the Postcolonial Studies Centre at Nottingham Trent University in collaboration with Bonington Gallery. The series foregrounds the work of underrepresented writers, academics, artists, intellectuals and activists worldwide who address inequalities of all kinds, often bringing people from different places and working practices together for important conversations.
The first segment of our 2021-22 Formations programme pays attention to the concept of indigeneity, and to indigenous people, communities, landscapes, artists, writers, and groups. Often considered controversial and closely associated with activism and protest related to rights and land access, indigenous artists and writers are creating some of the most innovative work and asking important questions about sustainability of all forms in New Zealand, Australia, Pacific Islands, Northern Europe, and North and South America. This segment brings together creative work by indigenous writers and artists from separate locations, to forge conversations about the ways in which indigenous scholarship, activism, and creativity is central to global questions of inequality.
Formations events in this segment include a special online screening of In My Blood it Runs, an award-winning collaborative documentary that illustrates what it means to grow up as an Indigenous person in Australia through the story of Dujuan Hoosan, a ten-year-old Arrernte healer living in Alice Springs. Two special events are inspired by this film: a conversation between three researchers undertaking work on indigeneity and indigenous art, writing, and film worldwide: Ngahuia Harrison (University of Auckland), Valentina De Riso (NTU) and Dani-Louise Olver (NTU), and a Creative Writing workshop led by novelist Eve Makis.
Eve Makis also leads two connected events with award-winning writer and poet André Naffis-Sahely, who is in conversation and reading from his work with Eve Makis and Rory Waterman, and then leads a Creative Writing workshop with Eve Makis.
Finally, in this segment Formations hosts students from Nottingham Trent University’s second year English and Creative Writing module, Literary Cultures, led by Jenni Ramone. This year, students deliver a conference with contributors from NTU and their collaborative partners, students from Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia, Canada. The conference is titled ‘Land of Hope and Toil’, and through guest speaker sessions, talks, and workshops, addresses the diversity of Canadian Literature, considering migrant and indigenous Canadian literature as well as literature written by English and French language settler communities.
Tuesday 30 November 2021, 6 – 7 pm. Followed by a bookable workshop.
While half the world swept west,
we trickled eastward, one by one,
single-file, like fugitives. Next stop:
Abu Dhabi, where my father had a job,and money, for the first time in years . . .
Andre Naffis-Sahely
Raised in Abu Dhabi, by an Iranian father and Italian mother, André’s work is informed by his travels and his cultural inheritance. His work described as clear-eyed, emotionally charged and infused with an acute sense of justice. The Los Angeles-based poet will be talking to us about his life, travels, world view and writing practice. He will be in conversation with the poet, Rory Waterman, and the writer, Eve Makis.
Click here to watch via our Youtube
The talk will be followed by an hour-long writing workshop at 7.15pm led by André on cultural recipe poems. Attendees will be encouraged to write about a dish that is culturally significant to them under André’s expert guidance. Information and booking link below.
Following the conversation event this evening, you are invited to participate in an hour-long writing workshop at 7.15pm led by André on cultural recipe poems. Attendees will be encouraged to write about a dish that is culturally significant to them under André’s expert guidance.
Places on the workshop will be limited so please book early.
All levels welcome.
Wednesday 1 December 2021
Formations hosts students from Nottingham Trent University’s second year English and Creative Writing module, Literary Cultures, led by Jenni Ramone. This year, students deliver a conference with contributors from NTU and their collaborative partners, students from Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia, Canada. The conference is titled Land of Hope and Toil, and through guest speaker sessions, talks, and workshops, addresses the diversity of Canadian Literature, considering migrant and indigenous Canadian literature as well as literature written by English and French language settler communities.
A full programme can be found here.
Click here to watch via our Youtube
Monday 22 November – Friday 31 December
Formations invites you to watch In My Blood it Runs and to take part in the related Conversation event and Creative Writing workshop inspired by the film.
Ten-year-old Dujuan is a child-healer, a good hunter and speaks three languages. As he shares his wisdom of history and the complex world around him we see his spark and intelligence. Yet Dujuan is ‘failing’ in school and facing increasing scrutiny from welfare and the police. As he travels perilously close to incarceration, his family fight to give him a strong Arrernte education alongside his western education lest he becomes another statistic. We walk with him as he grapples with these pressures, shares his truths and somewhere in-between finds space to dream, imagine and hope for his future self.
For more information, resources, and interviews with the cast, see the film’s official website: www.inmyblooditruns.com
Read a review of the film written by Rebecca Rees, BA (Hons) Creative Writing (year 1), Nottingham Trent University here.
Thursday 9 December 7-8pm
In My Blood It Runs is a collaborative documentary that illustrates what it means to grow up as an Indigenous person in Australia through the story of Dujuan Hoosan, a ten-year-old Arrernte healer living in Alice Springs. Dujuan’s wisdom is cherished by his family and tribe, but he struggles in school and faces increasing surveillance from the child welfare and the police. Doctoral researchers Dani Louise Olver (Nottingham Trent University), Ngahuia Harrison (University of Auckland), and Valentina de Riso (Nottingham Trent University) discuss the film in the broader context of Indigenous studies with attention paid to topics of education, justice, history, memory, language, and Indigenous resistance.
For more information, resources, and interviews with the cast, see the film’s official website: www.inmyblooditruns.com
Click here to watch via our YouTube
Thursday 16 December 6 – 7 pm
Writing for young people is a constant exploration of the points where a character’s ordinary world and the reader’s ordinary world intersects. Candy Gourlay will briefly discuss the concept of the “ordinary world” in fiction and break down how she built her indigenous characters from historical readings and contemporary insight.
This reading and conversation event is followed by a creative writing workshop with Candy Gourlay and Eve Makis, limited to 20 participants.
Click here to watch via our YouTube
Thursday 16 December 7:15 – 8:15 pm
Eve Makis invites you to join Candy Gourlay and take part in a Creative Writing workshop inspired by the film that we are screening as part of the Formations segment which pays attention to indigeneity and to Indigenous artists and writers worldwide.
Writing for young people is a constant exploration of the points where a character’s ordinary world and the reader’s ordinary world intersects. Candy Gourlay will briefly discuss the concept of the “ordinary world” in fiction and break down how she built her indigenous characters from historical readings and contemporary insight. Using some research Candy is doing on her current novel, participants will write a short scene under time pressure, share, and discuss.
For more information, resources, and interviews with the cast, see the film’s official website: www.inmyblooditruns.com
This free online talk is part of our ongoing public events programme Formations, led in partnership with the Postcolonial Studies Centre (PSC) at Nottingham Trent University (NTU).
Bonington Gallery and the PSC are very pleased to welcome back Dr Leila Kamali, following the talk she gave on John Edgar Wideman in October 2020. This event will be introduced by PSC co-director, Dr Jenni Ramone.
This talk will give a brief history of Black people’s presence in Britain which stretches all the way back to Roman times, and will offer education and resources for understanding the relationship between Britain and its populations of colour as a kind of continual historical pendulum. From Renaissance times, to the 18th century, to the post-Second World War period, Britain has again and again ‘invited’ people of colour to build the nation’s economic and cultural wealth, and simultaneously created conditions which exclude and dehumanise people of colour, and which foster and encourage racism. Whether in the time of Margaret Thatcher, the New Cross Fire and the repressive SUS laws, or in the wake of Brexit and the Black Lives Matter protests, Britain has a track-record of racial repression which supports and also precedes the racial violence more often popularly associated with the United States.
In 2020, the public murder of George Floyd caused the spotlight to be turned with a new sensitivity upon anti-Black racism. Now, in 2021, mixed conditions exist – the return of apathy at some level, the brief release again of racial hatred following the UEFA European Football Championship, and a right-wing politics which remains ascendant. This talk will ask questions about where we are situated historically in terms of anti-racist struggle, and in relation to what can be observed from the pendulum of history. Key suggestions will be thought through in terms of the kinds of anti-racist work which are most appropriate, and most likely to foster real inclusivity in Britain today, amidst the many social challenges currently facing us.
Watch on the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel.
Dr Leila Kamali is a literary scholar with specialisms in African American and Black British literature, diaspora, cultural memory and aesthetics. She has held research and lecturing roles at the African American Policy Forum, at the University of Liverpool, Goldsmiths University of London, and King’s College London. Her book The Cultural Memory of Africa in African American and Black British Fiction, 1970-2000 (Palgrave 2016) was named “boldly progressive” and “entirely original and provocative” by Professor Michelle M. Wright and Professor Paul Gilroy respectively. Her articles have been published in Callaloo, Obsidian, Kalfou, and Atlantic Studies, and she has chapters on ‘Diaspora’ in the volume Twenty-First Century Literary Fiction (Routledge 2019), and on Black Queer Poetry in With Fists Raised (Liverpool UP 2021). She is currently working on two monographs, one on the work of John Edgar Wideman, the other on the “inner life of Blackness”.
The sixth segment of Formations, our year-long programme delivered in partnership with Nottingham Trent University’s (NTU) Postcolonial Studies Centre, includes events in July & August under the thematic banner – Formation: Lace.
Lace is a prominent part of Nottingham’s industrial and cultural heritage, but its history is a global one, and its popularity in the UK in the nineteenth century was connected with its relative affordability since the cotton used to produce it was imported from slave plantations in the Caribbean and the American South. This segment draws attention to moments and materials in the histories of lace-making in Nottingham and in Cyprus, and invites participation in creative writing and Empowerment doll-making workshops, in a series of creative and conversation events focused on lace and other textiles.
Wednesday 21 July 2021 6.30 pm – 8 pm.
In this writing workshop, Angela Costi will thread the story of her Cypriot grandmother’s lace and embroidery making, called Lefkarathika, which imbues her poetry making. Through visual poems, photos and a display of the actual embroidery itself, you are invited to make word sequences, patterns and designs, stitch by stitch across the page. The kinaesthetic skills of creating ‘fairy windows’ with thread and linen are reimagined through a writing exercise – what do you see? Write it down before it disappears. In this way, we are honouring this traditional craft making that will not be with us for much longer.
Participants wishing to purchase or access a copy of Angela’s poetry book and creative documentation, as reference for the workshop, can do so on the following link, An Embroidery of Old Maps and New (Spinifex, 2021).
All levels welcome.
Click here to watch via our YouTube
Saturday 24 July 2021 10.30 am – 12:00 pm
In this workshop, you can make your own Empowerment Doll using a range of common materials. Advance registration is required and a free package of the materials you will need to make your doll will be sent to you. The workshop is open to all, and may be of particular interest to young people age 8-12, families, younger children supported by an adult, or adults and older children with an interest in dollmaking, textiles, fabrics, lace, or art. The session will be delivered live by Zoom and you will be supported by Rita to create your own doll.
Open to all but limited to 20 participants (advance registration). Aimed at young people age 8-12 and to families but all participants welcome to register.
Rita Kappia is an artist dollmaker from Nottingham. Rita Kappia’s Empowerment Dolls have become synonymous with exploring artistic expression and self-identity – an exploration of one’s sense-of-self. Her collectables have served as a reminder and representation of new empowering thoughts, feelings and expressions to explore and cultivate.
Wednesday 18 August 2021, 5 pm – 6 pm
Following her Zoom workshop in July, we are delighted to launch a video where Rita Kappia will introduce her Empowerment Doll project and provide instruction to create your own doll.
We join her in her workshop to hear about the significance of the art of doll making, what she hopes to achieve with her work, and the importance of making and owning a doll for people of all ages, genders, and ethnicities.
Rita Kappia is an artist dollmaker from Derby. Rita Kappia’s Empowerment Dolls have become synonymous with exploring artistic expression and self-identity – an exploration of one’s sense-of-self. Her collectables have served as a reminder and representation of new empowering thoughts, feelings and expressions to explore and cultivate.
Tune into the Bonington Gallery YouTube channel from 5pm on Wednesday 18 August to watch the video and follow Rita’s tutorial.
Thursday 5 August 2021, 6 – 7 pm
Lace, a fabric composed of thread surrounding holes, it is simultaneously both ubiquitous and symbolically ritualised. Its visual and tactile delights dominate our perceptions of this beautiful and complex fabric. Researchers at Nottingham Trent University have been considering ways to look beneath the surface and the connotations of lace to reveal new perspectives on this unique fabric. This event will present two ongoing projects which are interrogating lace to reveal new stories to enrich our understanding of its relationship with global trade and networks.
The first project is focused on samples of coloured lace found in the archive at NTU, which by using both established and novel scientific methods is aimed at discovering the composition of both the dyes used and the yarn types found in Nottingham lace in the late 19th and early 20th century. The aim being to identify the origins of the raw materials and place this evocative fabric into the matrix of the supply chain of this period.
The second project aims are to tell the story of lace from raw materials to disposal, reuse, or archiving, focusing upon the mechanisation of lacemaking which enabled the use of cotton thread, setting the city on course to become the centre of an international network through which raw materials, design ideas, technological advances, and finished goods were exchanged. Nottingham was thus connected to the cotton plantations of the US South, upon which Britain remained heavily reliant for raw cotton throughout the nineteenth century, but it also relied heavily on US and colonial connections for the export of finished lace. This talk highlights some of the questions raised in this project about the meanings of lace at these various points in its lifecycle, and the ways in which it could express, resist, or reinforce different aspects of the identities of those who worked with or used it.
The fifth segment of Formations, our year-long programme delivered in partnership with Nottingham Trent University’s (NTU) Postcolonial Studies Centre, includes events in May under the thematic banner – Formation: Milk.
In this segment, we consider the representations and meanings of breastfeeding and the breastfeeding body, to consider how this highly emotive topic is encountered in writing and art, and in public spaces. Join us for conversations and workshops about global representations of breastfeeding in art, literature, and research, from personal stories to public encounters with art.
Thursday 6 May, 7 pm – 8 pm
Breastfeeding is central to the human experience. It is also a highly emotive topic, debated in public and researched from clinical perspectives, yet in art and literature the topic remains under-emphasised, particularly as a symbolic or representational image. This conversation asks whether artists and writers tell different or similar stories about breastfeeding; engage different or similar audiences; and whether their works might have different or similar impacts on individuals, families, communities, scholarly debates, and frameworks. It will engage with breastfeeding in creative, academic, and personal ways through a discussion with writer and academic Dionne Irving Bremyer (University of West Georgia, ‘My Black Breast Friend’, 2017); academic Ann Marie Short (Saint Mary’s College, Illinois, Breastfeeding and Culture, 2018), and visual artist Lynn Lu (Adagio 2013; On Mother’s Milk And Kisses Fed 2013). Anyone is welcome to attend.
Click here to watch via our Youtube
Monday 17 May, 6.30 pm – 8 pm
Breastfeeding is traditionally associated with the female body and the body of the mother. Breastfeeding provides nourishment and protection. In addition, feminists have explored how the act of breastfeeding stimulates pleasure, pain and desire but little is known of breastfeeding as an act of resistance, both within and beyond biology. We want to hear about your breastfeeding experiences: the joys, struggles and feelings of ambivalence, your family stories, experiences unique to your gender identity, your culture, heritage or personal circumstances. Come and share your stories and hear others’ that might surprise you, about breastfeeding as resistant practice and breastfeeding beyond the conventional. We welcome all stories, across diverse communities, marginalised experiences and across different generations. We hope you can join us.
The workshop will be co-hosted by NTU’s Postcolonial Studies Centre writer-in-residence Eve Makis and Maud Lannen. 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.
Thursday 3 June, 7 – 8pm
In this conversation event, Rebecca Randle, Learning and Engagement Coordinator, and Helen Cobby, Assistant Curator, both from The Barber Institute of Fine Arts at the University of Birmingham, talk to Jenni Ramone about gallery text, the labels or other information which accompanies exhibited artwork, and about how galleries use gallery text and other methods to enhance public engagement with art, to support the generating of ideas, and to elicit emotion. The event will include discussion of contemporary and historical works of art which represent breastfeeding. Following the event, participants will be invited to write their own ‘gallery text’ for one of the works of art discussed, and selected texts will be published on Bonington Gallery’s Formations website. Anyone is welcome to attend.
Click here to watch via our YouTube
Friday 25 June, 5.00 pm- 6.30 pm
Lecturer in Media Production at Nottingham Trent University, Su Ansell, made the film Breast’work as a single screen video(wall) installation Moving Image Artist and Senior. This work, made in collaboration with women from the East Midlands, aims to challenge the depiction of the female body in art and media.
In this event, the artist and filmmaker talks to Jenni Ramone about the film, the making process, and the public response to the film’s first installations at galleries and conferences across Europe and the US. Ticketed attendees will also receive a link and password to watch the film which will be available until Monday 28 June.