Please check the booklet at the link below:

Booklet-Festival-Complete

Please register here: creativeinterruptions.net/festival

Probots are hacked robotic protestors, tele-operated to reduce the risk of activists who might otherwise receive sharp blows to the head while exercising their civil rights.

Probots become a “dissident witness” to the act of protest. Following early development by La Fábrica de Cosas Bonitas, the tele-operated self-balancing robot now reduces personal involvement in protests to a clinical and measurable effect. Mirroring military drone technology, it protects the “operator” from sharp blows to the head by angry police or drunk fascists, while at the same time maintaining some of the power of an embodied, human sized protestor that can carry a sign and produce loud chants and cheers. Built from shipping pallets, hoodies, and bullhorns, running on a single board computer, using surplus motors and a cheap android phone, the self-balancing robots can be sent on protest missions or a full day, controlled via low-latency mobile internet for two-way audio and video participation.

For the festival we will have the robots circling the Blue Room, being controlled by participants to the conference. With a cafe table the exhibit depicts an operator’s “cockpit,” in the form of the classic transient workspace of the European intellectual. The table is equipped with requisite Sartre and Proudhon texts, ashtray and Gauloises tobacco pouch, used espresso cups, and rough-and-ready control panel.

The viewer should be able to engage with the robot by sitting at the table and interacting with the robot as it rolls through the space. If viewers prove irresponsible, the artist will take that role.

Chris Csikszentmihályi is European Research Area Chair at Madeira Interactive Technology Institute, and directs the Rootio Project, a sociotechnical stack for community radio. Csikszentmihalyi has been a professor at colleges, universities, and institutes, including a decade at the MIT Media Lab, and was Distinguished Visiting Professor of Art and Design Research at Parsons the New School for Design. He cofounded and directed the MIT Center for Future Civic Media (C4), developing technologies that strengthen communities, and founded the MIT Media Lab’s Computing Culture group, which used participatory design techniques to create unique media technologies for cultural and political applications.

Many thanks to : Vitor Hugo Agiar and Victor Azevedo

35.875 people have died in the mediterranean sea since 1993 to today trying to reach a safe port. Hundreds continue to die monthly. Spanish and Italian governments have started prosecuting and forbidding navigation to any NGOs that will try to save their lives. Our brothers and sisters keep dying. The seas of the world are filled with black bodies.

In this piercing and heartbreaking piece, Sally uses the Kola nut, and the significance of the ritual behind it, as a narrative device. 

A scene from Sally Fenaux Barleycorn’s short film, Unburied

The Significance of the Kola Nut

“He who brings the Kola nut brings life.”

In joining our forces with Runnymede Trust,we have collaborated on commissioning two short films that resonate with our ethos and project themes.

We are pleased to announce our second commission, Alors on Danse by Director, Choreographer, and Creative Producer of Afrique Au Monde, Irene Ashu.

The short film is an exploration of African cultural diffusion. African dance has changed the world and created a global culture. From Shaku Shaku to tribal dance styles, Alors on Danse presents a raw and untraditional exploration of movement. African dance is birthed from our joy, pain, anxiety, ego, fears, love, and ancestors. From Beyonce to Michael Jackson, to Shakira, African dance has created waves on global stages. Paris is a melting pot of African migrants and some of the best afro-beat dancers in the world. Alors on Danse follows five iconic dancers through the streets of Paris reflect the ways in which African dance has traveled and evolved.  

Bio

From Arizona to Hollywood. From Arizona native Irene Ashu is making a name for herself in the entertainment industry. Irene is a dancer, director, and choreographer. Since moving to Los Angeles in 2013 Irene worked alongside artist such as SZA, P!NK, Superfruit, Nicki Minaj, Jennifer Hudson, David Guetta, Afrojack, DJ Carnage, WIZKID, Fanny Neguesha, AlunaGeorge, Chris Brown, Big Sean, Jeremih, SHIN, Carrie Underwood, Little Mix, Beba Rexha, MAJOR LAZER, and more.

Irene has performed and curated performances on shows such as the Late Late Show With James Cordon, and the MTV VMA awards. Irene had the privilege of performing with P!NK for her Michael Jackson Video Vanguard performance. Irene has appeared, directed, and choreographed various commercials with brands such as Apple, Sony, Coolhaus Ice Cream, Hollister, Google, Android, LG, Toyota, Irvine Auto Center, and Under Armour.

Beyond her work, Irene is Cameroonian activist and the owner of Dance For A Cause. Dance For A Cause is non-profit that gives underprivileged children & teens the opportunity to learn about jobs like directing, choreographing, producing, and more.

For more information about Irene and her work check: Www.ireneashu.com

Twitter: @IreneAshu

We are pleased to announce our first commission, Unburied by Sally Fenaux Barleycorn. A truly moving and poignant account of the heart-wrenching affects that hostile migration policies can have on real people. 

Below is a description of the film and some shots from behind-the-scenes by photographer Alice Brazzit. We will be uploading a preview of the film very soon…

Unburied by Sally Fenaux Barleycorn. Photograph by Alice Brazzit.

35.875 people have died in the mediterranean sea since 1993 to today trying to reach a safe port. Hundreds continue to die monthly. Spanish and Italian governments have started prosecuting and forbidding navigation to any NGOs that will try to save their lives. Our brothers and sisters keep dying. The seas of the world are filled with black bodies.

Unburied by Sally Fenaux Barleycorn. Photograph by Alice Brazzit.

Sally Fenaux Barleycorn’s short film is a visual poem of pain and remembrance. Dedicated to those buried in the waters, to their lost-at-sea souls; it is a moment for heartbreak, guiding their souls back home.

Unburied by Sally Fenaux Barleycorn. Photograph by Alice Brazzit

The film has been shot in Barcelona in collaboration with Ghanian artists, The Sey Sisters and Mouhamet Dia (Advisor of Immigrant & Refugee services, Barcelona).

Unburied by Sally Fenaux Barleycorn. Photograph by Alice Brazzit

Bio

Sally is the daughter of African and European migrants. She has been working in the film industry in 2009, and premiered her first short film in Amsterdam (NL) in 2015. As a director her focus has always been to translate emotional experiences into images, ideas into visual metaphors, exploring how much one can communicate beyond the ‘rational’ into the hearts of an audience.

To find out more about Sally’s work check out her website: www.nowheresally.com

Creative Interruptions is a project funded by the UK Government’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. We conduct research and support diverse communities to explore the role of the arts, media and creativity in challenging forms of exclusion, including racism. 

The current uncertainties around immigration, cultural difference, rights and responsibilities have resurfaced global debates on colonialism, borders, race, and resistance and brought to light the creativity that these circumstances produce. With this in mind, we have collaborated with different people from diverse backgrounds to find out why, and how, particular kinds of creative forms, textures and (alternative) aesthetics are used in arts and activism.

Some of the questions we have been asking include:

What is it about theatre, film, or the digital medium that makes each of them the most appropriate or enabling forms and spaces to communicate, share and enable activist messages, for example around race and class politics? In what circumstances does everyday creativity constitute a creative intervention?

Our team has teamed-up with Runnymede Trust ,and we have been writing posts on the Race Matters blog. You might have seen a few blog posts floating around Twitter news-feeds, if not here are the direct links to these articles, we aim to publish more soon:

Arts and Resistance in a Hostile World

Research subjects or co-creators? Making public outreach count

Together with Runnymede Trust we are currently co-organising a roundtable discussion about inequalities in the cultural and creative industries to enable conversations between artists from different communities, and, cultural policy-makers, towards thinking about what need to be changed and how we can do this through a collective effort. This will take place on the 17th June at the BFI in London, as part of our festival.  

To register for the festival and see our exciting programme click here: http://creativeinterruptions.net/festival/

In joining our forces, Runnymede Trust and Creative Interruptions have also collaborated on commissioning two films that resonate with the ethos and project themes. 

• inequalities and racism in the arts
• making differences between policies and practice in the art world
• engaging with the ideas of race, access, and representation
• ideas and opinions related to how art is used to tackle issues around race and/or class, and other inequalities

These films are still cooking, but keep your eyes peeled as we intend on announcing our commissions shortly.  

Creative Interruptions (Brunel University London) in collaboration with The Runnymede Trust, invite expressions of interest from innovative digital media practitioners (filmmakers, animators, etc.) who work across artistic media platforms, to produce and create a short film with us. The chosen practitioner will be expected to showcase work produced at the BFI Southbank this June, as part of our festival, for a live audience of artists, cultural and creative industry professionals, and policy experts.

This is a paid opportunity to commission a practitioner/collective for the production and creation of a short film. We are looking for practitioners who share the ethos of the Creative interruptions project, led by Professor Sarita Malik and Runnymede, the UK’s leading independent race equality think tank. They will be passionate about collaboration and advocate for equality in the arts, activist practices, and grassroots craft.

Themes of interest for the film can include (not limited, but must be related to these):

• inequalities and racism in the arts
• making differences between policies and practice in the art world
• engaging with the ideas of race, access, and representation
• ideas and opinions related to how art is used to tackle issues around race and/or class, and other inequalities

We would like your work to show the strengths, diversity, imagination, and innovative nature of your chosen genre: from observation to filmic essays, creative short films, animation films, 360 films, VR films. We are open to submissions on/or around the above-suggested ideas. If you think you have a great idea related to these themes, please mention this in your application.

Works should be between up to 5 minutes long and ready to be exhibited at the Creative Interruptions festival in June 2019, subject to schedule and feasibility.

The deadline for the film submission is 28 May 2019.

The commission fee will be up to £3000 depending on submitted budget.

This collaboration is between you, Creative Interruptions, Brunel University London and The Runnymede Trust. Our aim is to promote how artists and filmmakers use the arts, media, and creativity to challenge exclusion.

HOW TO APPLY

• A one-page CV
• A one-page expression of interest. This document should address, your practice and the way you work; why you are interested in this project; and how you would approach working with suggested ideas, and your initial ideas.
• Additional LINKS to your portfolio website, showreel, or online videos.
• A budget break-down (pre-production, production, post-production)
• Please combine these documents into one single file (doc. / PDF).
• The email subject line should read: Open Call App <YOUR INITIALS>.
• Send as an emailattachment to the project’s curator, Yiota Demetriou (panayiota.demetriou@brunel.ac.uk)
• Deadline of application 10th April 2019 10 am. We will not be accepting submissions after this time.

We welcome and encourage applications from those currently underrepresented in our workforce and in the arts community; particularly working-class people, people of colour, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender people, and disabled people (as defined by the Equality Act 2010).

We recently collaborated with Runnymede Trust, the UK’s leading independent race equality think tank to to write a series of posts for our project on their website Race Matters. Our first post was posted on the 7th of February.

On the post we argued that,

Art is a catalyst. It can drive people, and add energy to advocacy and civic agency. It can reach communities and individuals on deep emotional levels, conveying through action what cannot be said with words. Art provides a space in which stories that are often overlooked or misrepresented by mainstream media find a voice.

And we concluded with an invitation to our Festival in June,

The themes of the Creative Interruptions project, which will be covered in our academic arts festival, include creativity, resistance, race and the legacies of British imperialism. They have never been more relevant. The 2016 Brexit referendum, the Grenfell tragedy, the election of President Trump in 2017, and the 2018 Windrush scandal, alongside the growth of far-right politics, have profoundly shaped the experiences of migrants. From those who have moved to the UK from Europe recently, to black Caribbean communities who have considered the UK their home for generations, no one has been safe from the latent xenophobia bubbling to the surface.

You can read the post on Runnymede Trust’s website below:

Arts and Resistance in a Hostile World

Close to 1000 people visited the Preet Nagar Mela (Feb 16-17 and Feb 22-23 2019), marking the culmination of Creative Interruption’s work in Punjab. The ‘Mela’ (festival) was held at the historical site of Punjabi literature and culture, Preet Nagar. Half-way between two of Punjab’s most important cities, Lahore (Pakistan) and Amritsar (India), Preet Nagar is located 7km from one of the most militarised borders in the world. Preet Lari, based in the village, is one of the most significant Punjabi-language magazines, running since 1933. Since its inception the magazine embraced the linguistic diversity of Punjab, publishing in Urdu, Punjabi, Hindi, and English, working across the scripts and languages of Punjab. Working through Partition and waves of political unrest in Punjab, Preet Lari represents a Punjabi culture which is inclusive, pluralistic, and which consistently imagines across borders.

The Mela was developed to exhibit work undertaken during artist residencies over October and November 2018. The artists were from India, Mauritius, Canada, and students from Srishti Institute for Art, Design and Technology (Bangalore). They worked with local craftspeople, schoolchildren, and grassroots NGOs to produce work that responded to the theme of ‘Beyond Borders’. This work was designed to celebrate all kinds of creativity, from brass making and traditional weaving, to singing and folk tales.

To make this work accessible to a broad audience, and to connect a new generation to the legacy of Preet Lari, the Mela was held in a former cow and animal feed shed that had been converted into a community exhibition space for the festival in Preet Nagar. By combining the traditional format of an exhibition with talks, performances, singing and dancing, and by using a site which is recognisable to people living in smaller rural communities (a farmhouse and out buildings), the Mela attracted an incredibly diverse audience, from people working in the creative economies in Amritsar and Delhi, to local children in neighbouring villages, and craftspeople and workpeople who had helped with the preparation of the Mela, from doing electrical work to labouring.

The Mela gave this broad audience two performances from the singer and academic Madan Gopal Singh (and Chaar Yaar) and the Punjab University (Patiala) group, which demonstrated how fluid storytelling, music and spirituality has been in the Punjab.

This work has been funded by the Punjab strand of Creative Interruptions led by Churnjeet Mahn (CI, University of Strathclyde). Along with Churnjeet, the Mela team was made up of: Ratika Singh and Samia Singh (exhibition designers), Raghavendra Rao KV (art director), and Anne Murphy (UBC, Canada). The Mela was hosted by Poonam Singh and Rati Kant Singh who edit and publish Preet Lari.

Part of the art shown during the Mela, and a VR film about the Mela, will be shown at the BFI as part of the Creative Interruptions festival in June 2019.

These groups, drawn from campaigning organisations seeking asylum-seeker, abortion, socio-economic and LGBTQ rights, culminated in a play, We’ll Walk Hand in Hand, which toured across Northern Ireland in 2018 and was followed up by a range of community-outreach activities. One of these activities—our Schools Outreach initiative—used scenes from the original play, along with community theatre techniques pioneered by the famous dramatist and campaigner Augusto Boal, to facilitate critical thinking on contemporary rights issues.

The result, documented above, suggests the power of theatre in enabling critical dialogues and debates about controversial issues that don’t always get discussed in schools. We’re planning further follow-on events this year, and are working on an education pack that will help integrate these activities into the GCSE Citizenship and Learning for Life and Work curricula, following consultation with educational authorities and feedback from students and teachers.

This programme of schools activities was part of a collaboration between Queen’s University Belfast academic Dr Michael Pierse and the playwright Martin Lynch’s theatre company, Green Shoot Productions, and facilitated by a range of actors and theatre professionals led by Tom Finlay, who discusses here the process of linking up with schools.

We hope you enjoy the film!