Join us on the 9th June at The Box for a conversation about the critical re-imagining of collections and archives in an age of uncertainty and resistance, together with the increasingly urgent work of recovering and preserving intangible heritage.

This event takes place in the context of the Beyond the Now: Socially Engaged Practice in a (Dis) Connected World Programme, funded by the British Council International Collaboration Fund. Key partners include Ettijahat Independent Culture,Counterpoints Arts, Arts University Plymouth and Mozilla Festival (members of the *Beyond the Now collective).

3:00 – 4:30pm

Session 1 will showcase artistic interventions linking art and community projects with intangible cultural heritage initiated by the arts organisation Ettijahat Independent Culture (Beirut /Brussels), under their Create Syria Programme; together with projects and residencies supported in 2022-2023 by Beyond the Now: Socially Engaged Practice in a (Dis) Connected World.

Presenters: Basma Baydoun, Daniela Nofal and Sarah Allen.

Moderator: Stephen Felmingham.

5:00 – 6:30pm

Session 2 will explore the potential to reframe/reimagine public collections and archives through the integrated lens of displacement, socially engaged art practice, education and community engagement.

Presenters: Awate Suileman, Ashish Ghadiali, Abdullah and Chloe Hughes.

Moderator Áine O’Brien.

Register via Eventbrite to join in person. To join us virtually, register here.

Beyond the Now

Beyond the Now: Socially Engaged Art in a (Dis)Connected World is an international research, development and cultural exchange focused on the role(s) of socially engaged art in an age of displacement. It includes a programme of mentorships, residencies, public dialogues, commissions, and other peer-to-peer learning for Syrian and Arab artists working across all art forms in the SWANA region, Europe and the UK.

Beyond the Now aims to open up new creative cultural and political affinities/solidarities for a post-pandemic world. We comprise small to medium arts, civic, research and digital organizations:; Counterpoints Arts, (London, UK: https://counterpoints.org.uk/); Ettijahat-Independent Culture (Lebanon and Belgium: https://www.ettijahat.org/site/index); Mozilla Festival (Holland/UK: https://www.mozillafestival.org/en/); CREATE (Ireland: https://www.create-ireland.ie/); co-culture (Germany: https://www.coculture.org/); in addition to individual researchers and producers working at: Open University (UK: https://www.open.ac.uk/); Arts University Plymouth (UK: https://www.aup.ac.uk/).

Bios:

Noura Alsouma

Noura is a Syrian illustrator, graphic designer, and printmaking artist, born in the UAE. She graduated with a Bachelor’s in Graphic Design and Multimedia from the University of Sharjah, and is currently pursuing her Master’s in Graphic Art (with a specialization in printmaking) at UMCS Poland. As an artist between the Middle East and Europe, Noura tries to connect different places and cultures, and holds a special place for the Arabic Language in her art.

Yara Amairy

Yara’s journey with the arts began through music, where she had the opportunity to participate in various festivals and concerts in and around Damascus, and work with children ages 6 to 10 as a music tutor. After graduating from the Faculty of Architecture, she worked in the Consulting Center for Construction and Restoration of Heritage Buildings, supervising the restoration work in Khan Suleiman Pasha, and working on the rehabilitation of commercial buildings in Old Damascus. She volunteers as a teacher of architectural design for the first and second-year students in the Faculty of Architecture at Damascus University, where she has lectured on the history of Syrian art, and is pursuing her Masters in the restoration and rehabilitation of archaeological sites.

Abeer Sanyour

Abeer is an architect and Master’s student in Urban and Environmental Planning in Syria. She participated in various trainings around tangible and intangible cultural heritage and renovation, and has worked as editor for the magazine Twenty-Two, specialized in architectural concerns through educating, training, habitation and culture– spreading. Among their volunteering staff are students, graduate architects, and researchers across the architectural spectrum. Abeer has also collaborated with the Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums and is interested in social-spatial cohesion by working and connecting with local communities and their shared heritage. 

Ward Al Khalad

Ward is a Damascus-born artist who works with different artistic mediums such as illustration, fashion design, and documentation. After moving to Beirut, he worked as an illustrator with the Library of Arabic Literature NYUAD. Building on a passion for traditional crafts and design, he co-founded studio Kunukku, a multi-disciplinary studio preserving the traditional craft of Syrian block printing. Being its creative director, he has recently launched its first fashion collection in Beirut and is working on expanding his artistic research through more personal creative projects. 

Basma Baydoun

A graduate of Performing Arts (B.A – Lebanese University), Theatre Design (B.A – Concordia University), and Theatre Directing (M.A – Saint Joseph’s University), Basma splits her time between creative and cultural projects, in addition to being a programme manager with Ettijahat – Independent Culture, a cultural institution which supports artistic and cultural research and production, education, and capacity-building, in response to the needs of independent artistic and cultural practitioners in the Arab Region. She has worked with various artists between Lebanon and Canada and has collaborated with Director’s Lab Mediterranean to organize its first and fourth editions in Beirut.

Daniela Nofal

Daniela is a London-based cultural organiser and arts practitioner. Daniela has produced various artistic projects and creative interventions, sitting at the intersection of art, arts education and social engagement, and has collaborated with a number of organisations across the UK and internationally, including Beyond the Now, Counterpoints Arts and Ettijahat. Central to her artistic practice is experimenting with forms of organising and collectivising to reimagine forms of assembly and solidarity. Daniela is a member of several arts collectives including Cross Commons Collective, and Sadaa Sound Syndicate. In 2020 she co-founded Zamakan, a nomadic arts organisation working with artists from across West Asia and North Africa. Daniela is one of the initiators of SACF, London’s Syrian Arts and Culture Festival.

Stephen Felmingham 

Stephen Felmingham is an artist and educator with an active research interest in creative pedagogies, specifically research-led learning and alternative art school models and he leads on projects that work in and for communities, introducing this into socially-engaged art and education and connecting organisations (artist-led initiatives, community organisations, public and philanthropic funders) who are working with the agency of creativity in the social realm. His research outputs have developed over the last three years into outward facing social practice projects, including work with refugee communities that cohere with the College’s strategic aims of creative pedagogy and social justice, as a founding partner of Beyond the Now, a syndicated online platform working in locations across Europe, the MENA region and the Global South to open new creative, cultural and political affinities for a post-pandemic world.

Abdullah Al Kafri

Abdullah Alkafri is an award-winning playwright and theatre director. He has also collaborated with arts organisations including LIFT (UK), the Royal Court Theatre (UK), IEVP (Norway) and Lark (USA). He also works as a trainer, strategic planner, fundraiser and designer for arts intervention initiatives, working with Culture Resource (Al Mawred Al Thaqafy) and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung among many others in Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia, Yemen and elsewhere. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Arab Council for Social Sciences, the Artistic Committee of Sundance Institute’s MENA Theater Lab and the board of the 10th Summit on Arts and Culture.In 2014. As a member of Ettijahat – Independent Culture, Abdullah was chosen to succeed Rana Yazji as Executive Director of the non- governmental organisation. Ettijahat is dedicated to supporting Syrian artists and cultural practitioners and their peers across the Arab region and Europe, providing capacity-building and educational opportunities to artists, cultural practitioners and academics, as well as financial and legal support. He also teaches MA Theatre at l’Université Saint-Joseph, Beirut, where he was awarded a PhD in performing arts in 2022.Ettijahat is one of the founding partners of Beyond the Now Collective.

Ashish Ghadiali 

Ashish Ghadiali is a writer, filmmaker and activist. He is the Founder/Director of Radical Ecology, a not-for-profit organisation that works across art, research and policy to advance environmental justice and he is currently working on his first book, Dart River – a psychogeography of empire set in the landscapes of South Devon for Hutchinson Heinemann. Film works include Planetary Imagination (2023), a 5-screen installation for The Box in Plymouth and The Confession (2016), a feature documentary for BBC Storyville and the BFI. He is also curator of the multi-artist group exhibition, Against Apartheid, which will open at KARST, also in Plymouth, in Autumn 2023.

AWATE

AWATE is a critically acclaimed rapper, writer, producer and performer focused on stories at the intersection of race, class and surrealism – with a dose of humour. A former Activist in Residence at UCL in 2021, Artist in Residence at the Tate and British Library in 2020 and 2019. Musician in Residence for the PRS Foundation and British Council working in Brazil in 2018 and Resident Artist at The Roundhouse in 2016 – Awate has produced a wide range of commissioned multimedia works mixing music, film, theatre and visual art. Awate’s 2018 debut album, Happiness was supported by BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra, Spotify, Noisey, MOBO x Help Musicians UK and called a, “British rap masterpiece” by Trench Magazine.

Chloe Hughes

Chloe is a cultural leader who has worked across the creative sector. Chloe joined The Box’s senior management team in 2019, having previously worked for Cornwall Museums Partnership. Working within museums she specialises in establishing organisational strategy through an EDI lens, developing partnerships which create inclusive new opportunities and securing funding to enable audience development. She leads The Box’s extensive engagement programme which spans early years through to lifelong learning opportunities, and whose digital initiative during Covid was shortlisted for the National Lottery Award Project of the Year. She is a member of the Museums Association Decolonisation Collective and an alumni of their Transformers leadership programme.

Áine O’Brien 

Áine is the Curator of Learning and Research/Co-Founder at Counterpoints Arts.  Áine has worked across the arts, education and activism in the US, Ireland and the UK and was co-director of Counterpoints Arts 2012- 2020. Åine runs Learning Lab, a platform supporting cooperative (un)learning through socially engaged art (SEA). She directs the Summer School on Collaborative Practice and Social Change (in partnership with Create – National Development Agency for Collaborative Arts). A recent collective learning initiative includes Mutual Affinities 2022 (commissioned by Creative Scotland) and the publication Art, Migration and the Production of Radical Democratic Citizenship (co-edited with Agnes Czajka, Rowman International – Frontiers of the Political Series, 2022). Counterpoints Arts is one of the founding partners of Beyond the Now Collective.

Sarah Allen

Sarah is the Director of MozFest– a unique hybrid event that is part art, tech and society convening, part maker festival, and the premiere gathering for activists in diverse global movements fighting for a more humane digital world. Sarah has curated digital and physical art exhibitions and workshops at the festival to help broaden perspectives, learning and voices as we build a healthier internet and Trustworth AI. 

MozFest is one of the founding partners of Beyond the Now Collective