Programme for Tools for Solidarity
The programme unfolding in tandem with the project and outdoor play commission Tools for Solidarity by RESOLVE COLLECTIVE explores what tools are needed in our communities to practice solidarity. Throughout summer and autumn, a series of events and monthly lesson plans will propose and share elements of creative thinking and making, and collaborative play to question, define, gather and support practices of solidarity.
With a focus on radical play, we have invited several artists whose work focusses on co-creation and world-building to conceive lesson plans. These lessons plans manifest as a zine and are designed to guide creative activities in The Mosaic Rooms’ garden and beyond. Each one centres children’s creative language and is introduced with a public workshop but serves as its own resource.
As part of the programme STUART papers will also launch STUART Issue 3: Centring Solidarity, this issue of the visual pull-out poster newspaper gathers a collection of solidarity notes with Palestine.
Tools for Solidarity opened with a launch party with creative activities from RESOLVE Collective, a visual music score workshop with artist Nia Fekri, and music and sounds from Sudan by Basma.
Lesson Plans form the main pillar of the programme and act as a device to share participatory artistic practice. Conceived in a workshop for families, Mohammad Saleh introduces the first lesson plan with Yalla Seeding. Yalla Seeding proposes the practice of seed bombing as an act of care, and a soft method to heal and green the land with clay, compost and seeds. In the second lesson plan, British-Iranian artist Nia Fekri shares how to compose and visualise sounds with You Draw My Hum, which explores the world of sounds. Further lesson plans are currently being developed by Rose Nordin and Space Black.
Gatherings form another supportive pillar of this season. Students from MACC Collective curate a two-fold programme highlighting sonic practices as tools for nurturing solidarities. The collective reverberates these ideas through the form of a party, with Solidarity FX featuring a listening lounge with Syrian Cassette Archives, a site-specific voice note project, and DJ sets by Mo’min Swaitat, LUMA and Tabideee. The party is followed by Solidarity Re:Verb, a participatory performance on listening with Bint Mbareh. The School of Mutants assemble a gathering reflecting on the notion of Translation as Hospitality. The assembly is conceived around the Afrihili, a new language based on African languages developed in the 1970s by K. A. Kumi Attobrah with the intention for it to be used as a lingua franca on the continent.
A series of events celebrates literature, culminating in Small Press Fest, with readings for children by Liblib, poetry and music with From the Lips to the Moon created by Pouya Ehsan and Tara Fatehi, featuring performances by Jabbaristan, Silai and Maureen Onwunali, a writing workshop on Solidarity and Literature facilitated by Azad Ashim Sharma, Luke Williams, Rogelio Braga, Sarona Bedwan and Hadeel Himmo, a book launch of Moving Pictures Painted with Patrick Fry, Haytham Nawar and Aflam. The fair includes a pop-up bookshop by Maqam Books, and tables by CentreCentre, Hamja Ahsan, Khidr Collective, LibLib Publishing, STUART. Fereshte Moosavi presents In Creating Objects: Farhad Ahrarnia & Hossein Valamanesh, followed by a conversation with Vlad Morariu on how handcrafts have been at the heart of the creative domain in societies. One of Sudan’s most important contemporary voices, Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi launches his new bilingual poetry book, A Friend’s Kitchen. Readings together with fellow poets and translators Bryar Bajalan and Shook delve into midnight musings in the aftermath of Al-Raddi’s forced exile from Khartoum to London.
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