Young People
Image credit: Isoa Tupua
The Mosaic Rooms deliver projects in dialogue with young people local to the gallery. We aim for each project to be useful to and compassionate towards, the people who join us and take part.
The Mosaic Rooms Young Collective is a group of 18–25-year-old people who will meet monthly between April and November to take part in creative sessions with professional artist Jacob V Joyce, exploring the theme Cruising Alternative Realities.
🌸The hope with collaborative projects is always to carve spaces of mutual learning, between the group, the artist and the host or curatorial team. So far, we have all been on this beautiful journey of sharing knowledge as well as wisdom.
🌟When we invited Jacob to come on board as the lead artist, they suggested this year’s provocation: Cruising Alternative Realities. When Jacob proposed to share “Collaborative art sessions drawing on a variety of creative techniques to explore personal mythologies and stories of collective liberation” we were thrilled! A way to use art as a tool to dismantle dominant hierarchies through our bodies and voices – yes! We were so happy to receive many expressions of interest, through our partner charity CARAS, various community partnerships and an open call. The sessions have been exciting beyond what we could have imagined. Young people have been writing dream poems, wrapping themselves in corrugated cardboard and breaking free, communing with real and imagined ancestors and so much more.
🍉Each time we meet, we share some food and each other’s company. If we imagine this journey as a restorative afternoon in a warm garden, the hammock is the creativity we have explored , the blue sky above the legacies of liberationist historians, freedom fighters and artists, and of course the sunshine is Jacob and all of the wonderful people who make these sessions.
2023
The Mosaic Rooms Young Collective: Shall We Sit Together?
In 2023, we continued to support young people to encounter the visual arts and learn new ways to consider, discuss and produce work as a collective through The Mosaic Rooms Young Collective project.
Artist collective Febrik delivered monthly sessions with a group of young people from local charity New Citizens’ Gateway. Collaboration between the young people and artists was the starting point for discussion, thinking and making. The collaborative sessions introduced a series of methods and themes such as ‘collaboration’, ‘co-production’, ‘solidarity’ and ‘resistance’. The group considered questions including Why and how do we collaborate, for what purposes? How do we operate collectively, and who do we invite to work with us? This project ran alongside a sister project at De La Warr Pavilion.
You can read and download Manifesto of Care here, created by The Mosaic Rooms Young Collective as part of this exhibition.
2022
The Mosaic Rooms Young Collective: Anatomy of a World
You can read more about the exhibition that the group created here
The Mosaic Rooms Young Collective invites young people to engage with the visual arts and learn new ways to consider, discuss and produce work as a collective. In 2022 the group worked with artist Nia Fekri to take on a multidisciplinary approach in collaborative storytelling. Through speculative exercises, the participants were invited to create interweaving narratives, intersecting worlds and hybrid characters. The collective also received guidance and support on routes to further knowledge and education from IntoUniversity. The project included a paid opportunity to organise the public launch of the project at The Mosaic Rooms. This is a partnership project with New Citizen’s Gateway.
The Mosaic Rooms Young Collective: Suliman, Yalda, Rozhina, Dhaifallah, Souleymane, Rukeya, Bukhari, Areej, Nida, and Saba, in collaboration with Nia Fekri, have created a two-part installation in response to a series of collaborative storytelling and speculative exercise workshops led by artist Nia Fekri. Through conversations on collectivity, gift giving, rest and action the Tea Station and Sleep Station have been made.
Watch the video below featuring interviews with artist Nia Fekri and the young people of the collective:
Video Credit: Jon Lowe
IntoUniversity Arts Exploration Mentorship
In Spring 2022 we partnered with IntoUniversity to support young people with an interest in the Arts. This support included a visit to The Mosaic Rooms, a creative session with professional artist Aya Haidar, and career support and mentorship from the team.
IntoUniversity provides local learning centres where young people are inspired to achieve. At each local centre IntoUniversity offers an innovative programme that supports young people to attain either a university place or another chosen aspiration. Khadija Saye Arts at IntoUniversity continues the work of IntoUniversity with a focus on encouraging and supporting young people with an interest in the Arts.
2021
Ikhtiar / Choice
In autumn 2021 we hosted a collaboration with young people from IntoUniversity and New Citizen’s Gateway in a project led by artists Zahra Tehrani and Nia Fekri. Find out more about their project Ikhtiar / Choice.