Genesis Kickstart Fund project activity | November 2021
29 October 2021
Images: The Walk with Little Amal, Burum
The £1 million Genesis Kickstart Fund was launched to support freelancers in the creative sector and specifically to help them survive and thrive in an environment transformed by Covid-19. 41 grants of mostly £10,000 have been allocated to creative freelancers throughout the UK, to produce future-facing arts projects.
Here is an update on the projects that have upcoming activity in November.
Theatre
The Walk (Pathway for Puppeteers) | Good Chance Theatre
The Walk is a travelling festival of art and hope in support of refugees.
At the heart of the festival is Little Amal, 3.5 metre-tall puppet of a young refugee girl that is travelling over 8,000km across Turkey, Greece, Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and the UK, to focus attention on the urgent needs of young refugees and suggest new ways to think about the meaning of ‘community’ and of ‘home’.
Good Chance Theatre used the Genesis Kickstart Fund to train the puppeteers steering Little Amal through the UK tour, which includes Dover, London, Oxford, Coventry, Sheffield, Rochdale and Manchester.
Little Amal arrives in Manchester, her final destination, on 3 November. Find out more details.
Photography
The Troubles Generation | Seen Fifteen
Seen Fifteen is an independent gallery and project space in Peckham, South East London. Marking the beginning of its long-term curatorial project, The Troubles Generation, with No Country for Young Men – a solo show of new works by Northern Irish artist, Martin Seeds. Seeds looks back, via appropriation, at a series of found portraits in a Belfast school yearbook from 1965, a few years before the civil conflict known as “The Troubles” started, when political tensions in Northern Ireland were rising and trouble was brewing.
The Troubles Generation series examines the legacy of The Troubles from the viewpoint of artists born into its divided society and with lived experience of growing up during the conflict. Taking a phased approach to developing photographic projects and new writing. The ultimate ambition is to create a large-scale touring exhibition to coincide with the 25th anniversary of The Good Friday Agreement in 2023.
No Country for Young Men opens on 4 November. Find out more about this exhibition.
Music & Opera
Burum R&D Welsh jazz/folk | Burum
Burum are a Welsh jazz/folk sextet. Members of the group are leading Welsh trumpeter Tomos Williams, who straddles both the jazz and folk worlds, Patrick Rimes (pipes and flutes), Aidan Thorne and Mark O’Connor (rhythm team), Dave Jones (piano) and Daniel Williams (tenor sax).
Fusing Welsh folk music and jazz, Burum are developing new music inspired by the art of immigrant artists into Wales. In September, the sextet went to the studio at Llanbadarn Fynydd (Mid-Wales) to create a number of new suites of music.
Video clips of the session will be available online soon. Find out more about Burum.
–
Insurrection | Peter Brathwaite
Reuniting the team who made ‘Effigies of Wickedness: Songs Banned by the Nazis’ (Gate Theatre/English National Opera), British Baritone Peter Brathwaite has joined Ellen McDougall, Artistic Director and Joint CEO at the Gate Theatre, to develop Insurrection – an exploration of the music and history of Barbados.
Insurrection will present newly-arranged versions of Bajan songs, reuniting them with African musicians and instruments and reimagining them as cultural sites of resistance that contributed to the wider self-emancipation movement of enslaved people. It will give space to the voices and musical traditions that were silenced by English colonial oppressors. The Genesis Kickstart Fund supported the week-long research and development for the project. Stay informed on this project’s development.
Visual Arts
The Front Room | Valleys Kids
Based in the most disadvantaged areas in South Wales, Valleys Kids is a community regeneration charity, that has engaged with its communities for the past 43 years, opening opportunities to help people of all ages to fulfil their potential.
The Front Room is a pop-up art installation, inspired by the meaning of ‘Home’. It will provide an interactive place for visitors to engage in conversations and share memories and stories connected to reference points in the room. Visitors will also be able to be involved in the installation through simple creative art activities, such as felting or silk screen painting, to create a piece of community-inspired art.
The Front Room launches on 24 November 6-8pm at The Factory in Porth. Find out more about The Front Room.
—
