Growing Up B(r)ent – Ed Webb-Ingall with Mosaic LGBT+ Young Persons’ Trust.
Growing Up B(r)ent is a radio play by artist and filmmaker Ed Webb-Ingall, produced in collaboration with Mosaic LGBT+ Young Persons’ Trust. The play explores what it means to create communities of kin, particularly for individuals to whom such communities might initially seem out of reach.
Brent Biennial 2022
Community Commissions were a key part of the 2022 Brent Biennial, ‘In The House of My Love’. Partnerships were created with three groups across the borough:
- Asian Women’s Resource Centre
- Sufra Foodbank and Kitchen North West London
- Mosaic LGBT+ Young Persons’ Trust.
Each commission started as a series of workshops to identify how artists could work alongside staff and community members to address an important desire within their work and lives. The projects were community-led; the communities connected to these three organisations wrote the briefs and selected the artists who they would work with.
About Growing Up B(r)ent
Growing Up B(r)ent is a radio play by artist and filmmaker Ed Webb-Ingall, produced in collaboration with Mosaic LGBT+ Young Persons’ Trust.
It spans the past and present of Mosaic using the genres of documentary and fiction to delve into the history and legacy of Mosaic in Brent.
The play explores what it means to create communities of kin, particularly for individuals to whom such communities might initially seem out of reach.
The play takes as a point of departure the initial founding of Mosaic as a group for Gay and Bisexual men in Brent in the year 2000, which was made possible with funding for HIV/AIDS prevention and support from Brent Council. Mosaic subsequently became one of a handful of LGBTQIA+ youth groups in London and ran until 2016, when it closed its doors in the borough due to austerity cuts, registered as an independent charity and moved to its current location in Camden. Having found no information for the group in Brent’s archives other than a photograph of its founder, the artist began a search for Mosaic’s records, most of which were collected together and later passed on to Webb-Ingall by former staff. It was this unofficial archive—composed of newsletters, emails, minutes, guidelines and workshop descriptions, amongst other documents—which provided the founding material for a radio play imagining what it might have been like to attend the first few meetings of Mosaic, within the context of rampant homophobia, street hostility and the influence of Section 28.
Ed also met monthly with the young people who currently attend Mosaic. Through workshops they explored the history of the original group, and began to imagine and create an archive of their own. This became part of the installation at The Library at Willesden Green during Brent Biennial 2022, and has now become part of the library archive.
The young people also spent time making audio recordings to punctuate the radio play, exploring the politics and problems of coming out, and the ongoing importance of safe spaces for LGBTQAI+ people.
Listen to Growing Up B(r)ent
Written and Produced by Ed Webb-Ingall
CAST (in order of appearance)
Caretaker ………….. Fionnula Kennedy
Chris …………………. Adam Woolley
Jay …………..……….. Vikash Kawa
Andy …………..…… Joshua Asaré
Terri …………..…….. Femi Oriogun-Williams
PRODUCTION TEAM
Director: Turan Ali
Recording Engineer: Femi Oriogun-Williams
Music: Personnel
Script Consultant: Juliet Jacques
About the artist
Ed Webb-Ingall is a filmmaker and researcher working with archival materials and methodologies drawn from community video. He collaborates with groups to explore under-represented historical moments and their relationship to contemporary life, developing modes of self-representation specific to the subject or the experiences of the participants.
Website: www.edwebbingall.com
Instagram: @edwebbingall
About Mosaic LGBT+ Young Persons’ Trust
Mosaic LGBT+ Young Persons’ Trust is London’s biggest LGBT+ youth charity, serving the community through the delivery of outstanding services and events. Mosaic Trust runs Pride Prom and Homoween, as well as offering a youth club, mentoring and counselling, making sure to support LGBT+ young people holistically. It’s their mission to support, educate and inspire in order to build a proud, strong, cohesive LGBT+ community that is healthy, safe and thriving.
Website: https://www.mosaictrust.org.uk/
Photography by Thierry Bal.
Ed Webb-Ingall’s project was commissioned as part of the Brent Biennial 2022, titled ‘In the House of my Love’. The second edition of the Biennial asked how, and why, the act of making home can be a form of resistance and survival within the context of hostile environments—including those of racism, homophobia, ableism, climate catastrophe and political austerity. The Brent Biennial 2022 was curated by Eliel Jones, in collaboration with a curatorial committee comprised of artists Adam Farah, Abbas Zahedi and Jamila Prowse. Find out more by visiting the Archive.