9 May 2024
All moved in! Peer-to-Peer 2024 updates
Workshops and moving into Metroland Studios.
How time flies! The second half of the Peer-to-Peer programme has already taken place, and the cohort have now moved into their studio spaces at Metroland and are planning the artworks, workshops, events and exhibitions they will create during their time here. Our Peer-to-Peer residents have free studio spaces at Metroland Studios for the next year.
Here’s what the Peer-to-Peer cohort got up to in the second half of their workshop programme. (If you missed what happened during the first half, you can read all about it, starting from the beginning and their first session, here.)
Workshops
Their sixth Week together saw the group’s first session led by Lizzie Graham, Metroland’s new Programmes Curator. Lizzie oversees Metroland’s programmes of work across communities, artists and young people. During the session the group met with Christy, who works as a Curator at Metroland, and Lois, Metroland’s Director. Christy and Lois introduced the group to Metroland’s studio programme. They took them through the opportunities available to them and the process for submitting proposals for exhibitions in our gallery. The same afternoon the group visited Zineb Sedira’s exhibition, Dreams Have No Titles at Whitechapel Gallery, taking a self-guided tour.
The Peer-to-Peer cohort on their visit to the Whitechapel gallery – photos by Sue Man
For their seventh session, the Peer-to-Peer cohort met Rebecca Bellantoni, a multi-disciplinary artist who worked with Metroland on the 2022 Brent Biennial. Rebecca’s work includes moving image, installation, performance, photography, textiles, printmaking, sculpture, sound-text, and ceramics. Rebecca brought in a text she wrote about personal experiences and shared it with the group. She talked through her career, shared her inspirations and what drives her work and practice. Group discussions touched on grief, the breakdown of community in our neighbourhoods, confronting fears and how Rebecca brings these questions into her art. In the afternoon, Lizzie guided the group through an embodied centring practice by Staci K Haines, alongside an exercise, where the group were invited to response to prompts including ‘What do you want most for your communities and/or loved ones?’. These prompts were adapted from Adrienne Maree Brown’s book Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation.
In Week 8, the cohort had a studio visit with Adam Farah-Saad, visiting Adam’s studio at Metroland Studios. Adam gave the group an overview of his work and talked about how his artistic practice has developed. In the afternoon, Adam led a music sharing workshop inspired by the artist Ain Bailey’s work on sonic autobiographies. Each Peer-to-Peer artist brought a track and shared with the group what the music meant to them.
The Peer-to-Peer cohort visit Adam Farah-Saad’s studio. Photo by Amanda Colares Silva
During session number 9, Lizzie took the group to The Amadeus. The guest artist for the week was Marged Siôn. Marged is an artist and voice practitioner from Cardiff, Wales. Her work engages in voice as a transformative practice by utilising its healing purposes to experience vocal liberation. With Marged, the group explored voice practice and somatic consciousness as creative tools for personal and social transformation. Together, through different exercises, the group called on their own alignment, breath, resonance and imagination, as resources for vocal liberation. These exercises included drawing how they see their voice now, where they felt their voice inside their body and how they would like to experience their voice in the future. They also each brought words that are currently meaningful to their practices, and together moved around the space manifesting their words vocally to create a collaborative soundscape.
Peer-to-Peer cohort at The Amadeus – photos by Kim Chin
In Week 10 the cohort were joined by guest artist Joe Namy, an artist, educator, and composer, often working collaboratively and across mediums – in sound, performance, photography, text, video, and installation. In the morning, Joe shared his practice with the group, talking about how his projects often focus on the social constructs of music, organised sound and his long term research project on the composer, musicologist, and educator Halim El Dabh (also known as the Godfather of African Electronic Music). Joe opened the workshop with a series of questions by deep listening practitioner Pauline Oliveros called Sonic Images. In the afternoon Joe guided the group through an exercise that asked group members to create a score that related to their individual practices.
Plans for the future…
It’s been wonderful to see all of the wonderful peer-learning taking place in the 10 weeks that make up Peer-to-Peer’s workshop programme. We’re excited to see what the next stage of this year’s Peer-to-Peer programme brings, now that the cohort have moved into their studio spaces at Metroland. They are currently in the stage of planning artworks, workshops, events and exhibitions for their time in residence at Metroland Studios.
Our Peer-to-Peer residents have free studio spaces at Metroland Studios for the next year, so stay tuned for more news on what they have planned!
More…
Announcing Lizzie Graham, Metroland’s new Programmes Curator.
Having previously worked as the Associate Civic Curator at Serpentine, where she worked connecting artists and communities through long term residency programmes, we are thrilled to have Lizzie joining our team here at Metroland!
Peer-to-Peer 2024 Cohort announced!
Today the first Peer to Peer session of 2024 took place at Metroland Studios. We are thrilled to welcome the ten artists who have been selected to participate in this year’s artist support programme, Peer to Peer 2024.
Peer-to-Peer Update: Sessions 2 and 3