Brighton conference

Programme for Brighton conference now confirmed: click on images for enlarged versions

3rd materialities workshop

The third workshop in the RGS(IBG) Social & Cultural Geography Research Group sponsored material geographies series will take place on Friday 13th March at the University of Exeter.

This workshop will explore ‘Material Geographies: interdisciplinary perspectives’ (a topic suggested during the last round of consultation) through invited talks by speakers with other disciplinary backgrounds, small group ‘hands-on’ discussions, and discussant comments by speakers who are now geographers but have brought into the discipline understandings of materiality from their previous lives as artists, curators, and more.

Confirmed speakers:
» Robert Foster (Anthropology, Rochester), author of ‘Tracking globalisation’ in Tilley, C. et al (ed) (2006) Handbook of material culture. London: Sage.
» Dan Hicks (Archaeology, Oxford), co-editor of the forthcoming Oxford handbook of material culture studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press (with Mary C. Beaudry).

Confirmed discussants:
» Nigel Clark (Geography, Open).
» Caitlin DeSilvey (Geography, Exeter).
» Kathryn Yusoff (Geography, Exeter)

This workshop will begin at 11am and finish at 4pm. Further details - including registration forms, accommodation lists, etc. - will soon be posted on the workshop website - http://materialgeographies.wordpress.com/ .

For those in the East Midlands? An invite to a private view of 'A sense of Belonging'

Private View: Friday 16th January between 5pm - 9pm
January 2009

Exhibition to explore refugees sense of belonging

An exciting new collaborative arts exhibition is to open at the Bonington Gallery in Nottingham in the new year.
Sense of Belonging will showcase the work of emerging exiled artists as well as work created out of participatory arts initiatives, and will explore the concept of belonging for refugees and asylum seekers in the East Midlands.
Using film, sculpture, mixed media textiles, painting, photography, music and performance the artists, both individually and collectively, synthesize issues of cultural identity, displacement, relationships to surroundings, personal reflections on the process of exile and belonging with a celebration of the rich cultural contributions refugees and asylum seekers bring to cities and communities.
The exhibition represents the perilous journeys people make to reach freedom both physically and emotionally, the places left behind and what makes people feel a sense of belonging a sense of being home away from home
The viewer is presented with a rare opportunity to witness the double consciousness of transnational belonging, where art may be used as a tool for social and political activism.
The exhibition includes contributions from visual artists Aria Ahmed, Jasim Ghafur and Thaer Ali; sculptors Obediar Madziva and Emmanuel Changunda; filmmaker and musician Gaylan Nazhad; and several community arts organisations Charnwood Arts in Loughborough; City Arts in Nottingham; Long Journey Home; and Soft-Touch Arts in Leicester.
The exhibition will be open from 9 to 30 January 2009, Mon- Friday from 10am to 5pm and Saturday 10th, 17th and 24th, 10am to 4pm.