Making Believe. Sound/video series with reassembled cut up readings of 100-year-old books and archive film collage exploring authorship and obsolescence in the information age. With Xhi Ndubisi & Jo Manby. 2024
Going to the Match On Tour. Touring Lowry's 1953 masterpiece to the National Football Museum and four other North West communities. Funded by Arts Council England and The Sir Bobby Charlton Foundation, 2024
The Lowry, Maternity cover as Curator of Contemporary Art at The Lowry in Salford. Exhibitions: Hew Locke; Nikta Mohammadi; Jo Lathwood; Venture Arts. 2023
Refloresta! Maria Nepomuceno. Participatory textile, drawing, and ceramic installation combining fluid, organic forms with traditional rope-weaving and straw-braiding techniques. With Helder Clara & Apapat Glynn. 2021
A Journey to Dungeness. Sound for short film by Scout Stuart & Juliet Davis-Dufayard, which followed LGBT Foundation Manchester create a new garden for Manchester Art Gallery, the Derek Jarman Pocket Park. 2023
The World Reimagined. Mass participation art education project to transform how we understand history of the Transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans and its impact on all of us. Founding artist Yinka Shonibare. 2022-2023
Ownership & the Price of Empire. Interactive exhibition for Festival of the Mind. With University of Sheffield Director of Research and Innovation Dr Siobhan Lambert-Hurley & Sheffield Museums Trust. Supported by the Higher Education Innovation Fund. 2022
Textile & Place Conference. In conversation with Maria Nepomuceno on Refloresta! and the politics of textiles. Convened by Alice Kettle and Manchester School of Art. Keynotes: Lubaina Himid; Maria Balshaw. 2021
Working Class Movement Library & Manchester UNESCO City of Literature. ‘A Tale of Two Libraries’, presentation following staff exchange for the inaugural Manchester Festival of Libraries. 2021
Opening Moves: The extraordinary origins of chess. For MACFEST festival of Muslim arts and culture, British Museum curators Dr Sushma Jansari and Dr Irving Finkel on the Indian, Persian and Arab roots of chess. 2021
To Think Carefully: Rene Kulitja in Conversation. Live discussion with artist, traditional Uluru-KataTjutu custodian, and Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women's Council Director on her piece Pulangkita pitjangu (When the blanket came) and the colonisation of her people, land and language. 2020
Decolonising a museum or library exhibition. Live discussion on creative methodologies with Radha Kapuria, Helen Idle & Apapat Glynn for the University of Sheffield: Conflict, Cultures and (De)Colonisation. 2020
Getting Better: Questioning the language of ‘wellbeing’ and ‘recovery’. Public conversation on finding more compassionate language around mental and emotional health. With nurse Miriam Avery; Nous magazine founder Lisa Lorenz; artist and Mad Pride member Darren Adcock; Manchester Disabled People Against Cuts; and President of the College of Psychoanalysts Ian Parker. 2020
OOZY: Interruptions at the Holden Gallery. Video/sound performance with ARM (Navid Asghari and David Rogerson) concerned with what it feels like to be living through a period of intensifying alienation. 2020
ማን እያወራ እንዳለ ይመልከቱ. With Masresha Wondmu, Tsige Haile, Binyam Zenebe and Nuria López de la Oliva. Amharic-speaking Manchester residents reconsidering the balance of power between publisher, reader, translator and listener in the age of fake news and ‘alternative facts’. Filmed by Sophie Broadgate. 2019
Old Tools > New Masters ≠ New Futures. Post-performance panel discussion at Manchester Art Gallery with Contact Young Company and Young Identity asking “What does a postcolonial future look like?”. Directed by Tunde Adefioye, dramaturg at KVS, the Royal Flemish Theatre in Brussels & Ruby-Ann Patterson. 2018
The Sea is History & Lettres du Voyant. Q&A with Louis Henderson on his “mythically charged” films on the violent conquest of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and “a history that is now finally beginning.” 2018
Manchester Psych Fest. Performance for Manchester Festival of Psychedelia at Night and Day, with Mother: Allie Bell, Chan-yang Kim, Tim Schiazza and Karl Astbury. 2016
Samarbeta: Large Electric Ensemble. Sound performances with Ex Easter Island Head at Supersonic, Birmingham; Furnace, Liverpool; St John Bethnal Green and Bristol Cube. Supported by Arts Council England. 2017
Future Legacies: collections, collecting and artists' books. Artists, curators and archivists on the potential roles of artists’ books in contemporary practice and research. Collaboration between PAGES and Special Collections, University of Leeds. Supported by the Centre for Practice-led Research in the Arts. 2017
Bluedot at Jodrell Bank. Performance at Bluedot Festival of art and science at Jodrell Bank Observatory, Cheshire with Mother: Allie Bell, Chan-yang Kim, Tim Schiazza and Karl Astbury. 2016
Process: artists' talks. Keynote presentation at a programme of artists’ debates around the theme of ‘Process’, with supporting talks from Ness Donnelly, Helen Wheeler and Claire Tindale. 2018
Dining In. Curated by Chi Emecheta, with Ella Phillips, Peggy Brunache, Zuleika Lebow, Uli Westfal, Quarantine, Sheila Gheleni & Sue Palmer, Ecaterina Stefanescu, Horace Lindezey and Terry Williams. 2022
Voices. Exhibition by The Didijis: Sunaina Bhalla, Asmaa Mahmud Hashmi, Suman Gujral, Madhu Manipatruni and curator Uthra Rajgopal, on the experiences of South Asian women in their homes and in arts and heritage. 2022
Tracing the art of a Stolen Generation: the child artists of Carrolup. Curtin University with the Carrolup Elders Reference Group. Curators: Michelle Broun, Dr Helen Idle, and Goreng Noongar Elder Mr Ezzard Flowers. 2022
Brick by Brick: Architectures of potential. Curated with Emma Morley. Thu Le Ha, Andy Broadey, Johanna Just, Tianzhou Yang, Natalia Da Silva Costa Dale, Qingyuan Zhou, Daniel Elms and Jess Taylor. 2022
In the Margins. Programme by self-titled community-led collective coordinated by Abir Tobji, asking local residents, artists and writers “Through whose eyes do we frame the world?”. 2022
Kiganda Dance with Aminah Namakula. New film by artist Birungi Kawooya, dance expert Aminah Namakula, and Kiganda dancers in Uganda intended to embody the beauty of the African diaspora. 2021
Queer/Nature: What is ‘natural’ anyway?. Film programme looking at ecologies and landscape through a queer lens and questioning the lines we’ve drawn between human and nature, male and female, the natural and the unnatural. Commissioned with Aoife Larkin for Second Nature. Curator: Jamie Allan. With Edgar Pêra, Jorge Jácome, Sadé Mica, Maryna Makarenko, Flóra Anna Buda, and Jem Cohen.
Wild Lands. Interactive woman-led performance from artist-producer Amy Lawrence in collaboration with Joe Whitmore, Rowland Hill and Juliet Davis-Dufayard, inviting audiences on a video journey through a pocket of Manchester’s urban woodland to explore gendered bodies, marginalisation, and women’s relationships to urban wild-spaces at night.
Daisy Chain Reaction. “Daisies are the most common and best-loved weeds in Britain. Does finding out that they are not native to these islands change your opinion of them? Using the surprising migrant history of one of the UK's most common and well-loved flowers, artists and practitioners Jessica El Mal (Journeys Festival International) and Juliette Davis-Dufayard (Let’s Keep Growing) led a discursive workshop exploring the value of where things come from and what it means to feel rooted in a place.
Manchester: Ruskin Free City, with Tania Bruguera. With Alistair Hudson and Tunde Adefioye. Nineteenthth-century artist, critic and social reformer John Ruskin said “I perceive that Manchester can produce no good art and no good literature”. In 2019, his bicentenary year, our panel responded to some the controversial thinker’s challenges by proposing to “put art to use” through the movement of Arte Útil.
Spirited. Spirit of 2012’s autumn 2018 exhibition commemorating the often unsung women—and men—who fought for the vote one hundred years earlier and bringing to life their incredible acts of courage, creativity and cunning. Curator: Catherine Riley.
Entwined: Knowledge & power in the age of Captain Cook. Co-curated with Dr Helen Idle in partnership with the Menzies Australia Institute at King’s College London. 250 years since the voyage that culminated with Gweagal people at Kamay (Botany Bay) witnessing the first arrival of British people on their shores, Entwined used first editions of Captain Cook’s journals to consider the resulting process of colonisation and its context.
Does Information + Technology = Knowledge?. Using artist Nicola Dale’s work as a starting point, experts from different fields of study debated what aspects of “knowledge” are gained or lost through rapid changes in communication and technology. Nicola Dale - Artist and Researcher. Nicholas Royle - Author and Senior Lecturer, Manchester Metropolitan University. Dr Fred Schurink - Historian of Books and Reading, University of Manchester.
Gut Healing. Live poetry, spoken word, and site-specific video devised by Amy Lawrence, with Diana Tap, Alison Erika Forde, Seleena Laverne Daye, Henrietta Phoebe Dunn, Miray Sidhom, Harold Offeh, and Elmi Ali. 2017
Cut Cloth: Contemporary textiles and feminism. Foreword for book and production of group exhibition curated by Sarah-Joy Ford, 2017. With Tilleke Schwarz, Orly Cogan, Wendy Huhn, Rebecca Halliwell-Sutton.
Turning Blue. Collaborative performance of original live music, art, and spoken word from award-winning author Ben Myers, Mustard Tree artist-in-residence Carolyn Curtis-Magri ,and David McLean’s Crime Scene ensemble.
Fun & Games: Playtime, past & present, 2021. Birungi Kawooya, Apapat Jai-in Glynn, Bob Bicknell-Knight, Le Ha Thu, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Gray Wielebinski, Hope Strickland, Polly Tayarachakul,
What it is to be here: Colonisation & resistance, 2020. Helen Idle, Rene Kulitja, Steve Dixon, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Lowitja Institute and Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women's Council,
Talking Sense: The changing vocabulary of mind and brain 2020. Fifty artists. Fifty minds. Fifty artworks in paint, film, drawing, sculpture and print
Second Nature: What is ‘nature’ anyway? 2019. Navid Asghari, Jackie Chettur, Oliver East, Jessica El Mal, Louise Hewitt, Ruth Murray, Joanna Whittle, Amy Lawrence, Journeys Festival International, Venture Arts and Let’s Keep Growing,
Making the News: Reading between the lines, from Peterloo to Meskel Square, 2019. Robel Temesgen, Polyp, Schlunke & Poole.
Fancy Pants, 2019. Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou, Ruby Kirby, Lindsey Mendick, Camille Smithwick, House of Ghetto.
BiblioTech: from bookshelf to big data, 2018. Dan Hays, Jane Lawson, Claire Tindale.
In So Many Words: Roget’s Thesaurus & the power of language, 2018. Jez Dolan, Rowland Hill, Jonathan Hitchen.
The Things That Look Back, 2018. Nicola Dale.
Beautiful Monsters. Co-curated with Anya Charikov-Mickleburgh, with Laura Dekker, Dina Varpahovsky, Donal Moloney, Evgenyi Strelkov, Ed Saye, 2018
Bittersweet: Legacies of Slavery & Abolition in Manchester, 2017. Lubaina Himid, Keith Piper, Mary Evans plus items from Manchester Art Gallery & Quarry Bank Mill, co-curated with Dr Natalie Zacek.
Recollection: Memory & time, 2017. Saima Rasheed, Alnoor Mitha, Maggie Hargreaves, Leo Robinson, Stacey Coughlin.
Cut Cloth: Contemporary Textiles & Feminism, 2017. Sarah-Joy Ford and artists Tilleke Schwartz, Wendy Huhn, Orly Cogan… + items from People’s History Museum & The Pankhurst Centre.
Made In Translation, 2017. Co-curated with Alice Kettle and MMU Crafts Research Group. With Stephen Dixon, Louise Adkins, Rachel Genn. Crafts Council example of good practice in interdisciplinary collaboration.
Be Strong, Live Happy & Love: 350 Years of Paradise Lost, 2017. Chloë Manasseh, Ilona Kiss, Kate Shaw, Helen Mather + items from Chethams Library.
Many Splendoured Thing, 2016. Co-curated with Raphael Fonseca. Gê Orthof, Manchester School of Art, HOME and Prêmio Marcantonio Vilaça/Plano Cultural.
Non-Places of Intelligence, 2016. Shreepad Joglekar.
The Four Guardians of the Sky, 2016. Ousama Lazkani,
Build a Wor(l)d with ‘ing’. Helen Wheeler. 2015
Video Jam. Live-scoring artists’ films with new original sound. Islington Mill; Manchester Art Gallery; Sounds From The Other City. 2014