About the Project

This project takes place both in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic and in the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter uprisings, both of which have starkly exposed the realities of ongoing systemic and structural racism and its impact on the physical and mental health of people of colour and people who are otherwise marginalised or socially disadvantaged.

This project is interested in exploring how creative practice can impact the negative mental health effects of racial discrimination. Following the lead and practices of the artists involved in the project the intention is to ground this exploration in a hopeful and generative approach. Anti-racist, feminist, and other work to challenge intersectional oppression has necessarily focused predominantly on the mechanisms by which oppressive structures are transmitted and maintained.

This project will build on that essential work by exploring, for example, how communities can be built, not on exclusion, but instead on the joy of finding connection and community. The artists will use creative practices to facilitate conversations about the positives that diversity and inclusion can bring to existing networks and communities, exploring how an artistic methodology can make conversations about intersectionality and diversity joyful, and the impacts that a foundation of joy and hopefulness will have not only people’s motivations and desire to join in with such conversations but also on the worlds that might be envisioned together.

Below Gemma shares with us more about the project and what knowledge she is hoping to gain through bringing together two artists for a collaboration such as this.

In my academic work I’m really excited by creative research methods and academic/artistic collaborations, and to have the opportunity to learn more from Cinna, Bee and the team at Arts and Culture Exeter about the creative process and about how art and creative practice can be used to explore ideas is an amazing opportunity for me.

Through the project I hope to learn from Cinna and Bee about how creative practice can be used to generate and facilitate conversations about intersectionality, racism and mental health.

I’m really, really excited to witness the coming together of a graffiti artist and a paper flower artist. I’m really excited by the possibilities of both of these mediums. As I reflected on in a recent blog, both mediums have the potential to catch people’s attention, and therefore to carry messages, potentially difficult, sensitive messages, and perhaps even to imbue these messages with something joyful and bright, allowing people to relate to them in different ways.

I’m so grateful to have the chance to collaborate with these two artists, I can’t wait to see what unfolds.

Project Plan

The project will have two stages. Firstly, Cinna and Bee will collaborate through an Artists’ Residency by using their artistic and creative practices to make something together that speaks to intersectionality and wellbeing. They will then run two online craft workshops with communities of colour including PhD students of colour from the SWDTP and other people of colour from the Exeter area.

Precisely what the residency and workshops will involve is yet to be decided because much will depend on what emerges from the creative and collaborative work that Cinna and Bee are yet to do… Watch this space!

How the Residency Unfolded

Throughout the course of the residency Cinna was based soley in Berlin but connected on a regular basis with Gemma and Bee via Zoom, where they had in-depth discussions about how the power of arts and creativity had affected them personally.

Below is a recording of just one of those occasions. Whilst Gemma and Bee crafted paper flowers in Exeter, Cinna created a brand new piece of public art on a designated graffiti wall in Berlin.

All three spent time reflecting on the residency through the use of blogs, which touched on their own individual practice; their motivations and creative inspiration and how they think creativity could be utilised to open up conversations around intersectionality and mental health.

Below are excerpts to each of these blogs along with a link to the full version.

Towards the end of the residency Cinna also created a stunning canvas inspired by the conversations she had been having with Gemma and Bee.

Below Cinna outlines more about her creative process and motivations for creating the piece.

"I used an 80x70cm canvas that I got from a friend already painted with an acid green. I painted a grounding base with acrylic white, let it dry, and started with the sketch. Then I painted the green background and the yellow faces, inspired by the colors and shapes of the Brazilian flag. I started shading the faces with orange, and a friend said that it looked like it was burning, and I incorporated the idea.

As the national flag has become a symbol of hate in many countries and also the fact that in that week a very important law for the rights of the Originary peoples of Brazil was being voted, I wanted to subvert that symbol. The stars that represent our districts were added together with the cracks of a land that's burning.

The first phrase is a wordplay with the sound of 'Brasileiro' (Brazilians) and 'brasa' (ember), a reference to how the current situation is cultivating lots of rage in the inside of us facing so many adversities, and also to bring up the fact that we've been having a huge increase in the forest fires since Bolsonaro was elected.

The second one refers to Bill PL 490, which "aims to make the demarcation of Indigenous lands in the country unfeasible and to set the year of the Constitution of 1988 as an arbitrary cut-off date for recognizing Indigenous land rights. If the Bill passes, Indigenous Peoples who were not on their land before 1988, due to various factors including forced removal and lack of legal recognition, would no longer have rights to their traditional territories."** It's also a reminder that the original people have always been in their place: we are the invadors. "

** Source: www.culturalsurvival.org

Reflections on Cinna Solar X Wild Hive from Gemma Lucas

In a new blog post, Gemma Lucas reflects on her experiences managing this project and what whe learnt from her time on placement with Arts and Culture. Read an excerpt from the blog below:

"Delivering this project, I learned a huge amount about how both artists and cultural organisations understand and explore topics relevant to my research. Throughout the placement as whole I have also developed a huge amount of insight into the benefits and challenges of working with artists and other non-academic partners.

"I have learned, for example, that working with people who have similar understandings to me about the topics we are exploring, but who are from very different backgrounds, can lead to much richer work because of the different pools of professional and personal expertise we can draw upon together. For example, in the arts project I managed during my placement, I collaborated with a graffiti artist and a botanical artist to explore the topic of intersectionality, mental health and creative practice. We are all feminists and committed to anti-racist work, but our practices are completely different. Knowing that we had a shared politics and vision allowed us to build trust in each other, and in the process, and to bring our different skills and knowledges into conversation with one another to produce artwork and public engagement workshops."

Read the full blog post here

This project is jointly funded by a Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health’s ‘Enhanced Research Award’ and South West Doctoral Training Partnership student led collaboration funding.