Luke, Author at DLWP, The De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill, East Sussex

Celebrate the Next Generation of Jazz at DLWP

DLWP Fundraiser Dan Scales previews the National Youth Jazz Orchestra from a unique perspective:

It is as exciting for the Pavilion’s staff to hear about upcoming performances as it is for our community. From big names to emerging artists, from music to comedy, we all get the same buzz when an artist we love gets announced.

This week, the news of the National Youth Jazz Orchestra (NYJO) visiting DLWP as part of their forthcoming tour, celebrating the music of Amy Winehouse, piqued my interest for a slightly more unusual reason…

Growing up in Norwich, I played trombone in the Norfolk Student’s Jazz Orchestra – a group of the most talented young jazz musicians from across the county. A highlight of my time in the Jazz Orchestra were visits from NYJO, with whom we held joint workshops, sessions and, of course, watched perform at Norwich’s leading venues.

NYJO has been a hot bed of jazz and big band talent for over 55 years. Alumni include Guy Barker, Laura Jurd, Mark Nightingale, the leader of the Strictly Come Dancing band Dave Arch (plus most of his band), London 2012’s

Many of my peers in the Norfolk Student’s Jazz Orchestra went on to study music to degree level and beyond, gracing stages up and down the UK. Never that talented myself, I took a different path – studying history before moving into Fundraising, eventually returning to the arts and music in my current role at the Pavilion.

DLWP is far more than just a venue. We engage over 6,000 people each year through our learning and participation activities, enabling children, young people, and adults to engage in the arts, developing creative and personal skills in the process.

NYJO is more than just an orchestra. NYJO runs a comprehensive national education programme. This spreads the ‘Jazz message’ to around 20,000 young people annually. I was fortunate enough to benefit from these fantastic workshops years ago, and am delighted that NYJO continues this work to this day.

So, come and celebrate the best young jazz musicians in the UK on Thursday 7 October 2021. Speaking from experience, it’ll be worth it…

Book tickets here!

#peopleofthepavilion

Dan Scales as a primary school student & budding musician

Site Line Day 4

This is our final session here. Extending and elongating the borders of the building, we walk to meet the sea, taking the building memory to the sea with our bodies and our mirrors. Our paths across the lawn and down the glittery white stone stairs.

Our circular mirrors reflect and carve the afternoon light.

The tide is going out and we catch glimpses of this ebbing away through out hand held portals. How they have become part of us.

Our feet get wet as we immerse the mirrors in the salty water.

The salt creates a new film across the glass, and they take on the appearance of underwater moons and flowers…

During this residency, the DLWP became a fantastic creative Lab, allowing us to create portals and membranes to travel through, forming new connections and language as we immersed ourselves in the body of this building and the inhabiting sculptures. Our voices took space through the camera lens of our phones, sound walks, messaging, listening and translations in space. Rich conversations evolved from rooftop to lawn and beyond… new questions surfaced. How does this building breath? How does it shift in time? Where does it believe its borders are? And we ask the same questions of ourselves…

PRESS RELEASE. Bassam Al-Sabah: I AM ERROR, 21 July – 19 September 2021

Gasworks presents the first solo exhibition in London by Belfast-based artist Bassam Al-Sabah; I AM ERROR, from 21 July to 19 September 2021. His work embraces the shape-shifting potential of computer-animated worlds, creating fantasy dreamscapes in which personal mythology, historical trauma and queer possibility intersect. Al-Sabah’s exhibition centres on a new animation film displayed in an immersive environment, combining fantasy erotica and body horror to explore questions of identity and masculinity in action-adventure video games.

In previous works, Al-Sabah reflected on geographical dislocation through reference to Japanese anime cartoons broadcast throughout the Middle East during his childhood. Packed with imagery of warfare, anime cartoons and video game culture take on a heightened political significance within Al-Sabah’s practice, whose family was exiled from Baghdad after the Iraq War.

The exhibition at Gasworks explores the construction of masculinity in action-adventure video games. Presented in an immersive cinematic environment, l-Sabah’s newly commissioned CGI films confront the armouring of the male body in gaming culture by queering its military ethos from within.

The centrepiece is a 28-minute-long animation projected on to a large curved screen. It features a collection of cinematic sequences from an imaginary game in which the hero’s body is constantly in flux, undergoing metamorphoses as a result of his encounter with other lifeforms, whose physical touch makes him vulnerable to change, threatening his identity and selfhood.

Combining fantasy erotica and body horror, Al-Sabah’s films celebrate the hero’s growth and transformation in all its literalness, as his body sprouts and blends into its surroundings, among writhing flowers and tentacular creatures. The tactile, hyperrealistic quality of the footage contrasts with the immersive architecture of the film installation, which engulfs the viewer to induce a sense of disembodiment.

The show is punctuated by digitally sculpted objects that explore the materiality of organic decay, extending the eerie atmosphere of Al-Sabah’s animations into the gallery space.

Bassam Al-Sabah, I AM ERROR, 2021. Video HD, 28 min. Film still. Commissioned by Gasworks, in partnership with De La Warr Pavilion, with the generous support of the Freelands Foundation.

Bassam Al-Sabah’s exhibition is part of the Freelands Gasworks Partnership.

Gasworks commissions are supported by Catherine Petitgas and Gasworks Exhibitions Supporters.

Free admission. Address: Gasworks, 155 Vauxhall St, London SE11 5RH

For high resolution images click here or email sheena@gasworks.org.uk

Please visit gasworks.org.uk to see our covid safety measures.

About Bassam Al-Sabah

Bassam Al-Sabah lives and works in Belfast and Dublin. He graduated from IADT Dún Laoghaire in 2016, and was awarded the RHA Graduate Studio Award (2016-2017) and the Temple Bar Gallery Residency Award (2018-2019). Recent exhibitions include RTÉ Illuminations (2020); Solstice Arts Centre, Navan (2019); The LAB, Dublin (2018); and Eight Gallery, Dublin (2017).

Al-Sabah is the fifth artist to take part in the Freelands Gasworks Partnership, a programme for emerging UK artists based outside of London. Made possible thanks to a generous grant from the Freelands Foundation, the programme combines a three-month residency with a solo exhibition, commissioned by Gasworks in partnership with the De La Warr, where a second instalment of the show will be presented in 2022.

Previous participants were Jamie Crewe, Rachal Bradley, Libita Sibungu, and Lauren Gault.

About Gasworks

For over twenty years Gasworks has played a unique role in the contemporary visual arts sector by working at the intersection between UK and international practices and debates. It does this by providing studios for London-based artists; commissioning emerging UK-based and international artists to present their first major exhibitions in London; and developing a highly-respected international residencies programme, mainly working with artists based outside Europe and North America. All programmes are accompanied by events and participatory workshops that engage local and international audiences with artists and their work.

Gasworks is also the hub of Triangle Network, an international network of small-scale arts organisations and projects that support and disseminate the work of emerging artists through artist-led workshops, residencies, exhibitions and outreach events. Gasworks and Triangle Network are registered as a charity in the UK under ‘Triangle Arts Trust’ and all their activities are free to the public.

Site Line day 3

Above as below… and our choreography shifts around the building.

As ‘Invertebrate’ stands above and below, we echo these viewpoints.

From roof to lawn, we use our phones to text each other, noting what we see, what we feel….

Texting morphs into refracted light and secret messages.

From above and below we walk, holding and moving our mirrors, transmitting light signals to each other.

Interruption and interpretation.

Back in the gallery we continue to create tunnels though the glass membrane…

Site Line day 2

2/4

Today we start with a sound walk.

Movement within the acoustic ecology of the building, and its architectural spaces. Its body and its hollows.

At one end of the gallery, we stop at a large mounted plaster sculpture .

From one side it reminds B of a huge sea shell, or ear.

We put our ears against it and listen, only to discover a mesmerizing echo as we whisper to each other…

We climb the stairs to the roof, stopping at certain points to stand still, close our eyes and listen.

Easier to detect and discover the layers of sound and the distant voices.

There is music playing on the lawn outside . With his eyes closed, B can also hear the swell of the sea rising up and down, watery sound waves. H says he feels his eyes bouncing off the ground as the music gets louder. The sounds alter the light behind my eyelids…

We walk to the other side of the roof.

Here the overlapping sound is a rhythmic conversation between the sound of rain and car tyres.

It feels harsher here. B says. ‘Like the pace of life and expectation’.

A return to the gallery space. It sounds padded, buttered, soft…

8 round mirrors and our phone cameras. Our movement now becomes a reflected choreography, more playful, focussed. A deeper inquiry.

In the gallery, onlookers move around us, giving us space. We can’t invite them to join in, to play because of the distancing and object touching restrictions, and so today they remain as fleeting witnesses.

We are immersed in a process of dislocation in order to relocate, until it is time to surface…

Words by Nicole Zaaroura. Keep up with Nicole’s blog here, for updates from behind the artist’s eyes.

South East Local Enterprise Partnership launches flagship support programme to aid recovery of the South East visitor economy

Partners from across the South East have launched a brand-new support programme to aid the recovery of the South East’s visitor economy, which directly responds to the impact that the Covid-19 pandemic has had on the region.

The Revi-VE – South East Visitor Economy Fund is a 100% grant fund which sits as part of a wider package of support and is funded by the South East Local Enterprise Partnership (SELEP) in order to help deliver long-term resilience and adaptation to a post-Covid world for the visitor economy.

This new programme is being delivered by a consortium of partners that represent the tourism and hospitality industry across the region and comprises of colleagues from Visit Kent, Visit Essex, East Sussex County Council, Sussex Modern, and Southend-on-Sea Borough Council.

The Visitor Economy is a considerable engine of growth for the SELEP region, worth over £8.6bn, supporting more than 177,000 jobs as of 2015. Visit Britain’s forecast for 2020 predicted a 64% decline in domestic leisure day trips within the UK and a 73% decline in international visits when compared to 2019, contributing to a significant impact on the country’s tourism and hospitality sector as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The programme will provide funding of between £1,000 and £3,000 per project, for a minimum of 150 businesses across the SELEP region and will crucially inject small visitor economy businesses with the financial investment they need in order to respond to changed conditions across the marketplace.

The funding grants – which cover 100% of the costs and require no match funding from businesses – will focus on driving innovation and helping organisations to adapt or diversify their model to meet new trends and consumer behaviours in a post-Covid world.

Examples of the types of projects that would be considered for this funding include – but are not limited to – changes in operations in order to continue functioning in some capacity during restrictions (e.g., online booking software or online, virtual experiences), adaptations to increase visitor capacity (e.g., investment in outdoor spaces) or adaptations to improve consumer confidence (e.g., equipment needed to deliver an exciting new visitor experience).

Applications will open from 9am on 15 July 2021, running until 11:59pm on 18 July 2021. Businesses are encouraged to start looking at the funding criteria and preparing applications from now, in order to ensure that this fund is the right fit for them.

Sussex Modern steering group member and Director & CEO of the De La Warr Pavilion, Stewart Drew said:

‘It’s been extremely tough for businesses in the visitor economy over the past year. The new Revi-VE fund aims to give a much needed boost to the sector, helping businesses innovate and adapt to support their recovery going forward. We are delighted to be working with partners across the SELEP region on this vital project.’

South East LEP Chair, Christian Brodie said:

“We must get behind our visitor economy organisations and businesses – that is why we are really excited to launch this fund today. At South East LEP we understand the value the visitor economy plays for our area, not just in terms of jobs and employment but the undeniable value that this sector brings to our communities, and our well-being. This fund is launching at just the right time as other monies begin to wind down and in the last push ready for reopening. We know there is so much resilience and innovation in this industry and we want to do all that we can to support those who need it most.”

With its core focus on the tourism and hospitality industry, Revi-VE is one of three flagship packages launching in order to support micro, small, and medium businesses (under 250 employees) within this region. Two further packages, which focus on start-ups (the Starting and Succeeding in Business COVID-19 Recovery Fund) and digital businesses (the Adapting with Digital COVID-19 Recovery Fund) will also be launching this month.

For more information on the Revi-VE – South East Visitor Economy Fund, and to find out whether your business is eligible, please visit their website by clicking here.

Site Line day 1

Circular mirrors, escape hatches and forensic tilts…

The DLWP has become Site Lines new co creative lab space for July, and the reason why will travel further today as a group, as four parts of a moving body, seeking to navigate and disturb the building as a body…

‘Invertebrate’ and ‘Indifferent Deep’ offers us ‘an exploration of edges, borders, what can pass through, and between, and what happens underneath’ and this is our starting point…

We trace Invertebrate over three levels and from the roof space someone says ‘it reminds me of the stove pipes, seen in Syrian houses that are heated by oil’.

Slow walking around the gallery space, we are four parts, weaving through the sculptures, noting the spaces in between, through and below. A private sensing in a public space…we are a body within a body.

We explore through the eye of the camera (mobile phone) and our sensing eye. We move from exterior to interior spaces, leaning, arching, looking up, down and glancing sideways. We become archaeologists, peering through the layers, and physicians, as we stand in front of illuminated intestines.

Moving to the roof, casting aside our masks, we take deep breaths, look at the sea, taste long distance. We return to the gallery space, with three round mirrors, our instruments for the day.

With these mirrors, we start to move and create circular escape hatches, new openings. We fracture, create and disturb the space…so much can be done without touching…Its challenging, and the beginning of our creative lab…

Keep up with Nicole’s blog here, for updates from behind the artist’s eyes.

Site Line by Nicole Zaaroura

Artist Nicole Zaaroura will be launching her Site Line residency at the DLWP, commissioned as part of the England’s Creative Coast programme at the DLWP on 3^rd July These artist led sessions will respond to Holly Hendry’s ‘Invertebrate’ and ‘Indifferent Deep’, and echoing themes, as they physically weave throughout the DLWP building.

Over 4 consecutive Saturdays, Nicole will be working with her project participants from the refugee, asylum seeker and migrant communities, exploring internal and external spaces, through an embodied approach to photography, using mobile phones, movement, somatic walks, and texts, forming a lab space for experimentation. Nicole will also be keeping a weekly blog that will follow the journey of the residency.

Site Line is a photo project that began in 2019 and is supported by the Syrian Resettlement Project, East Sussex.

Nicole Zaaroura creates site responsive ‘choreographies’ using movement, performance, texts and encounter to explore the physical, emotional and peripheral spaces that we inhabit and resist. Through an embodied practice, she works within a sensorial approach to body, space and time, investigating, and creating ephemeral, temporal and documented works through performance, video, photography and installation. Using space as a catalyst she explores concepts and questions concerned with the dichotomy of loss, memorial, intimate distances and ephemeral borders.

She has designed and delivered creative lens based projects with the refugee community for the past 15 years. Her site responsive works are created in public, private, architectural and peripheral spaces across Europe, and she has been presented in festivals, residencies, and exhibitions internationally.

To read more and to follow along with the residency as it progresses, check out the artist’s blog here, where she will be posting weekly about the sessions with her own input and imagery.

Travelling by Train on the Coastal Culture Trail

There is something beautifully old fashioned about taking the train. Even amongst the electric barriers, the whirl of the electric engine, the crackle of the tannoy, you are standing on a platform looking into the past. The warm Victorian timber canopy politely sheltering you from the elements, the painted intricate detail in colours from a time gone by, you could be forgiven for picturing sweethearts alighting, embracing each other, throwing their worn leather suitcases to one side.

Today’s train travel tends to be less romantic, associated with the commute, shuffled along, packed in, trying to grab enough space to open the newspaper, giving up and just hoping you make it to your stop without falling over awkwardly into a stranger.

The Coastal Culture Trail, however, puts the romance back into train travel. With ease, efficiency, and affordability, it truly is a wonderful way to travel the journey from Victorian Eastbourne to historic Hastings, via 1930’s Bexhill.

The coastal train line takes you within reaching distance of the sea. Racing past the pebbled beaches, windsurfers and beach huts, it is a chance to take in the landscape from a different viewpoint. Having someone else effortlessly whisk you toward your destination allows you the time to pause, take in the stunning coastal landscape, and take out the Coastal Culture Trail map to plan your day.

Orientation by train station is a perfect place to start, often dropping you in the heart of the town you are visiting. This is the case in Eastbourne, giving you the opportunity to explore the streets, cafes, galleries, and open spaces as you meander your way to the award winning Towner Art Gallery.

Arriving at a train station allows you to drink in the atmosphere and vibe of a town before you exit the doors, and start discovering it for yourself. Taking a moment to pause and observe, you will soon pick up on the pace – are people dashing around in suits and trainers trying to make their next meeting – or are they slowly organising their bag and contemplating a coffee, and let’s face it, a pastry from the kiosk – which is exactly what I found myself doing at Bexhill station before heading out and turning right towards the sea.

Arriving at Bexhill train station is a calming step back into a by-gone era. Bexhill-on-Sea gives a relaxing pace, suited to the 30’s architecture, rows of vintage shops, and busy independent high streets. Nothing awakes your inner child more than spotting the sea, and strolling down from the train station is no exception. The stunning, and much awarded, De La Warr Pavilion is situated right on the beach, fronted by gorgeous lawns, and tempting colonnades. An ideal spot for a cup of tea and slice of cake overlooking the English Channel.

One of the many advantages of taking the train is time. Knowing exactly when you will be arriving at your destination means more time for exploring each wonderful town. At Hastings, I took advantage of this by soaking up the twisting streets of the Old Town and getting lost amongst the iconic, jet black weatherboarded net huts. Buying freshly caught fish directly from the local fishing boats on the doorstep of the cutting edge Hastings Contemporary really reminds you of where you are.

Travelling the Coastal Culture Trail by train means you can visit all three galleries, and absorb the best of these great towns, all in one day. Taking the train is a greener, hassle free way to travel, leaving you with time to take in the vibrancy and grandeur of Eastbourne, the calm and pace of Bexhill, and the history of Hastings.

I have fallen back in love with train travel, perhaps today’s train travel does have an air of romance about it after all.

You can find out more, and book your train tickets on the Coastal Culture Trail website here

By Katie Lineker

UCL and partners: supporting people with aphasia to have better conversations

Thanks to a new course developed by UCL, a charity and arts organisation, people with a communication difficulty are finding ways to make conversation easier.

Aphasia is a serious communication difficulty that affects how people speak, understand, read and write words. It’s something that can develop after a brain injury (most typically after a stroke) and 350,000 people are currently living with it in the UK. Yet only 5% of the population have even heard of it, making what can be a very challenging condition also a very lonely place to be.

“Imagine not being able to speak like you can now. Not being able to order a coffee in a café, share your day with your partner, chat to your kids. That’s what it’s like for people living with aphasia. They’ve lost their language. It robs them of their ability to connect, to be heard and to listen,” explains Firle Beckley, a speech and language therapist and PhD student based at UCL.

Firle has been instrumental in setting up the Art of Conversation with Aphasia, a new eight-week creative wellbeing course that helps people with aphasia to have more successful and enjoyable conversations.

Conversation through art

Drawing on research from UCL’s Better Conversation Research Lab, led by Dr Suzanne BeekeAssociate Professor, UCL Department of Language and Cognition, the course embeds the latest conversation training in arts and culture. It’s facilitated by Firle, and artist facilitator Nikki Hafter,

“We use art to inspire conversation between the group, while also weaving in what we know about conversations from our research, to give people with aphasia and their family and friends new conversation techniques and tools.

“We create an environment in which the group look at, talk about and do art, combined with individually exploring with each couple a video of their everyday conversation to spark ideas about how they can keep their conversations flowing.

“It’s about designing and delivering a course that incorporates the knowledge of people with lived experience, together with art, to create something outside of people’s everyday experience, something that takes their minds off their aphasia for just a minute or two,” says Firle.

Pooling collective expertise

The Art of Conversation with Aphasia has been co-designed by a team from UCL, the De La Warr Pavilion and the charity SayAphasia. Open to people with aphasia and their chosen family member or friend, the course brings together collective expertise about aphasia and new ideas on how to live well with it, from across the arts, health and academia.

The first series of sessions, which ran at the beginning of 2021, took place on Zoom due to the pandemic, but the team hopes to run future courses at the De La Warr Pavilion, a cultural centre on the south coast.

“It worked brilliantly online. In some ways it was more intimate as we got to see each other’s lives inside our homes. But doing it face to face will mean people can fully engage with the exhibitions at the De La Warr.

“We want to give people with aphasia the confidence to engage with the cultural activities happening on their doorstep, to know that art is for them too.”

Innovation and partnership in action

Commenting on the initiative, Kathryn Walsh, Executive Director, UCL Innovation & Enterprise, said: “This project is a fantastic example of knowledge exchange in action, where we’ve been able to take UCL research and use it to create something that’s really making a difference to people’s lives. Bringing together ideas from across the arts, academia and the charity sector, this project is opening the door to an exciting new kind of training and therapy for people living with this debilitating condition.”

Colin Lyall, founder of SayAphasia, who has aphasia himself after experiencing a stroke, and helped develop the programme, said: “Why I did this project was to be better, nice people to work with. Been doing guinea pig research trying things out, but this project, very good yeah, listened to and making things better for people with aphasia.”

Firle and her collaborators are now working on plans to expand the Art of Conversation with Aphasia programme, with the aim of opening up the training to many more people living with the condition.

If you are an arts organisation or funder of art and health initiatives, and would like to support this vital work, please email acaphasia.pals@ucl.ac.uk.

June 2021 is Aphasia Awareness Month, a national campaign to increase public education around aphasia, and to recognise the people living with, or caring for people with, this challenging condition.

For more information, we encourage you to use the resources below:

The Art of Conversation with Aphasia

Video: The Art of Conversation with Aphasia

Say Aphasia

De La Warr Pavilion

UCL Better Conversations Lab

UCL knowledge exchange and innovation funding

Support for external organisations to partner with UCL