Location for Intervention:
Inivia Space & Stuart Hall Library a Starting Point.
Considering what would the best space to hold my intervention I felt a more neutral space or more student-led environment could have the effect of hosting the discourse in a more ‘open’ environment rather than the ‘classroom/studio’ where the students and staff are normally in the teacher<>student hierarchical structure. And the space where most the learning happens is in part part of our conversation in evaluating their experiences – it could possibly trigger negative emotions if, for instance, a negative memory is associated with the space.
On the Chelsea campus grounds the Stuart Hall Library [https://iniva.org/library/] is a specialist library that centres art and theory publications from the Global Majority, African, Asian, Caribbean, Polynesian, Latinx, and Diaspora perspectives. The library serves as the intellectual and social hub of iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts).
Iniva is an evolving visual arts organisation dedicated to nurturing and disseminating radical and emergent contemporary artistic practice centring Global Majority, African, Asian, & Caribbean diaspora perspectives.
I attended my first event at the Invia Stuart Hall Library on October 28, Body as Testimony artists/designers were discussing the embodiment of their research practices. Seeking questioning strategies and definitions through bridging knowledge and ‘the body’. This is where I met Sepake Angiama, Creative Director and Beatriz De Britto, Curator of Invia.
It was at this event that I saw the potencial the space could hold for our students and all who want to interrogate, explore and contribute to a conversation that sheds light and evolves other ‘norms’.
I contacted them and visited the space at a later date when they were not hosting an event. They gave me a tour of the space and showed me around their archive collection. I informed them of my intention of using the space to host my event, where I would require from them an introductory tour of the space and archive and space to hold further dialogue (total 1.5 hours).
UPDATE:
I planned to host my group of [Beyond the Boundary] thematic group ARP session at the Iniva library. Due to technical issues I never received the response with agreement to possible dates from Iniva, meaning we missed the window to actualise the planned event.
And due to the ARP project assessment dates and students assessment dates, I will now need to host the session online to ensure students can participate. They have submitted their Formative Submissions for assessment (I have 27 students to write feedback for in 2 weeks). In this time before they leave on their holidays, I organised the event.
I chose to do it online also partly as students in the last week, when they have already submitted their assessments, miss the last week. So if this was the case for the students I selected they could still be included in the conversation, regardless of where they would be.
On reflection I could have offered for any students that wanted to attend in person they would also have this possibility. There could be various reasons why a student might not be able to attend digitally or prefer to speak in-person.