Tuesday 6 April 2021
After a year of postponements, cancellations and online streaming, the UK’s arts and cultural sector is looking to stage a cautious but determined real-life comeback this summer with outdoor, socially distanced indoor and digital events designed to lift our battered spirits, let our imaginations soar and travel without having to get on a plane. Flexibility is the name of the game for cultural organisers up and down the country.
Fargo village in Coventry
COVENTRY
First up in the nation’s arts reawakening is Coventry’s year as
UK City of Culture, which kicks off on Saturday May 15 with a festival of street art and artist-designed shop windows and launches with an even bigger bang on June 5 with
The Sisterhood exhibition aims to disrupt oppressive and Islamophobic mischaracterisations of women in the community A powerful artistic disruption : Speakers Corner Collective members (Photograph by Sofia Bouzidi)
Young women in Bradford are taking back control of their own narratives. In celebration of International Women’s Day, they have organised a public photography exhibition across city billboards, reclaiming public space by portraying their empowering sisterhood.
Amid heightened isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic, the group from Speakers Corner Collective, a creative and political space that mobilises girls and young women in Bradford, came together last summer for a photoshoot.
Sisterhood is a series of images created in collaboration with art director Neesha Champaneria and photographer Vivek Vadoliya, who said they wanted to “go beyond the cliches of what you might expect it means to be a South Asian female in Bradford, thinking about Bradford’s rich migra
FIVE women from the district are to be part of a pioneering international project. They will join with five women from Pakistan to curate and deliver a weekend of digital literature festival events in November. ‘From Keighley To Karachi’ is part of a collaboration between Bradford Literature Festival and Adab Festival in Pakistan. It is backed by the British Council Digital Collaboration Fund. Adab Festival was formed in 2019 to showcase Pakistan’s historically rich and diverse literature and cultures against a backdrop of “continuing challenges, stifled expression and stereotypes”. Organisers say From Keighley to Karachi will bring together women from diverse and disadvantaged communities, in Bradford district and across Pakistan, who face a range of barriers – from gender-based to economic.