ARTIST CALLOUT | Conversations Series III: ‘Narratives’

Conversations Series III launches with brand new 'Narratives' project.

  Conversations Series was first established back in 2016, as a programme of artistic projects and residencies delivered by Venture Arts, aimed at creating new work in a shared exchange of art and ideas.   The programme brings together a range of artists, with and without learning disabilities, to develop collaborative, reciprocal learning and creative exchanges. Through this, it is hoped that open conversations and new dialogues about the role of art in contemporary society will be generated.   Conversations Series has become an award-winning series of major projects in partnership with Castlefield Gallery. ‘Conversations Series I: OutsiderXchanges’ (2016) and ‘Conversations Series II: Other Transmissions’ (2018-19) took the form of residencies where emerging neurodivergent artists collaborated with emerging, contemporary artists. Over several months, they took inspiration from each other to create shared and independent artwork. The resulting artworks were shown at venues including The Whitworth, Tate Liverpool, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Artlink Hull, University of Salford and The Grundy, Blackpool.  

Conversations Series III: Narratives

Our upcoming ‘Conversations Series III: Narratives’ will take the form of a new collaborative residency, working with eight artists for whom personal narratives around heritage are central to their work. We aim to work with four Venture Arts artists from diverse cultures and backgrounds. Collaborating with Castlefield Gallery, The Lowry and Explorers, we wish to commission four local artists for whom cultural identity is also important in their work, or who would like to create new work about their personal stories and narratives.   We hope to work with artists who possess shared or parallel identities/histories, and who will work together to create a new body of work over a five month residency at Venture Arts. There will also be opportunities to work with other organisations such as the Ahmed Iqbal Ulla Race Relations Resource Centre to support artists to further explore heritage themes within their work, through archival research.   The work will be shown in an exhibition at The Lowry, Salford Quays from January to March 2023.    Narratives is part of the EXPLORERS project, led by Project Art Works. EXPLORERS is a dynamic collaborative programme of art and action that opens up routes into artistic practice for neurominorities, dismantling attitudinal and systemic barriers to representation and rights in art and society. Find out more.

Artist Callout

Venture Arts are now seeking expressions of interest from North West based visual artists to engage with the Conversations Series III project in 2022.   All successful artists will receive a £2880 artist fee and be given access to free studio space for five months (April 2022 – Sept 2022) coming together for 1 day per week to share the space.   Please download our Artist Callout Information here for full details on how to apply.   Please email your full application to sarah@venturearts.org    Details of what is needed in the application are in the Artist Callout download above.   Deadline extended to 28th March 2022.