For the last two years KWMC has run an event called Project Night: a space for creatives, making work in community contexts to share ideas and receive peer support. Sessions themed around ‘staying connected to communities’ and ‘self-care and community wellbeing’ felt especially beneficial for those attending.
Creativity + Care has grown out of learnings from the Project Nights, aiming to create a new programme that explores the themes of radical care and pleasure activism. It will provide opportunities for creatives to explore and experience nourishing spaces of care that can support, inspire and enable their creativity.
Co-curators Roseanna Dias and Josephine Gyasi have embarked on a collaborative Research and Development (R&D) process to shape the possibilities and principles of the Creativity + Care programme. In Spring 2021 they invited artists / creatives who are involved in socially engaged / people / community based work to learn from one another and work in dialogue – together they’ve been collectively dreaming up a blueprint for the future: one where care is recognised as universal, reciprocal and central to sustainable and authentic creative practice. Specifically, they have been exploring ideas around Contracts of Care, Creative Care Coordinators and Care Languages. Read more on what they’ve discovered so far in this blog post.
This June, we’re excited to launch a call out for artists / creatives to create work around our first strand of the programme which will explore Care Languages. This theme takes inspiration from the idea of Love Languages (words of affirmation, quality time, acts of services, gifts, physical touch) which describe different ways of expressing and receiving love. We want to expand this thinking into exploring how we express and receive care for ourselves and others through creative practice.
This Summer–Autumn 2021 KWMC is looking to commission 4 creatives to explore the links between creativity and care as part of a remote – or in person mini residency. Come and take part in a care-giving circle where we explore the theme of care languages – or the different ways we express and receive care through creative practice.
Find out more and how to apply here and read full artist brief here.
If you have any questions or need assistance with the application, we’d love to talk. Contact: josephine@kwmc.org.uk
