Always on
This project successfully funded on 16th July 2024, you can still support them with a donation.
Reflections Community Exhibition Handsworth
Birmingham, West Midlands, United Kingdom
Aim: Reflections Community Gallery is a FREE photography, film and music exhibition featuring local people from Handsworth and surrounding areas
Life of a People Project is working towards REFLECTIONS GALLERY, a FREE 10-week community exhibition at Handsworth Library/S&C College (date TBC) 💥💥💥
- Photos of people from Handsworth, Hockley, Handsworth Wood, Winson Green, Perry Barr, Newtown, Hamstead, Cape Hill & more...
- Original filmed songs, poems and stories by locals
- All pieces translated into 6 languages: Urdu, Pahari, Somali, Polish, Punjabi, Bengali
- Foreword by Sharon Duggal, free-to-take zines
- We are still finalising a launch date. In the meantime to show what it's all about, we are previewing the concept at JAAG FESTIVAL 22.06.24! Come down!
By supporting this Crowdfunder you'll help us to:
- Put on a FREE exhibition with no economic barriers.
- Get the work interpreted into braille and British Sign Language so everybody can engage.
- Help to support the costs of the gallery, artist subsistence and our volunteer work going forward working within our communities.
You can also enjoy some unique merchandise as a thank you for donating!
The Story So Far
I’ve been gathering photos & interviews in our local communities of North Birmingham for the longest now. It started out as just a convo & a photo but soon trends emerged in what people were saying: cultural joys, sending money back home, cost of living, racist workplace encounters, informal local drug economies, healthcare, housing precarity. These kept coming up, so I documented them with an anti-imperialist, class lens, making the project unapologetically emotional & political!
The concept was tested at @eprjcts in Digbeth 2022, showing some of the photos and interviews. Those who realllly felt the work were from areas that the project was made in, naturally! Hold tight 1 guy who got 2 buses & a jog on to see the work. While I loved this commitment, it proved that the work needed to breathe in the communities it came from.
So this time round, we're bringing the work back home. We've been working hard with people in Handsworth and surrounding areas. They have ingested the interviews like Bulbasaur taking in light, & output REFLECTIONS: original filmed songs, poetry & stories expressing the thoughts of a community - lives of carers, those seeking asylum, delivery drivers, those excluded from arts along class & ethnic lines. Affirmative action by accident:
Complex topics, from the gentrification of Perry Barr, civic duty, zero-hours contracts, roots & identity, homelessness & concepts of home, refined to be brought to the heart of community. Some artists involved can’t be here no more courtesy of the Home Office, friends made & lost during this process.
We’ve faced down security to get footage for this project. Went where outsiders wouldn’t. Filmed in an abandoned sewing factory caved in roof & all.
With work from @affiejam, @poetrybyraaj, @sitcho1, @jjb.writes, @shahnoor & more translated into 6 languages, illustration by @waheeda_art, zines by @shelbyxstudios, foreword by @sharonduggal, & tied together by Riché from @ijustfinishedwork, this is the ONLY place to see this work.
We are previewing the exhibition at our incredibly supportive partner @jaagcollective ‘s JAAG Festival,