‘What conditions do you need to thrive as a creative?’ Projects announcement
Thank you to everyone who applied for our our call for proposals during April and May. We are so excited to be able to announce the programmes we will be funding during the next few months. If you didn’t get a chance to apply for this opportunity, or weren’t successful, please do sign up to our mailing list and keep an eye on our socials for future opportunities, such as our Camden NoW! scheme - supporting a new theatre show to be made and presented in Camden this year.
We have chosen to fund four fantastic and varied projects… please enjoy reading about details of these below.
We’ll be announcing how to take part in the coming weeks, but and don’t hesitate to get in touch if you’d like to know more!
Work Party For Cheats - Rachael Clerke
Work Party for Cheats is a communal space for getting the stuff done that you just can’t get done. Over two hours we will endeavour to resolve as many unfinished tasks as we can, using all the skills and energy in the room to share, swap, steal and cheat our way out of our stuckness. Because doing other people’s work is easier than doing your own work, and collective satisfaction is better than individual smuggery
To take part, please bring with you an unfinished or unresolved task, along with anything you think might be useful in resolving it. This could be something that you can’t do because you don’t have the skills or don’t have time, or something you are just avoiding because it’s boring or complicated. Feel free to bring something even if you think it’s impossible to be solved by collective cheating on a Thursday evening. Here are some things I am not getting done right now to inspire you: write an evaluation (can’t be bothered), make myself a blue workwear suit with long shorts (really want to but not prioritising), work out how to make more money (too hard).
We will work from the assumption that we have everything we need in the room to complete these tasks. This might not be true but we will try anyway. We will cheat.
We are excited that you can now sign up online for 'Work Party for Cheats' events with artist Rachael Clerke:
Thursday 21st July: 10:30 - 12:30
Thursday 11th August 18:30 - 20:30
Friday 26th August 14:00 - 16:00
Black Boy Joy Club - Mark Banfield
The Black Boy Joy Club will be offering a series of workshops for Black LGBTQI+ persons at ODAC. There will be three workshops centered around themes of mental, emotional, physical, and sexual health. These are scheduled for Thursday 30th June, Tuesday 26th July and Thursday 25th August.
Three more workshops will feature vegan brunch cooking classes and a film screening. These will discuss the benefits of a vegan diet and provide Black LGBTQI+ persons with the knowledge and skills to prepare nutritious and affordable meals and raise awareness of the contribution of Black LGBTQI+ persons to the arts and the narratives around their lived experience.
See What’s Happening? for event dates and to sign up.
Survival Signatures - Omikemi Bryan
Omikemi is offering offering a series of four two-hour workshops engaging writing,
somatics and mindfulness-based care practices to support creatives in the shift
from surviving, to stabilising, to thriving.
Sessions will explore concepts such as care, rest, creative rhythms and how
these impact the ability to generate sustainable creative practices.
The sessions are QTPoC centred, meaning the workshop materials and concepts are geared towards those who have this lived experience. The sessions also welcome those from other marginalised communities.
Omikemi is a creative and healing arts practitioner making care-driven spaces focused on listening and alongsideness. Omikemi sometimes does this through writing, body work, workshop facilitation, creative mentoring, friend and fellowship.
Dates to be announced.
Cleaners - Cleo Tabakian
This project provides paid quality studio time to seven members of ODAC's cleaning staff. This will be a moment to connect with the moving self, to lie down, stretch, breathe and explore movement that feels right to the body.
Through immersive dance journeys that bring one’s active imagination into movement and discovery, attention will be drawn to the intricacy of events taking place in the body, encouraging restorative and liberating movement pathways.
Cleo Tabakian is a dance artist, based in London and Marseilles (France). Graduated from the Fine Arts Academy of Paris and from the Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance (London), she creates low-budget self-produced artwork. She combines artistic and social work which focuses on the moving body.
