Young people model Lace garments at Godfried Donker Exhibition. Photograph David Sillitoe

Past

Lace and Slavery

To accompany Godfried Donkor’s exhibition at Wollaton Hall, in partnership with The New Art Exchange and Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham Contemporary organised an exhibition, seminar and talk series. They were well attended by staff and students from local universities, colleges and by the general public.

68@40: Remember Revolution

An exciting series of educational projects is still running after our exhibition, films and events to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the student uprisings in Paris, across Europe, and a wider world.

I Pledge Allegiance to Queen and Country – a digital film and video workshop, explored proposals for young people to pledge allegiance at school. Film maker Roger Knot-Fayle led a digital filming and editing project for young people from across Nottingham, based at the Broadway Media Centre. Influenced by the ground-breaking 60s techniques of the radical director Peter Watkins, showcased in our film season, the young people acted in, shot and edited their own short film, using Watkins’ workshop and documentary style. The finished film will be screened at the Broadway in September.

Start Your Own Revolution

Performance artist Annette Foster led a series of projects with local secondary schools, using the Disobedience exhibition to start discussion and activities. Young people explored contemporary citizenship, political participation, activism and radical new art practices. A series of follow up workshops in schools and with Nottingham communities have encouraged both pupils and residents to consider art as a catalyst that may make their world a better place. The results will be screened at the Broadway in September.

Other activities around 68 at 40: Remember Revolution included a talk by Marco Scotini and Luca Frei, curator and designer of the international Disobedience archive in Nottingham, and Don’t Liberate Me – I’ll Take Care Of That – a “happening” by local artist and historian Chris Matthews who took people on a time trip of radical Nottingham.