Learning Lab with Open University – ESRC Festival, MAC, Belfast

behjat.working (1)
Behjat Omer Abdulla working on the ‘From a Distance Series’  (Photo: Andreas Engman)
Date: Wednesday 7 November
Time: 12:00 – 14:00
Venue: The MAC Belfast, 10 Exchange Street West, Belfast BT1 2NJ

Please join us for a Learning Lab focusing on the theme ‘Who are We?’. The Learning Lab will draw on the collaborative work between the Open University and Counterpoints Arts as part of Tate Exchange. The UK-wide ESRC Festival aims to open up social science research to new audiences by showing how such research has an influence on our everyday lives.

What contribution can art make to how we think about identity, belonging, migration and citizenship? Come along to our Learning Lab where we will look at how participatory arts can raise public awareness of issues such as migration, displacement, placemaking, citizenship and the production of social democracy.

The workshop will look in particular at how the art and activism of migrants and refugees are challenging notions of democratic citizenship. Artists are audaciously inserting themselves into, and pushing the boundaries of controversial political debates, challenging dominant interpretations of the parameters of citizenship and belonging.

The Learning Lab will draw on the collaborative work done between The Open University and Counterpoints Arts as part of the Tate Exchange. Counterpoints Arts is a leading national organisation in the field of arts, migration and social change, supporting and producing art by and about migrants and refugees, seeking to ensure that their contributions are recognised and welcomed within British arts, history and culture. The Learning Lab will enable participants to explore some of these interventions, and the contribution they make to creatively and radically reimagining the map of democratic citizenship in the UK.