ReFramed Bursaries & workshop opportunities

ReFramed are launching a new project to record Black, Asian and other minority ethnic communities experiences of COVID-19 across the Midlands.

‘Digital Diaspora: The Midlands Covid-19 Project’ will be documenting the impact of COVID-19 on Black, Asian and other minority ethnic communities across the Midlands. The project is led by a team of award-winning photographers and curators who believe that visual arts play a critical role in shaping civic and contemporary attitudes, initiating collaborative conversations, and changing prevailing thoughts about race and our communities.

In the current climate, this project is important.

There is much-documented local racial disparity in terms of wealth, opportunity, social isolation and mental health, yet local BAME communities are underrepresented in the arts. This project will attempt to redress these issues. Over the next six months, we will inspire and train local Black, Asian and other minority ethnic communities to engage with photography, alongside spoken and written narratives, to enable them to capture and present a greater range of stories than is normally represented of local culture within the Midlands.

As part of the project, we will be running online art classes to enable local people to tell their own stories, showcasing local narratives on this website and awarding bursaries to enable two local artists to produce work.

Bursaries:

Two £500 bursaries will be offered to emerging artists from Black, Asian and other minority ethnic communities living within the Midlands. These bursaries will enable two visual artists to document and explore the effects of COVID-19 in their communities / homes (whilst also following government guidelines). The awards will be accompanied by support and mentoring.

Workshops:

A series of 9 workshops will be delivered to help Midlands-based Black, Asian and other minority ethnic community participants produce a body of work (between 2-5 images) which will be published in a printed publication later in the year. These workshops will help you think about out how you PLAN, MAKE and SHARE your work with others through one-to-one tutorials and weekly peer reviews.

People can apply to attend workshops or apply for the bursary on our website: https://www.reframed.uk/call-out. Alternatively people can use this link https://mailchi.mp/7bb19b1ff07b/3bxaiqlp91

All work from the project will result in a publication. We are aiming to produce this by November 2020.

This project is a collaboration between Black Country Visual Arts and ReFramed artists & curators, and has been made possible through a generous grant supported by Arts Council England. The project will also work in close collaboration with charities and community groups across the Midlands to help them to use visual images to promote their work.

About ReFramed

ReFramed is a Midlands-based network for Black, Asian and other minority ethnic communities who are interested in producing photographic visual art. It was set up in January 2020 by a team of local, award-winning photographers and curators including Andrew Jackson, Sebah Chaudhry, Anand Chhabra and Jagdish Patel.

For more information visit: https://www.reframed.uk