Walkspace is happy to announce our first funded project – an international walking arts collaboration with Jalan Gembira in Indonesia.
Jalan Gembira is a female-led walking practitioners group based in Yogyakarta, Java. The name translates as ‘happy road’ and reflects the enjoyment they have recently discovered from walking and exploring their city.
Back in August, they invited us to partner in their application to the British Council’s Connections Through Culture programme, which fosters international collaborations through arts and culture. (Thankyou to Louise at BOM for the introduction.) In September, we were delighted to hear that we had been awarded funding for our proposed project.
The full project title is ‘Parallel Walking: Between Here and There, Between the Seen and the Unseen’. Like Birmingham, Yogyakarta is a ‘motor city’ where walking is secondary to the car/motorbike/moped, where public space has been eroded by private interests, and where the infrastructure of the city can make walking feel unsafe for pedestrians. These were just a few shared themes we identified in our initial talks.
Over the next three months, we will be working and walking in parallel, gaining insights and developing our practices through showing each other our streets. We want to hold up a mirror to each other’s cities as part of our cultural exchange.
The ‘Parallel Walking’ project will run from November until the end of February. It will involve three UK artists (Beth Hopkins, Andy Howlett and Fiona Cullinan) and three Indonesian artists (Deidre Mesayu, Kurnia Yaumil Fajar and Riksa Afiaty). The mix of participants includes musicians, illustrators, collagists and walking artists. Together they will explore the identified themes through their own practices, perspectives and while walking in parallel in their cities.
We will be producing a joint zine of material from the walks and hold a simultaneous parallel exhibition – ours will be at Artefact in Stirchley, Jalan Gembira’s will be on ‘pos kamling’ – community watch posts in the neighbourhoods where they walk.
The exhibition/zine is scheduled for early February.
#BritishCouncilCTC #CultureConnectsUs
