Bad Practice: a centre for collective action
At Gallery II Thursday 23rd March – Thursday 1st June 2017 and 19 - 24 June + 1 July for Refugee Week. (Closed for bank holidays: Fri 14th April, Monday 17th - Tuesday 18th April, Monday 1st May, Monday 29th May)
Between March and June 2017 Bad Practice will occupy Gallery II, centring women’s experience, learning and knowledge. During this period we will exhibit three films in the gallery: Women Work (1984) by East Leeds Women’s Workshop, Cycles (1989) by Zainabu Irene Davis and Sharla Shabana Sojourner Selena (2016) by Rehana Zaman. We will also use the gallery to host a short course on furniture making for all who identify as women, with carpenter Sue Clarke; radical ESOL classes; an inner midwife pottery workshop with Liz Whitney (Faculty of Health Studies); planting workshops with Grow Bradford; a temporary plant nursery; an exhibition of work by Schools of Sanctuary during Refugee Week; a relaxation cube; and an information drop-off point for Bradford-based activist and community projects. Find out more
Who are Bad Practice?
We identify as ‘cultural workers’ whose activity involves teaching, making, organising, curating, discussing and consuming art in its broadest and most exploratory sense. We are committed to working with an anti racist, anti capitalist, intersectional feminist method. Within the context of Gallery II at the University of Bradford, we want to confront the institutional violence, silencing and exclusion that takes place historically and presently, along the lines of race/sex/gender/disability and class within the university and within the ‘art world’.
Current members: Amy Charlesworth, Gill Park, Louise Shelley, Rehana Zaman
Bad practice sets out to question workshop-based activities that increasingly exist within the art world.
WE WANT TO KNOW:
Who benefits from collaborative art making and workshop based activity?
What outcomes and levels of sustainability can realistically be achieved?
Who determines these outcomes?
How are individuals and groups brought into conversation?
What working models exist-
How might they be reimagined and repurposed?
We are interested in learning-
What can we bring and what can we take away from a centre of temporary exchange?
WE WANT TO KNOW:
TIME - WHOSE?
PAY - HOW MUCH?
WHO’S IN CHARGE?
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
Supported by Women Make Movies, University of Bradford and Arts Council England.
Bad Practice events programme
Wednesday 3rd May - 13:00, English Language workshop with Bad Practice and members of Room 101
Bad Practice (english language workshop)
A new format English language workshop combining language, drama and collective exchange. Free and open to all, held at Room 101, Richmond Building, University of Bradford.
Thursday 4th May, 15:00 - 17:00, Partition/ Prevent/ Positions, workshop with Samayya Afzal and Bad Practice
A workshop on the violence of governments and institutions, racist profiling and resistance, starting at 1947 through to 2017, mapping partition, prevent, power and positions.
Open to all, with a particular emphasis on WOC.
Thursday 11th May, 18:00 - 20:00, Life/ Death with Bad Practice in collaboration with Speakers Corner
Bradford Refugee Week, 2017
Our shared future - Refugee Week Art Exhibition
The exhibition is open daily from Monday 19 to Saturday 24 June 11am to 5pm, and again on Saturday 1 July to coincide with the International Refugee Festival at nearby Grange Interlink.
Bradford City of Sanctuary and Gallery II have joined forces to create Our shared future, an art exhibition to celebrate Refugee Week 2017.
This is an all-age, mixed media exhibition, with work from schools, art students and established artists, including work by refugees and asylum seekers. Work is individual and collaborative.
Exhibits by refugee artists include Arabic calligraphy by graphic designer Lama Andoura, with sentences from poetry by Bashar Farahat, and Get a grip; a wallhanging with ceramics produced by refugee women working with Nazmeen Akhtar.
Year 10 GCSE art students, from St Bede's and St Joseph's Catholic College, were asked to reflect on the theme of the exhibition – Our shared future – and then come up with their own interpretation.
Amongst the photographic exhibits is a series by Jax Griffin illustrating what asylum seekers can buy with their weekly allowance of £35. There is a participatory work by Lucy Illingworth that encourages visitors to write their dreams on a blackboard or a washing line. The grassroots arts project Wur Bradford has produced a collective zine on the theme of the exhibition.
Also on show is the magnificent lino cut Flight by Ruth Fettis which is the cover image for the whole of Bradford Refugee Week 2017. All works are hung in an exhibition environment that is part of Bad Practice: a centre for collective action; a project about collaboration and networks of solidarity at Gallery II, University of Bradford.