Arts Week 2022

Creators, makers and users discuss craft provenance, archival collection and digital technology, exploring the intersection of digital and traditional cultures of making. In-person.

An interactive workshop that gives you the opportunity to create and discuss nineteenth-century optical toys. In-person.

An 'in conversation' event on the subject of birds and place in both historical and contemporary contexts with nature writers. Led by medievalist Michael Warren (Honorary Fellow, Birkbeck). Online.

Mathelinda Nabugodi uncovers some of the links between the poetry of freedom and the practices of slavery in the Romantic period, drawing on her current work-in-progress, a critical memoir entitled The Trembling Hand: Reflections of a Black Woman in the Romantic Archive. In-person.

Dan Ryan, one of the UK’s leading stage and screen actors talks with Birkbeck’s Daragh Carville and David Eldridge about their work together on The Bay (ITV, 2019-date) and Middle (National Theatre, April-June 2022), among his many other stage credits. In-person.

Good Friends for a Lifetime introduce collage as a tool that can be used to inspire and support feminist, collaborative and non-hierarchical theatremaking processes. In-person.

Book launch for Seda Ilter’s new book on the evolution of playtexts in response a mediatized age. Online.

A conversation with Nat Ogle, whose debut novel, In the Seeing Hands of Others, has been described as ‘a breathtaking meditation on trauma, care and the limits of empathy.’ In-person.

Architect, editor and publicist Miloš Kosec on the story of Jože Plečnik's Stadium in Ljubljana and its exclusion from the Unesco World Heritage List. Online.

Explore Renaissance crime and punishment by walking in the ancient precincts of the City of London. In-person.

A discussion of the politics of the animal fable and its potential as a model for tackling questions of our time, chaired by Marina Warner. In-person.

Writers Chloe Aridjis, Monique Roffey and Birkbeck’s Toby Litt talk about writing, hope, activism and climate. In-person.

An exploration of the major events, people and scenes depicted in this extraordinary survival from post-Conquest medieval England. Online.

The first of two workshops exploring the possibility of connection and joy through movement, open to artists of all abilities and disciplines and hosted by choreographer, dancer and teacher Ingrid Mackinnon. In-person.

A short film and presentation exploring the ways in which women’s work and voices have been silenced in both historic and contemporary contexts. Online.

An online live event exploring how Indigenous artists from Brazil have engaged with museum collections to discuss issues of Indigenous rights, climate change and biocultural diversity loss. Online.

Bring your ideas and your independent spirit to this part-presentation, part-workshop to explore how artists can make and sustain their own opportunities when established institutions are struggling to do so, and what independence looks like after the pandemic. Online.

New play investigating the link between violence and femininity through history via multiple intertwining stories. In-person.

Demonstration of Kalaripayattu, a martial art for the battlefield and how it symbolises the cycle of human physiological growth, through a presentation and live Q&A session. Online.

Conversation on the question of whether it is possible to separate the art from the artist, between acclaimed French novelist Michaël Ferrier and Birkbeck’s Damian Catani. Online.

Author Richard Seymour and poet and prose writer Rebecca Tamás consider how we can reckon with, and truly confront, the ecological crisis that we are already living in. In-person.

A discussion of the extended mind - the idea that cognitive processes happen outside the brain - in the context of early modern life, thought and culture. Online.

A panel of academics and artists discuss the notion of creative practice and art-making as a reparative act of healing and self-preservation. In-person.

Play conveying fictionalised experiences through characters on a multiracial street, casting a kaleidoscopic lens on survival through violence; prejudice; the struggle for breath: the grip of the COVID-19 virus on our lungs, the importance of oxygen for life. In-person.

Workshop delving into the basics of storytelling techniques, to enable interrogation of the hostile environment for East and Southeast Asian migrants living in the UK. In-person.

The second of two workshops exploring the possibility of connection and joy through movement, open to artists of all abilities and disciplines and hosted by choreographer, dancer and teacher Ingrid Mackinnon. In-person, outdoor.

A practical workshop on key principles of fourteenth and fifteenth century European martial arts including wrestling and swordplay, run by theatrical fight directors Craig Hambling and Kiel O’Shea. In-person.

A collaboration between Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre and THISISPOPBABY (Ireland) on the state of Irish plays in London now: who is writing them, where they are being staged, and what the term ‘Irish play’ now means. Online.

This panel discussion explores how we make archives and celebrates three projects that 'collect' histories of architecture, and how they have done so. Online.

Film screening and Q&A with documentary filmmaker Medhin Tewolde, whose internationally-acclaimed Negra explores what it means to inhabit Mexico as a black woman. In-person.

Julia Kristeva, internationally renowned thinker, on the potential and risks of 'transformative femininity' in psychoanalytic experience, followed by discussion and Q&A with Jacqueline Rose, Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities. Online. Booking available soon.

A mix of short fiction, poetry and spoken word performed by students from Birkbeck’s BA Creative Writing. In-person.

A new piece of climate theatre offering a radical reimagining of the future to come, followed by a discussion with the directors.

Symposium on the elusive concept of freedom and how we write about it. In-person.

This day of workshops includes two site visits to grassroots archives to spend time with materials relating to artists' practices that have documented and intervened in the gentrification of London. In-person.

A talk by Shama Khanna and a participatory event where kids and their parents and/or carers can use stickers to play with gender stereotypes in children’s books: from characters' pronouns to the way they are dressed. In-person.

In this drumming workshop, learn the basics of percussion and rhythm, freely express yourself through the beat, and explore the positive effect music and rhythm can have on our mental health and wellbeing. In-person.

Readings and discussion of powerful testimonies, poems, essays and interventions, with guest writers, artists and activists from across the world. Online.

Presentation and panel discussion on new approaches to the art and design of the fin-de-siecle. In-person.

Birkbeck’s Mike Bintley discusses his new translations of Old English poetry representing trees, plant life and woodlands in and beyond early medieval England. Online content

A collaboration between Hong Kong-based instrument designer Chaklam Ng and Birkbeck’s Jackie Lou, explores the common ground between language and music by ‘translating’ the rhythm of human conversation into drumbeats using an algorithm.

Five mini podcasts offering five different pictures of the soul from late medieval literature, translated into Modern English. Online content.

Discussion of a theatre project devised with young people from the opposite sides of the demarcation line in Donbass region, asking how the ‘Minotaur’ of war can be defeated. Online content.

Four fifteen-minute interviews with new writers from Birkbeck’s Creative Writing programme: Tasneem Abdur Rashid, Lily Dunn, Valentine Carter and Nadia Wassef. Online content.

Reading The Modern Maternal Memoir: Birkbeck English PhD students Jemma Walton and Kate Errington talk to memoirist Laura Dockrill about her experience of Postpartum Psychosis. Online content.