Youth Engagement Forum is an informal session for 16-24 years old to meet other young people on a regular basis (monthly) and do creative projects inspired by our exhibitions and collections in our venues.
You’ll get to plan, create, produce and organise events and activities for other young people in the city and to help make their galleries and museums more diverse, inclusive and a space for everyone to enjoy.
Takes place in the World Museum Treasure House Theatre.
Find out more here.
The Bluecoat is delighted to welcome independent Art and Cultural Historian, Michael Ohajuru on Thursday 9 December at 6pm for an online discussion, Black Magus: Power and Magnificence in Renaissance Europe.
Ohajuru, Senior Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, researches, writes and speaks on Black presence in Renaissance Europe. He will present his research into the presence of the Black magus or Black king in art history as part of an illustrated Q&A with Bluecoat’s Head of Programme, Marie-Anne McQuay.
Ohajuru will unpack how the image of the Black magus shifted over time, what he represented and who might have sat for his studies, leaving time for questions from the online audience. The conversation has been devised in response to artist Rosa-Johan Uddoh’s exploration of the Black magus, otherwise known as Balthazar, who shifts from a white European to an African king within depictions of the Nativity.
Rosa-Johan Uddoh’s exhibition Practice Makes Perfect is now showing at the Bluecoat and includes a major new work, a large-scale collage, which investigates the historical figure of Balthazar.
According to tradition, Balthazar was one of the three biblical magi and later a saint, who offered the gift of myrrh to Jesus. Depicted since medieval times as a lone black figure in artistic imagery of the Nativity scene or ‘Adoration’, this king is often the first time school children encounter a Black person of importance in a performance.
Historically, Balthazar is also a figure through which white artists and their patrons in Europe first constructed ‘Blackness’. Through her research, with the assistance of Nasra Abdullahi, Uddoh has found and catalogued around 150 historical ‘Balthazars’ featured in ‘Adoration’ paintings made throughout European history.
Thinking about the real, Black European sitters for these paintings, Uddoh’s billboard-style collage brings these Black kings together in friendship groups on a long march of solidarity to change the West.
The exhibition commissioned in partnership with Focal Point Gallery is showing at the Bluecoat until 23 January, along with A look inside by US artist Deborah Roberts, and Always Black Never Blue by Liverpool Artist Sumuyya Khader. All three solo exhibitions explore the formation of identity in the 21st Century.
To watch the discussion see here.
Our journey towards bold climate action is at a critical moment. For the past 12 months audiovisual collective D-Fuse have developed Nine Earths – a unique environmental documentary that explores the relationship between everyday events and humanity’s excessive demand for the Earth’s resources.
Nine Earths is a British Council Creative Commission for COP26, the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. The project has engaged nearly a hundred collaborators to create a mosaic of day-to-day life, using footage shot by international collaborators in Brazil, Indonesia, Lebanon, Vietnam, and the UK.
This online and in person event on Saturday 20 November will gather the project participants from around the world as well as Mark Maslin (Professor of Earth System Science, UCL and Author of ‘How to Save Our Planet: The Facts’), Climate Activist Daze Aghaji, and Mike Faulkner, Founder and Director of D-Fuse, to share their thoughts on COP26.
They will also hear directly from the project participants about their relationships to consumption and the widening gaps between the world’s wealthiest and poorest nations.
Blending participatory and observational types of documentary, Nine Earths reveals global consumption patterns through the lens of climate justice and takes audiences on an audiovisual journey through multiple locations, highlighting individual voices and stories. The project looks into the relationships between consumption levels of countries and individuals, cultural differences and similarities, and how we are all inextricably connected.
The challenge of the 21st Century is that we must learn to think and act as a global species.
Join Bluecoat in this online panel discussion to explore Liverpool City Region’s artist studios.
In 2020, Laura Marie Brown and Patrick Kirk Smith authored a report into Liverpool City Region’s artist studios. Hear from artists, studios and spaces as they reflect on their role, what they need and whether they can survive.
On the panel are – Patrick Kirk Smith, Michelle Peterkin-Walker, Erika Rushton, Brigitte Jurack, Claire Weetman. Chaired by Laura Brown.
The event accompanies the exhibition in Bluecoat’s Vide, A Creative Community, which reflects on over a century of the Bluecoat as a working building for artists.
This event will take place online.
Popular comedian and presenter, Robin Ince comes to us to talk about his new book, The Importance of Being Interested. Robin joins The Reader on his 100 Bookshop Tour where he’ll be signing books and explaining why Science should be for everyone – including enthusiastic amateurs.
Tickets are pay what you feel. Copies of The Importance of Being Interested can be bought in advance and collected on the day or extra copies will be available to purchase from The Reader Shop.
About The Importance of Being Interested
‘A delightful and scintillating hymn to science.’ Carlo Rovelli
Comedian Robin Ince quickly abandoned science at school, bored by a fog of dull lessons and intimidated by the barrage of equations. But, twenty years later, he fell in love and he now presents one of the world’s most popular science podcasts. Every year he meets hundreds of the world’s greatest thinkers.
In this erudite and witty book, Robin reveals why scientific wonder isn’t just for the professionals. Filled with interviews featuring astronauts, comedians, teachers, quantum physicists, neuroscientists and more – as well as charting Robin’s own journey with science – The Importance of Being Interested explores why many wrongly think of the discipline as distant and difficult.
From the glorious appeal of the stars above to why scientific curiosity can encourage much needed intellectual humility, this optimistic and profound book will leave you filled with a thirst for intellectual adventure.
Join BlackFest to celebrate the launch of Malik Al Nasir’s ‘Letters to Gil, A Memoir’, held Downstairs at the Everyman.
Letters to Gil is Malik Al Nasir’s profound coming of age memoir – the story of surviving physical and racial abuse and discovering a sense of self-worth under the wing of the great artist, poet and civil rights activist Gil Scott-Heron.
The event is held Downstairs at the Everyman, 29 September, 7pm. See here for tickets.
Born in Liverpool, Malik was taken into care at the age of nine after his seafaring father became paralysed. He would spend his adolescence in a system that proved violent, neglectful, exploitative, traumatising and mired in abuse and racism.
Aged eighteen, he emerged semi-literate and penniless with no connections or sense of where he was going – until a chance meeting with Gil Scott-Heron turned everything around.
2021 marks the 10th anniversary since Gil’s passing, and in honour of his legacy, Malik Al Nasir releases Letters to Gil, a frank and moving memoir, which tells the story of Malik’s empowerment and awakening while mentored by Gil; from his introduction to black history, to the development of his voice through poetry and music.
Written with lyricism and power, it highlights how physical abuse and institutional racism can debilitate and disadvantage a child, but also how mentoring, creativity, self-expression and solidarity can help unleash a person’s full potential, despite the odds being stacked against them.
Stacey Dooley has firmly established herself as one of the most recognisable faces on British TV.
Now , following several sell – out UK tours, Stacey is heading back on the road to celebrate the publication of her new book, Are You Really OK? Understanding Britain’s Mental Health Emergency, which explores the mental health crisis in Britain and its particular impact on young people, inspired by Stacey’s two most recent documentaries on mental health.
The event is held Storyhouse, Chester, 22 February 2022, 7.30pm. See here for tickets.
In conversation for these limited events, Stacey will open up the conversation about mental health in young people, to challenge the stigma and stereotypes aroun d it.
She will also touch on related, broader topics which she has tackled in her documentaries – poverty, addiction, identity, the pressures of social media – and look back on the stand – out moments and interactions from her wide – reaching career.
Join her for what promises to be a thought – provoking, inspiring and informative evening. With a chance to try your own hand at journalism and ask Stacey the questions, this is an opportunity not to be missed.
This event will be to a full audience (not distanced).
Ignite are a Grassroots community organisation who organise and present a quarterly event where members of the community are invited to present on a subject they are passionate about.
Enlighten people but make it quick!
They have had some great presentations from a wide variety of people. You don’t have to be technical to do it, you just need passion for the chosen subject of your presentation.
The format goes like this:
At every Ignite the crowd gathers upstairs at Leaf Cafe on Bold Street for around 12 talks from members of the public each talking about a subject they are passionate about.
The next Ignite event is held 20 October and runs from 6-10pm, with talks normally starting at 7pm. See here for tickets.
For more information see: https://igniteliverpool.com/
After the success of the “Space Is The Place” opening, the team have set a second late date for everyone to head down, see the exhibition and hear directly from the artists.
Artists Patric Rodgers and Angelo Madonna will be at Convenience Gallery on Thursday 30th September at 7pm for a conversation on Space is the Place.
They will be diving into the exhibition providing insight into its creation, process, concept and exploring the wider inspiration discussing the history, myth of Hilbre Island, psychogeography and how to connect deeper with our own place in space.
The exhibition will be available to view in its full glory with all the mood and ambience of their opening.
Show Booklets will be available on the night.
An opportunity to join the Museum’s Learning & Participation Team as they talk through the fascinating stories of some of the many inspirational Black British people connected to Liverpool.
The workshops are free and held Museum of Liverpool, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 October, 11am and 2pm.
Liverpool has a rich history of inspirational Black scousers, such as the groundbreaking 1970s group The Real Thing. These workshops shed light on their many achievements.