"FutureBlackSpace" by John-Paul Zaccarini

FutureBlackSpace is a creative space of recovery, discovery and project/artist development, free from the white gaze. It is designed for POC who operate within largely white fields/institutions and offers them a chance, through creative writing practices, to reflect upon how this affects or troubles their work/study. It is meant as a supportive space that offers tools to generate authentic work from the specific experience of POC.

Aim and research questions

• In what way will a brown/black-only creative working space impact the research of those within it?
• Within the weaving together of our various strands of embodiment, can we re-invent ourselves as artists, researchers and activists, owning our identifications, rather than playing out a position scripted for us by the construct of whiteness?
• What is a brown/black research/work of art when not produced for the white gaze?

Research implementation and anticipated impact

In writing workshops, we work with collectivism, critical consciousness, radical hope, strength and resistance, cultural authenticity and self-knowledge in order to understand how we can promote these self-governing and self-care/radical healing concepts within our creative communities. The workshops both facilitate these understandings and share the methodologies so that they can be adapted for the creation of participants’ own safe FutureBlackSpaces.

Collaboration

Anna Adeniji – Educator, Consultant in Critical Diversity Work, PhD Gender Studies

Hanna Wallensteen – Licensed psychologist working mainly with norms, minority stress, racism and transnational adoptions in Sweden

Andrea Kronlund-Davis – Exhibitions Producer, Photographer

Ana Sanchez-Colberg – Choreographer, Pedagogue

Toubab Holmes – Circus artist, painter, musician, perfumer

Josette Bushell-Mingo – Head of Acting Department

Camilla Welton – fashion designer

Schedule

2020–2021

Additional links

Subcase: The Huddle

Image credit, top image: John-Paul Zaccarini, Overboard