Recovery and renewal: creative approaches to the Covid crisis
How have cultural organisations responded and adapted to the Covid crisis? What new ways of working have emerged as a result?
The pandemic has forced the cultural sector to reassess, regroup and reimagine. With buildings closed, audiences at home and jobs on the line, cultural organisations have had to innovate, upskill and adapt in order to survive, and continue engaging audiences.
How successful have these new ways of working been? What challenges have organisations had to overcome, and what learnings can we take with us moving forward?
Join us for the second webinar from our major research programme examining the impact of Covid-19 on the cultural sector, we’ll be looking at examples of creative and inspiring approaches to the crisis. You’ll hear from project researchers John Wright, Karen Gray, Eva McAvoy, Harry Weeks and Danielle Child, who between them have interviewed cultural sector workers from over 50 different organisations across the UK.
You’ll also hear first-hand perspectives from two of our case-study participants including Liz Chege, film programmer, critic, curator, and director of Africa in Motion, as well as Julia Negus, award-winning artist-producer with Theatre Absolute, who will share how their organisations have adapted and innovated in the face of Covid-19.
The webinar will be chaired by Dr Abigail Gilmore.
This research programme is led by the Centre for Cultural Value in collaboration with the Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre and The Audience Agency. It is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) through UK Research and Innovation’s COVID-19 rapid rolling call.
This is the second of our webinars sharing emerging findings from the research. You can watch the first webinar, looking at inequalities, here. The research programme runs until November 2021 and there will be further events in November to share final findings.
Accessibility
We want to make the webinar a positive experience for all participants. If you have particular access needs please let us know in advance at ccv@leeds.ac.uk
Live transcription by a Palantypist (Speech to Text Reporter) is provided for this session. Transcription will be available on Zoom captions, and on StreamText.net.
If you will be using the transcription to access the session or have any other accessibility requirements, please let us know in the booking form in good time before the event date.
The session takes place on Zoom. Read Zoom’s accessibility FAQ’s here https://zoom.us/accessibility/faq
Speakers
Liz Chege
Liz Chege is a film programmer, critic and curator. She is a Berlinale Talent alumni and founding member of Come the Revolution, a collective of creatives and curators committed to exploring Black life, experience and cultural expression through cinema. She was programme producer of British Council’s “No Direct Flight” at British Film Institute’s Southbank, a cross-media exploration of global African diaspora moving-image makers that interrogated how the digital world has shaped culture and aesthetics. She has curated programmes for international festivals and worked as a freelance marketing specialist for filmmakers and distributors. Recently she was appointed festival director of Africa in Motion.
Julia Negus
Julia Negus is the Producer for Theatre Absolute, an award-winning theatre company in Coventry. After touring across the UK, she co-founded the Shop Front Theatre (SFT) in City Arcade in 2008 with Chris O’Connell (artistic director/writer for Theatre Absolute). The SFT is a theatre space housed in a disused fish and chip shop.
Julia is a member of Fri 13th which meets to amplify the voices of the Coventry’s independent artists and organisations. She sat on the City of Culture Steering Committee securing the title for Coventry for 2021. She is on the board of the WMCA Cultural Leadership Board.
Julia is also a visual artist, working primarily in textiles. Works include designing and creating the Godiva coat for Imagineer Productions (Coventry) for London 2012. In 2020 Julia was a guest speaker at the Textile Society of America regarding her work ‘The Visible Maker’ – a live craft performance using a 1919 treadle sewing machine and bespoke code.