A cross-cultural creative response to pandemic
REPORTS ON A GROUND-BREAKING ARTS PROJECT
THE Transforming Narratives project was launched in Birmingham in March 2019 to promote collaboration between artists based in the city and in Bangladesh and Pakistan.
And for its first year, the programme funded artists travelling across the three destinations to explore ideas and create new work. Then Covid-19 struck, putting future plans in jeopardy.
Unable to bring artists and creators together in person because of the pandemic, the Transforming Narratives team went online, launching an ambitious new digital collaboration scheme which has seen more than 100 artists working across 17 projects.
And the results have included film, music, dance, spoken word, crafts, visual arts, podcasts, photography and debates – bringing together international creativity in a way the programme could never have imagined.
Now the team have created a new short film showcasing the digital projects and taking viewers into studios, villages and outdoor spaces as far afield as Lahore, Dhaka and Birmingham.
Transforming Narratives project director Sophina Jagot says the team realised they were facing an immense challenge with the pandemic but were determined to continue to support artists.
“From the beginning, the vision for Transforming Narratives was about creative and cultural exchange between Birmingham and cities in Pakistan and Bangladesh for the mutual benefit of all three places and we had been doing that through various projects,” she says. “We were about a week away from going live with the open call for the final part of the programme when Covid hit.
“With the pandemic, we were very aware that it was a really difficult time for artists and creatives in all three countries and we really wanted to spread a bit of hope and provide a space for expression.
“We talked to our funders and steering board and got agreement to repurpose some of the budget to trial digital collaborative grants. We would still be funding artistic work and it still had to follow the same principles of Transforming Narratives, in being a collaboration between at least two of the three countries and multi art form, but it
would now be digital.”
The team allocated £75,000 towards the grants and put out a call for project applications – and were inundated. They selected 17 projects, all of which brought together artists from at least two of the respective countries but with many featuring participants from all three.
“We wanted to see a variety of art forms and we had literature, painting, theatre, film, spoken word, creating soundscapes and many more,” Sophina continues.
Each work was a specific response to the pandemic, says project co-ordinator Nushin Hussain.
“For example, ANGON was a vodcast with the lead advocate from Bangladesh and with speakers from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Birmingham and the conversations which took place were amazing
and so insightful.
“Another project was I Don’t Know You, You Don’t Know Me, with Shehzad Chowdhury as the lead advocate in Bangladesh and Mahtab Hussain from Birmingham. They had never met before and they got to know each other through Instagram where on a weekly basis they set a theme and responded to each other through a digital letter and a creative artwork. It was really thought-provoking and gave them a chance to explore each other’s cultures and reflect on life.
“Baasi News looked at newspapers from the pandemic but they were being repurposed, so in the cultures of Pakistan and Bangladesh they use newspapers for a second purpose such as wrapping up food, and the artists were looking at how the pandemic therefore became stale news.
One of the projects, CollaborArtists
brought together eight artists from Birmingham, Bangladesh and Pakistan in creating a single artwork. It was produced by Birmingham-based Amrit Singh, whose multicoloured artworks created under the name MrASingh, have been exhibited across the country.
For Amrit, the project was a new direction.
“I’ve always wanted to do a collaborative project and the idea of working with artists across the world was a real opportunity. We focused around the word isolation – asking our artists the question ‘what does isolation mean to you?’”
“I sent each artist a random line but they had no idea what the line represented. The only expectation was they had to make that line stand out, whatever they created. We had different artists – watercolour, charcoal, mixed media.”
Amrit’s seemingly random lines joined to create an image, bringing all of these distanced artists together.
“I didn’t tell them until right at the final showcase event when we put it all together and then they realised and the reaction was fantastic, seeing all their styles linking together.”
As a filmmaker, Amrit had also mentored each of the artists in recording their process and he then brought all of their individual clips together into a single film.
Amrit says the project has been a real eye-opener.
“For me, the two words which sum up this project are opportunity and triumph. The biggest thing I have learnt is that the world is very small now, there is no reason we can’t commission artists from around the world.”
Amrit is also creating the showcase film for the entire digital collaboration programme, featuring each of the 17 projects.
“You can’t tell the entire story of each project but it’s highlighting each one so the viewer can see who was involved and what they were doing and they can then go and view them in more detail on the Transforming Narratives website.”
The team are now working towards a festival in 2022. Whether that will be in person or digital is still undecided.