In this episode, Disruption Network Lab speak about community engagement, collective learning and creative mentoring, with speakers connected to UK-based art charity Lighthouse and Landmark/Bergen Kunsthall from Norway, two organisations that Disruption Network Lab have been working together with since 2019 in the Re-Imagine Europe project. As part of this project, ten different cultural organisations have been working on new ways to open up and invite their audience in as participants, producers, co-curators or protagonists, to build and expand networks with new and existing communities. In this edition we will hear more on two inspiring examples.

Lighthouse (UK) is a Brighton-based arts charity, providing an accessible programme of talks, exhibitions, commissions, professional development and education initiatives, which aims to connect new developments in art, technology and society. Their Lighthouse Young Creatives programme is an acclaimed mentoring scheme assisting young people to pursue careers in the creative industries.

Erin James (Erin James Media, UK)  shares more on how she has kick-started her career through the Young Creative programme in 2020. During the last year, while working from home, she has launched a small business, become a host for Brighton’s first next-gen Breakfast Show, and started a collaboration with a local art gallery.

“It has been a challenging and difficult time to be juggling so much, but I am grateful for the busyness. With this talk, I want to explore what it means to be creating and working during such a difficult time, and how art can be used as activism in a time where it’s needed more than ever. How can we disrupt the toxic system in which we live in, and uplift ourselves and others around us to challenge and change the world around us?”

Scott Elliott is joining from the Bergen Kunsthall (NO) centre for contemporary art. Bergen Kunsthall organises a broad range of learning activities and debates that are open to everyone. Landmark is their vibrant strand of live events that includes concerts and club nights. Scott presents the newly commissioned work of Nikima Jagudajev, entitled ‘Basically’ that is currently occupying Bergen Kunsthall’s gallery V space. The work, created together with numerous collaborators, invites visitors to experience the process of choreographing, rehearsing, discussing and staging the movement-based work as a way to share the moments of collective learning and making that lie at the heart of the work.

Jagudajev’s practice is concerned with the format of gatherings. Her works engage participants and audiences in open-ended situations which collectively make up space and deviate. Projects include formal dance sequences, but also food, divination, sorcery, music, clothing, and sound. These elements work as informal invitations to engage in different ways, shifting attention or offering agency. Her spaces propose strangeness and are interested in the voids of representation, in what is often left out from what is considered culturally valuable or desirable.

Photo Courtesy of the organisation