Animating Archives Workshop 4: Creative Captioning in the Archive

Saturday 25th June 2022, 14:00-16:00
198 Contemporary Arts and Learning, 198 Railton Road, SE24 0JT
Presentation online and in-person / workshop in-person only

Access Information: Presentation (and workshop tbc) will be live-captioned. There will be a 10 minute break halfway through the event.

In person, with an option to access presentation online. In-person workshop numbers will be limited and booking is essential.

We are pleased to share the details and open bookings for our fourth workshop entitled Creative Captioning in the Archive. This session aims to introduce PhD researchers and others to a range of creative approaches to captioning, exploring what this can bring to working with art and activist archives, with guidance from The Art of Captioning research group co-leads Hannah Wallis and Sarah Hayden.

The Art of Captioning is a British Art Network research group that brings together artists, curators, researchers, activists and access workers to address the state of captioning and access awareness in British Art. Hannah Wallis and Sarah Hayden will begin the workshop by delivering a presentation about The Art of Captioning’s ongoing work on access as ethos, which will be available for participants to join remotely as well as in-person at 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning. This will then be followed by an in-person practical workshop on access-thinking in archives, with the opportunity for participants to work directly with materials held in collection of the Women’s Art Library and 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning.

This workshop is open to all, although aimed in particular at PhD researchers who are working creatively and politically with archival material. Spaces are limited, please register via Eventbrite. We encourage participants to take a lateral flow test before attending and to observe guidelines on face covering and social distancing. Any questions can be sent to Beth Bramich (bbram001@gold.ac.uk) or Hatty Nestor (knesto01@mail.bbk.ac.uk).

FURTHER INFORMATION:

Animating Archives is a research project inspired by the diversity of creative research based in the Women’s Art Library collection held in the Special Collections, Goldsmiths, University of London and the Jo Spence Memorial Library Archive at Birkbeck, University of London.

The Art of Captioning is a research group co-led by Hannah Wallis (Artist and Curator; Assistant Curator, Wysing Arts Centre) and Sarah Hayden (Associate Professor in Literature and Culture, University of Southampton, AHRC Innovation Fellow: Voices in the Gallery) that explores what creative captioning can bring to art while advancing vital work around access, equality and inclusivity in the sector. The aim of the research group is to bring together artists, curators, researchers, activists and access workers to address the state of captioning and access awareness in British Art, and builds on Wallis and Hayden’s previous programme, Caption-Conscious Ecology, at Nottingham Contemporary in 2021.

198 Contemporary Arts and Learning is a centre for visual arts, education and creative enterprise. Their work is framed by their local communities and the history of the Brixton uprisings; informed by a policy context that calls for greater action on equality, and shaped by unfulfilled demand for diverse visual arts and new pathways to creative careers.

The Women's Art Library began as the Women Artists Slide Library, an artists' initiative that developed into an arts organization publishing catalogues and books as well as a magazine from early 1983 to 2002. WAL collected slides, ephemera and other art documentation from artists and actively documented exhibitions and historical collections to offer a public space to view and experience women's art. As part of Goldsmiths Library Special Collections and Archives, the Women's Art Library continues to collect, with

thousands of artists from around the world are represented in some form in this collection.

This workshop is generously funded by CHASE Doctoral Partnership.

Image credit: Poster for the Women Artists Slide Library. Courtesy of the Women's Art Library.