Childhood & Public Housing is a one-day symposium and platform for discussion around architecture, legacy, and memories associated with childhood and public housing. The symposium responds to the work of artist, activist and filmmaker Andrea Luka Zimmerman – affording a focus on regional experiences of public housing in the UK alongside international perspectives. This is an interdisciplinary event bringing together expertise in archaeology, cinema, architecture, design, sociology and criminology. These multiple perspectives allow us to consider the social benefits of local cosmopolitanism, play and equality that are ideal affordances of public housing, as well as the disadvantages when homes are badly maintained, sometimes dangerously so, or are in other ways inappropriate for residents building childhoods for themselves and their families.
The day consists of a keynote talk by Venu Dhupa from Community Links, short presentations in the format of three panel discussions and a screening of Lazeez Raimi’s short film An Englishman’s Stead (2019) with the artist attending to discuss his work during a Q&A session. Audience engagement through open discussion and debate is encouraged throughout.
Childhood and Public Housing is a Mansions of the Future event developed and delivered in collaboration with the Justice, Arts and Migration project: There’s No Place Like Home. The symposium forms part of Mansions of the Future’s Urban Form: Social Architecture & The Commons season – a four month programme of activity which intends to engage artists, architects, academics and local citizens in conversation and debate around the past, present and future of Lincoln’s social and civic life, within the context of the local built environment.
In Lincoln film-maker Andrea Luka Zimmerman will deliver an artist talk and present a screening and Q&A on 4 February and 7 February respectively. Her film Here For Life marks the culmination of a long collaboration between Andrea and theatre-maker Adrian Jackson – a troupe of Londoners and a dog. All have lives shaped by loss and love, trauma and bravery, struggle and resistance. They grapple with a system stacked against them. They dance, steal and eat together; agree and disagree, celebrate their differences and share their talents.
A full list of speakers and schedule for the day will be available from the end of January.
Lunch will be provided. For further event information or to inform us of dietary requirements contact info@mansionsofthefuture.org.
Symposium Schedule :
10:00 – 10:10am: Introduction by Stephi Hemelryk Donald
10:10 – 10:20am: Poetry reading by Tommy Sissons
10:20 – 11:20am: Panel One – ‘Play, Performance & Archaeology’ with Ananda Breed, Trevor Elvin & Carenza Lewis, chaired by Kaya Davies Hayon
11:20 – 11:35am: Break
11:35 – 12:10pm: Panel Two – ‘Social Housing, Places & Spaces & an Acknowledgement of Life Itself’ with Sue Bond Taylor & Ian Waites, chaired by Bhav Bhella
12:15 – 1:15pm: Keynote – ‘The Newham Experience: Social Housing & Child Poverty’ with Venu Dhupa & colleagues. Discussion chaired by Trevor Elvin
1:15 – 2:15pm: Lunch provided for speakers & attendees
2:15 – 2:30pm: Poetry reading by Tommy Sissons
2:30 – 3:15pm: Screenings of ‘An Englishman’s Stead’ by Lazeez Raimi & Canning Town by Michelle Walsh in collaboration with Community Links. Introductions & Q&A led by Michelle Walsh
3:15 – 4:00pm: Final Panel with Venu Dhupa, Stephi Hemelryk Donald, Tommy Sissons, Kaya Davies Hayon & Ananda Breed, chaired by Carenza Lewis
END
Speaker Biographies:
Venu Dhupa is the Director at Community Links a social action charity based in Newham which runs programmes and services underpinned by key policy themes. She has held several Senior Executive Roles in the Public Sector, including 3 at Non Departmental Public Bodies. She has held two senior roles in UK Charities, as CEO at the Nottingham Theatres Trust, with responsibility for over 100 staff and 200 volunteers and as Senior Director of Programmes at Stonewall. She has raised nearly £16million in additional or funds for the organisations in which she has held senior roles. She also runs her own business in Cultural Policy and Workforce Development.
Venu holds a Visiting Professorship at Nottingham Trent University, an External Examiner role at the Open University and is Co-Editor of the International Journal for Creativity and Human Development Home – Creativity & Human Development She is a Non-Executive Director of Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce and a Member of the European Cultural Parliament.
Stephi Hemelryk Donald is an academic specialising in film, China, migration studies, and creative industries. She has worked most of her career in Australia but joined University of Lincoln as distinguished professor in 2018. She takes most pleasure in working with other people in creating pathways to social change and mutual understanding. She has collaborated with children with lived experience of refugee journeys and migration in China, London and Australia, working with them to create films that showcase their talents and their perceptive understanding of home-making. Her publications include There’s No Place Like Home: The Migrant Child in World Cinema (2018); (eds) Childhood and Nation in World Cinema: Borders and Encounters (2017); (eds) Inert Cities: Globalization, Mobility and Suspension in Visual Culture (2014); and ‘Refugee Film-making’, Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media (2019).
Stephi’s current research is focussed on the There’s No Place Like Home project for the Justice Arts and Migration Network. In 2016-2017 she collaborated with Omid Tofighian and Behrouz Boochani to include stories from Manus Island at the Refuge Alternatives conference in Sydney, and at the Sydney Film Festival. In 2019 she worked with Mansions of the Future (April) to bring Remain by Hoda Afshar for the first time to the UK. This event also featured the first Skype interview with Boochani in England and a presentation by Omid Tofighian.
Dr Sue Bond-Taylor is Senior Lecturer in the School of Social & Political Sciences at the University of Lincoln, where she contributes to the Criminology, Social Policy and Sociology degree programmes. She is a passionate advocate for the child friendly city model, which promote children’s rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Sue chairs the Steering Group for the Children of Lincolnshire initiative, which aims to develop Lincoln and the wider county as a child friendly community.
Sue’s research explores the connections between social care provision, crime prevention and youth justice. In particular, Sue’s PhD in Social Policy evaluated the use of family intervention services in supporting families with complex needs, in the context of the UK’s controversial Troubled Families Programme. Since then, she has developed an interest in how early help approaches can be used to support young people in conflict with the criminal justice system, as well as exploring the potential of community-based strategies for improving the opportunities, wellbeing and outcomes for vulnerable children and young people. Her research is underpinned by feminist theory, with an emphasis on intersectionality and the ethics of care.
Professor Ananda Breed is author of Performing the Nation: Genocide, Justice, Reconciliation (Seagull Books, 2014) and co-editor of Performance and Civic Engagement (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) in addition to several publications that address transitional systems of governance and the arts. She has worked as a consultant for IREX and UNICEF in Kyrgyzstan on issues concerning conflict prevention and conducted applied arts workshops in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Indonesia, Japan, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Palestine, Rwanda and Turkey. Breed is Professor in Theatre at University of Lincoln. Prior to this, she was the Co-director of the Centre for Performing Arts Development (CPAD) at the University of East London (2014-2017) and former research fellow at the International Research Centre Interweaving Performance Cultures at Freie University (2013-2014).
Ananda is Principal Investigator (PI) of AHRC Ubwuzu: Shaping the Rwandan National Curriculum through Arts (2019-20), PI of GCRF Development Award: Mobile Arts for Peace (2019-20), and Co-I of AHRC GCRF Network Plus Changing the Story: Building Inclusive Civil Societies with, and for, Young People in 5 Post-Conflict countries. Breed uses arts-based methods to explore the adaptation of cultural forms for dialogic purposes. The Ubwuzu (joy) project has developed curricula to address the stated need for resources related to the subject of Music, Dance and Drama through cultural workshops, training of trainers, youth camps and in-school and out-of-school clubs in Rwanda.
Kaya Davies Hayon is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the College of Arts at the University of Lincoln. She works alongside research director, Professor Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, to conduct research into migration and film, to run and manage the Justice, Arts and Migration Network (JAM), and to develop arts-based creative initiatives that bridge academic and cultural sectors. Kaya’s research focuses, broadly, on the intersections of gender, sexuality and ethnicity in contemporary Maghrebi film and visual culture. She is also interested in and has published on exilic and diasporic film, queer Arab cinema, and gender and feminism in Arab women’s film.
Michelle Walsh is a Lecturer in Photography and Programme Leader of a new MA in Photography, Development and Social Transformation at the University of Lincoln. Her practice involves using participatory photography methodologies to enable migrants and other marginalized groups in the UK to share the stories that matter to them.
Tommy Sissons (@tommy_sissons) is an award-winning poet, political writer, lyricist and educator. He is currently writing a book about white working class masculinity for Repeater Books, and is the literary editor of GRASS Magazine. Sissons has toured his performance poetry across Europe and worked as the poet-in-residence of Channel 4’s TV series ‘Four to the Floor’. Other clients have included BBC Radio 1, Red Bull, VICE Magazine, Farah, the Imperial War Museum, the National Trust and the Guardian. Sissons’ poetry has been studied at the University of Trier in Germany and he has given lectures about widening participation in education and the creative industries at a number of academic institutions. His debut poetry collection, ‘Goodnight Son’, was published by Burning Eye Books in 2016 and his debut album, ‘We Were All Mud and Halos’, was released via QM Records in 2018.
“His poems are drive-by shootings straight to the soul” – Joelle Taylor
“A one-man revolution” – Tom Charles Sayer
Lazeez Raimi is an artist-filmmaker and graduate of Chelsea College of Art (2016) and London College of Communication (2015). He works across image and sound, exploring topical and historical phenomena autobiographically. Homelessness in the city is ever present in his work, raising greater questions about the relationship between state and citizen. Lazeez has exhibited with artist-led collectives The Bomb Factory Art Foundation and sorryyoufeeluncomfortable and is a recipient of the Stanley Picker Trust Bursary (2015).
An Englishman’s Stead (Raimi, 2019) is a new short film by Raimi. It shows Lazeez and and his dad going to watch Nigeria vs England at Wembley last year (2019). Before the journey, Raimi intercut found footage, childhood photos and images from my first ever film project about his childhood home in public housing in London. The film touches on urban regeneration / gentrification and contrasts it with homelessness. An objective of the film’s style is to demonstrate the speed at which changes and challenges to being ‘at home’ have occurred in this decade. The film ends by revisiting the site of Lazeez’ childhood home, which has been knocked down for ‘affordable housing’.
@lazeezraimi
Ian Waites is a senior lecturer in the School of Design at the University of Lincoln. He studied History of Art and Design at Leicester Polytechnic, and he has taught in various schools of Art, Architecture, and Design at Lincoln since 1995. His PhD Unbounded Freedom: The Art and Aesthetics of the Common Field Landscape, c.1700-1850’ (2007) was published as Common Land in English Painting, 1700–1850 (Boydell Press, 2013). He currently teaches on the MA programmes in English Studies, Historical Studies, and C19 Studies, and directs the critical and cultural studies modules for the BA (Hons) Graphic Design programme.
Ian’s current research explores the landscapes, histories, dreams and memories of the postwar English council estate. His writing and photography documents this world, and his reminiscences of his childhood on a 1960s estate in Lincolnshire. Today, these estates are commonly viewed as problematic and unattractive places but this research presents a more nuanced perspective by demonstrating that they were carefully and thoughtfully planned, with rich and meaningful histories. His most recent publication on this is ‘One big playground for kids’: a contextual appraisal of some 1970s photographs of children hanging out on a post-World War Two British council estate, in the journal Childhood in the Past (2018).
Bhav Bhella is the Assistant Producer at Mansions of the Future and graduate of Goldsmiths University in Curating (2019). He works predominantly in organising public talks, events and programming art exhibitions/installations with particular interests in topics of personal histories, social class and labour. He was a member of the curatorial team that organised the LOUD BODIES series of events at the Goldsmiths CCA which focused on performance, feminised labour and gig economies. Most recently he has produced and delivered the Social Housing and Sustainable Futures series for Mansions of the Future in collaboration with the Lincoln School of Architecture. This consisted of a lecture, workshop and panel discussion led by Historians, Architects and a Design Collective.
Trevor Elvin is a design practitioner and academic with extensive experience within industry and the creative fields, using the design studio environment as a research laboratory for testing and building ideas. Trevor`s objective is to engage in the transformation of public place through built projects, exhibitions, research, and writing. His practice promotes external collaborations through the use of live projects. This has resulted in lasting professional relationships and community consultation at a local, national and international level. He is founder and director of Groundlab, University of Lincoln – www.groundlab.co.uk, the University’s community design studio. The project developed in collaboration with the city of Lincoln Council for the Sincil Bank community works with residents’ groups and other stakeholders on a range of projects with a focus on public engagement, place making and ownership of public space.
Trevor is a practitioner and researcher with a cross disciplinary approach to research and enterprise with over fifteen-year experience within industry. Expertise in community enabled development, place making, Immersive Learning, Urban renewal, Arts, Civic Design. Awards include: Roof structure at Zurich International Airport – completion short listed – ZRH/LSZH; Leeds Royal Armoury Entrance design – completion short listed design – RIBA; Contemporary Art at Packwood [follies] – completion short listed – National trust; Gallery/studio space, Greestone [UL Architects] – short listed – RIBA EM Awards; Creative industries, Sparkhouse [UL architects] – short listed – RIBA EM Awards.
Professor Carenza Lewis is an archaeologist and Professor for the Public Understanding of Research at the University of Lincoln, where she teaches medieval archaeology and history in the School of History and Heritage and leads across the university on public engagement with research. She is strongly committed to enhancing educational, economic and social well-being through active participation in archaeology and heritage, and has carried out archaeological fieldwork and excavation on many sites across the UK, directed numerous community heritage projects and appeared widely on TV and radio. She is vice-chair of Trustees for the Council for British Archaeology and formerly President of the Society of Medieval Archaeology and founder and first Chair of the Society for the Study of Childhood in the Past.
Carenza’s research interests include medieval archaeology and history, rural settlements and landscapes, the archaeology of children and childhood, widening participation in higher education and public and community heritage. She currently leads Community Archaeology in Rural Environments Meeting Societal Challenges (EU Horizon 2020/AHRC) (2019-22) which is exploring the social impact of community archaeology in the UK, Netherlands, Czech Republic and Poland. This builds on her work from 2004-15 at the University of Cambridge which involved more than 12,000 people in local heritage projects, including 7,000+ young people participating in the Higher Education Field Academy scheme boosting skills and aspirations for higher education amongst disadvantaged teenagers. In 2016-18 she led Unearthing Middlefield’s Utopia (AHRC) which involved residents of all ages in archaeological excavations on the Gainsborough council estate where they lived, unearthing new evidence showing how twentieth century children used its open spaces which challenges established ideas about the decline of social housing estates.