Overview
This panel discussion will offer reflections and ideas for cultural activities and creative production in the countryside, chaired by writer Nathalie Olah with contributions from Joanne, artist and Director of Lens Think; Menelaos Gkartzios, Reader in Planning & Rural Development at Newcastle University; and Giulia Gregnanin, Director of Timespan in Helmsdale, Scotland.
The discussion will last up to 90 minutes, afterwards attendees will be invited to play a traditional game of Quoits and sample food from Joanne’s local area.
Attendees will also be given a handout of The Countryside Code, offering considerations for cultural workers in the countryside and space to add their own ideas and reflections.
Free to join, book now.
About The Lie of the Land
Joanne Coates’s The Lie of the Land is a body of work that explores the social history of the land and narrates a story of gender and class that has long been forgotten – or simply never told – in relation to the countryside of the North East of England. For this commission, she collaborated with twelve women who identify as working class, living and working in rural or agricultural settings, to develop a series of portraits that represent their individual lived experiences.
About the chair
Nathalie Olah is a writer and critic whose work considers the commoditisation of cultural disciplines and the future of creativity. She is the author of Steal As Much As You Can (Repeater, 2019) and Look Again: Class (Tate Publishing, 2021). She lives and works in London. @nrolah @nathalieolah
About the panel
Joanne Coates is a working-class photographer. Born and based in North Yorkshire, she works across the North East of England. Joanne explores rurality, social histories of class, and inequalities relating to low income through photography, installations, and audio. She was first educated in working-class communities, and then at London College of Communication BA (Hons) Photography. Joanne’s work has been exhibited in the UK and internationally including at The Royal Albert Hall, Reveal-T Photography Festival, Cork Photo Festival and Somerset House. In 2012, she was awarded a Metro Imaging Portfolio Prize, a Magnum Portfolio Review and The Ideastap innovators award. In 2016 she was awarded the Magenta Flash Forward Top 30 emerging talent in the UK and in 2017 she was one of the artists working in Hull for the UK City of Culture. joannecoates.co.uk
Menelaos Gkartzios is Professor of Planning at the Izmir Institute of Technology in Turkey and Reader in Planning & Rural Development at Newcastle University. He works on rural mobilities and social change, the theory and practice of rural development and artistic practice in the countryside. He has also worked as Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo twice, and he is Associate Editor of the international journal Habitat International. Recent books include Rural Places and Planning (Policy Press, 2022) and Routledge Companion to Rural Planning (Routledge, 2019). @gkrtzs
Giulia Gregnanin is a Curator, Researcher and Writer raised in the Republic of San Marino and based in Helmsdale,UK. She is the Director and Curator of Timespan, a cultural institution committed to diagnosing and responding to urgent contemporary issues rooted in the context of remote Scotland. She is part of Il Colorificio, Milan, curatorial collective aimed at exploring visual and performative practices through political and communal perspectives. From 2018 to 2021, she has been Co-Curator of 19th Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean. In 2019 she co-funded Understate Project, a visual art organisation devoted to transfeminist studies and theories in Glasgow. She was one of the recipients of BAGLIORE, residency for Italian writers. She served as editor of Flash Art; her texts have been published on Flash Art, Mousse, CURA., Extra Extra. timespan.org.uk
Format
This discussion will last up to 90 minutes, afterwards attendees will be invited to play a traditional game of Quoits and sample food from Joanne’s local area.
Attendees will also be given a handout The Countryside Code, offering considerations for cultural workers in the countryside and space to share their own.
Capacity for this free event is limited, book now.
This event will be recorded and made available online afterwards.
Access
We want to make sure that our events programme is welcoming and accessible.
Please contact us if you would like to discuss how we can support you to attend and enjoy this event or if you have any feedback on the accessibility of our work.
You can contact us via email at [email protected] or telephone +44(0)7944 903 991.
