Art Activisms

Still time to respond to our CFP - deadline 30 April Full details via our website link in bio Join: Crafting Conversations with Communities, a RAAD conference exploring the possibilities, challenges, and futures of art, craft and design practice

CFP Join: Crafting Conversations with Communities An invitation to participate in Join: Crafting Conversations with Communities, a RAAD conference exploring the possibilities, challenges, and futures of art, craft and design practice. Deadline for abstracts 30 April 2026, in-person conference 1 July 2026 in Birmingham. See full CFP for more details: /blog/cfp-join

We’re proud to share that Care & Defiance is now supported by the BCU @raadbcu research grant. Thanks to this support, printing costs for the exhibition will be fully covered, removing a key barrier and making participation more accessible for selected artists. Open Call deadline: 23 February Submit your work via the link in our bio. Design: @marta_kochanek #CareAndDefiance #LunaPhotoBirmingham #PhotographyOpenCall #WomenInPhotography #BCU #MidlandsArts

Co-Remembering Covid in Teams: Revisiting Art School Lockdown through Creative Co-production 📅 Wednesday 28 January ⏰ 2 - 3 pm 📍 Birmingham School of Art, G.01 Lisa Metherell and Cathy Wade discuss their ongoing collaboration to creatively unpack experiences of Covid lockdown as carers and lecturers in Higher Education in order to help understand where we are today. Open to the public and free. No booking required.

PhD researcher Fred Hubble will open his Viva Show “Phenology Out of Joint”, to the public this Thursday, come along to see his final research showcase! Thursday 8th January, from 5pm with celebrations at 6pm. There will be hot and cold drinks and some samosas too!

Fantastic event of sharing practice amongst our @womeninphotobham community tonight. Thank you to the BCU research cluster @artactivisms for hosting us @birmingham_school_of_art There was a mixture of introductions, sharing practice and work in progress updates. Birmingham has a rich diversity of women practitioners, and tonight listening and seeing that breadth of practice was special. Holding this safe space for the community to gather and lift each other up is integral to who we are. When we continually see the statistics of women being adversely affected not just in opportunities for work, but healthcare, maternity rights and our very physical safety we need this group now more than ever. It's been an honour of mine to see how this project has grown, and in this pivotal moment for the community I'm also honoured to say we now have a committee that is sharing the work to ensure we can sustain ourselves long term. For that a huge thank you goes to @rebeccamorleans @gamangari @maria_reaney @marta_kochanek @rachelsegalhamilton for bringing their leadership and commitment as we look to evolve as a grassroots community organisation. There will be more good news to come in the new year! For now a huge thank you to everyone that joined us tonight, shared work, listened and for all those that have participated in 2025 🙏🏽 esp our youngest new member Alice 😍 Jaskirt x

Exciting news incoming, we have confirmation of a WiPB exhibition next year (full details to be released in Jan) and in preparation for that we are collaborating with @artactivisms for the first time, who will be hosting our next gathering @birmingham_school_of_art 🗓️ Thurs 11 Dec 🕕 6 - 7.30pm 📍 Birmingham School of Art, Margaret Street, B3 3BX The Dec 2025 Social will be focused on sharing work in progress and ideas you would like to submit for the forthcoming open call and exhibition. Please bring a laptop, tablet or memory stick with your work, or physical work, prints or book with you to share. Please reply in the comments if you will be attending, and if you will be sharing work, ideas or listening. Best wishes Jaskirt

Tomorrow: ‘In Conversation’ with Bella Milroy, Khairani Barokka and Art Activisms at Birmingham School of Art ✨⁠ ⁠ 📍 Hybrid: Margaret Street, B3 3BX⁠ and online⁠ ⏰ 6 - 8pm⁠ 🎟 Free, booking essential⁠ ⁠ While our conversation with exhibiting artists Bella Milroy, Khairani Barokka and Art Activisms is just around the corner, we’d like to bring Khairani’s film work into full focus! 🎥⁠ ⁠ 📌 A series of four moving image works, shot in Jakarta, Indonesia, ‘Kerokan Pol’ is a playful way of saying ‘kerokan to the max’ in Indonesian.⁠ ⁠ The act referred to is a traditional Indonesian form of healing from cold and flu symptoms by taking a coin, and rubbing cajuput oil into someone’s back in stripes, until the marks redden (the redder, the more the person needed the intervention, or so we think). 🪙⁠ ⁠ 💘 These four short films, show the varietal contexts, messiness, communality, and different sonic volumes of intimacy in place, and culture-specific contexts, juxtaposing them with hypercapitalist settings and pressures.⁠ ⁠ 🔗 To find out more and book your free place, click the link in our bio.⁠ ⁠ 📸: David Rowan, 2025.⁠ ⁠ ‘Languages of Intimacy’ is generously supported by Arts Council England, Paul Hamlyn Art Fund, The Elephant Trust, Shape Arts and DASH.⁠ ⁠ @acegrams ⁠ @artactivisms ⁠ @bella.milroy ⁠ @birmingham_school_of_art ⁠ @dashdisabilityarts ⁠ @theelephanttrust ⁠ @mailbykite ⁠ @paulhamlynfoundation ⁠ @section_8 ⁠ @shapearts ⁠ ⁠ [Image description: A landscape photograph showing a series of four projected film works along a white-walled gallery. Each film is accompanied by a soft, linen armchair and a tall, wooden plinth which props up each projector. The wooden floorboards are well worn and textured, while the ceiling above holds large, hanging lamps and a suspended frame of spotlights.]

While our ‘In Conversation’ event with Bella Milroy, Khairani Barokka and Art Activisms commences next Wednesday, 19 November, we’d like to share a few works within ‘Languages of Intimacy’, our current exhibition at Birmingham School of Art. ⭐️⁠ ⁠ 🫧 ‘Popcorn Fur’ by Bella Milroy is a body of work exploring the debris of domestic life and the living beings the artist shares their home with.⁠ ⁠ Concerned with concepts of public and private spaces and how the sick-disabled body exists within them, these works consider the presence of softness, affection, love and devotion found in experiences which are often deemed disgusting or grotesque. 💘⁠ ⁠ ✨ Here, Bella poses the sick-disabled experience as a place of vast intimacy.⁠ ⁠ 🔗 To find out more about this event and book your free place, click the link in our bio.⁠ ⁠ 📸: David Rowan, 2025.⁠ ⁠ ‘Languages of Intimacy’ is generously supported by Arts Council England, Paul Hamlyn Art Fund, The Elephant Trust, Shape Arts and DASH.⁠ ⁠ @acegrams ⁠ @artactivisms ⁠ @bella.milroy ⁠ @birmingham_school_of_art ⁠ @dashdisabilityarts ⁠ @theelephanttrust ⁠ @mailbykite ⁠ @paulhamlynfoundation ⁠ @section_8 ⁠ @shapearts ⁠ ⁠ [Image description: A large scale, charcoal illustration duct taped against a tall, white partition wall. The illustration is softly spotlit using cool white light, in a gallery with well-worn wooden floor boards and sage green panelling. The image depicts an equine animal, likely a horse or donkey, as a soft and well-worn plush toy. Suspended in negative space, the plush looks jumbled up with limbs swaying, as though falling to the floor.]

💬 Languages of Intimacy: Bella Milroy and Khairani Barokka in conversation! 💬⁠ ⁠ 🗺️ Hybrid – Birmingham School of Art and Online ⁠ 🗓️ 19 November 2025⁠ ⏰ 6–8pm⁠ ⁠ Join us at Birmingham School of Art or online for an in-depth conversation with the artists of ‘Languages of Intimacy’, who will be talking about their process-oriented practices, the experience of creating the exhibition, and broader themes of intimacy, play, crip time and the messiness of institutional and non-institutional practice in relation to the disabled body and experience. The conversation will be followed by a Q&A. 🌟⁠ ⁠ This ‘In Conversation’ event is hosted by the Art Activisms research cluster at Birmingham School of Art and the Q&A portion will be hosted by students from Birmingham School of Art. 💖⁠ ⁠ Live captions for the event will be provided by 121 Captioning.💚⁠ ⁠ This event is free but booking is essential. Find out more and book your place at the link in our bio 🔗⁠ ⁠ 📸 Installation view of Bella Milroy’s ‘popcorn fur’, in Bella Milroy and Khairani Barokka, 'Languages of Intimacy', exhibition by Grand Union at Birmingham School of Art. Images by David Rowan, 2025.⁠ ⁠ 'Languages of Intimacy' is is generously supported by Arts Council England, Paul Hamlyn Art Fund, The Elephant Trust, Shape Arts and DASH.⁠ ⁠ @bella.milroy ⁠ @mailbykite ⁠ @birmingham_school_of_art ⁠ @artactivisms ⁠ @section_8 ⁠ @acegrams ⁠ @paulhamlynfoundation ⁠ @theelephanttrust ⁠ @shapearts ⁠ @dashdisabilityarts ⁠ ⁠ [image description - A landscape image of a gallery solace with warm wooden floors, white walls, and a lighting rig suspended from the ceiling. Within the space, modular exhibition walls hold artworks. One wall, to the left of the image, is positioned at a diagonal angle. On this wall is a large scale charcoal drawing of a stuffed dog toy in the shape of a carrot. It is attached to the wall with strips of thick black tape. On the far wall, a series of eight artworks are attached in a grid. The details of these works cannot be seen from this distance.]

The launch of ‘Languages of Intimacy’, by Bella Milroy and Khairani Barokka is just one week away! ⭐️⁠ ⁠ 📍 Birmingham School of Art, Margaret Street, B3 3BX⁠ 🗓 Thursday, 16 October 2025⁠ ⏰ 5 – 8pm⁠ ⁠ 💘 With exactly a week to go until the launch, we’re well into install prep and planning. It’s really exciting to start to see the show come together in this new (to us) space. ⁠ ⁠ Hosted by Birmingham School of Art, we will be working closely with the Art Activisms research cluster which asks how we define cultural practices and their relationship to activism as a form of political and social protest. With radical intimacy as the starting point between Bella and Khairani’s process the exhibition and expanded programme become an opportunity to explore what activism can look like in the context of the institution and the wider art sector. 🌀⁠ ⁠ Join us next Thursday from 5–8pm to celebrate the opening of ‘Languages of Intimacy’ by Bella Milroy and Khairani Barokka! 🥂⁠ ⁠ 🔗 To find out more about our work with Bella and Khairani ahead of our launch, click the link in our bio.⁠ ⁠ ‘Languages of Intimacy’ will take place alongside an expanded public programme in Autumn/Winter 2025 and is generously supported by Arts Council England, Paul Hamlyn Art Fund, The Elephant Trust, Shape Arts and DASH.⁠ ⁠ 📸 Image: Bella Milroy, “It Feels Like This”, Text on envelope, Commissioned as part of the Adam Reynolds Award for Shape Arts, 2023.⁠ ⁠ @bella.milroy ⁠ @mailbykite ⁠ @birmingham_school_of_art ⁠ @artactivisms ⁠ ⁠ [Image description - A digital photographic scanned image (landscape, colour) of what looks like the front of a brown envelope. It is torn open, with an address printed along the tear. It reads “If undelivered please return to DWP, PO Box, Belfast. BT1 1DW”. It is presented in portrait, with the torn opening running down the left. Taking up the majority of the envelope is a scrawl of hand written text in block capitals in black marker pen that reads, “Awoken by the loss of warmth, Mourning tenderness & touch, Exhausted by the cost, We are a body, grieving; Aching for enough, Dreaming of rest, Imagining a future that shines”.]

Congratulations @jo_gane1 on your beautiful exhibition culminating 4 years of your PhD work at @birmingham_school_of_art The exhibition is open to the public, and includes lots of analogue photographic processes, storytelling and material culture. The hanging of differing works is sensitively curated and gives each work space to breathe. Even in a packed room it was gorgeous to go through each work. I loved the portraits and text, with the customised moving light table, created by @mjmbespoke as well as the river flowing photograms. The exhibition will be open @birmingham_school_of_art until 18 Sept, weekdays only (mon-fri) 10am - 2pm. Magnificent work Jo, congrats again 👏🏽 Jaskirt xx