Shared spaces festival

The Shared Spaces Festival continued from the success of the Shared Space Exhibition the previous year.

Shared Spaces brought Muslim, Jewish and many other Bristol communities together through art. It provided opportunities for artists from different communities, particularly Muslim and Jewish, to work and network together, forming and a collective of Shared Spaces artists who supported Salaam Shalom’s aims and values.

Visitors to the Shared Spaces Festival talked, learnt and created art themselves as part of of a programme of activities.

Salaam Shalom’s highly successful, 2015 Shared Space Art Exhibition led to Arts Council England funding for the two-and-a-half-month-long Arts Festival in spring and early summer of 2016. The Arts Council grant brought in additional financial support from Bristol’s Mayor’s Office.

Both the 2015 and the 2016 Shared Spaces art exhibitions included an accompanying programme of workshops, talks, film screenings, displays, dialogue events and performances.

In addition to a month long exhibition of art works by sixteen Muslim and Jewish artists selected from across the UK , Shared Spaces Festival comprised:

• a two month exhibition at Bristol Central Library of material drawn from the Bristol Archives showing the Muslim and Jewish contribution to the city in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
• a poetry and music event at the Central Library
• a cross-cultural community meal, sharing food and culture
• a record-your-community event in Barton Hill, part of a Bristol University community recording project
• films at the Watershed, depicting relationships forged between Muslims and Jews, each followed by a panel discussion
• a talk at Bristol Old Vic by a Southampton University lecturer on Chagall’s life in Vitebsk pre- and post-World War 1, to accompany the – by chance – performances by Kneehigh theatre company of “The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk”
• events of relevance to the theme of cross-cultural dialogue in the programme of Bristol Festival of Ideas.

 

Shared Spaces is an ongoing project and subject to funding. We hope to continue sustaining a relationship with all the artists we have worked with, and continue to expand the number of Artists involved.

If you would like to show your support of this project through making a donation, it would be gratefully received. Please visit salaamshalom.org.uk/supportus

The Artist Tom Berry and Poet Shagufta K collaborated on this stunning artwork, titled ‘Diaspora’ 42×49 cm High quality limited edition glicee prints are available for £65 and all proceeds are generously donated to Salaam Shalom. Email enquiries to [email protected]

Artists listed below have participated in Shared Spaces 2015 and/or 2016 Please do not publish any images without written consent of Salaam Shalom. Salaam Shalom may also need to seek permission from the Artist where the image is solely of the artwork. If you would like to make contact with the Artist through Salaam Shalom please email us at [email protected]