Hosted at Tramshed in the heart of Woolwich in South East London, the talks play host to six inspirational artists across the series. They’ll discuss their work, as well as consider the different ways to enact change in the world around us, in discussions chaired by Rose Bruford College students.
Activating Change: Open Talks are free to attend, and tickets can be booked via the links below.
The full line up is as follows:
Thursday 19 October, 7pm: Livia Kojo Alour
Livia Kojo Alour is an award-winning Nigerian, German-born poet, musician and theatre maker based in London. Her solo show Black Sheep rose to critical acclaim at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2022, and is touring the UK this autumn. Livia is the author of Rising of the Black Sheep, a daring memoir-style poetry collection that was recently long listed for the Polari First Book Prize 2023. She also has a ten-year touring career as sword swallower under her belt, and has performed many residencies in New York, London, Tokyo, Berlin and Las Vegas. Her minimalist art piece The Female Sword Swallower’s Moon Calendar is touring museums across Europe.
Find Livia Kojo Alour on Instagram: @poetrywithlivia
Thursday 26 October, 7pm: Cassie Leon
Cassie Leon is a theatre and cabaret producer whose practice centres on ensuring the representation, inclusion, and participation of marginalised people within arts and culture. She is interested in creating viable and sustainable opportunities, facilitating creative action, and developing culturally rich experiences through live performance and documentation.
Find Cassie Leon on Instagram: @cas_phoenix
Thursday 30 November, 7pm: Duckie
Duckie are a group of veteran LGBTQ club runners that emerged out of the wasteland of south London’s Vauxhall running their Saturday performance club every week for over 28 years. Led by Simon & Dicky, the Batman & Robin of the queer performing art world who produce the shows, are the executive and make everything work. In the twenty-tens, Duckie broadened its reach and began to develop new models of community theatre that targeted an audience outside of its core LGBTQ base. Specialising in popular forms arts and variety for working class subcultures, it produces a programme of socially engaged clubs that generate a healthy arts and cultural scene for communities outside of the mainstream, or on the so-called ‘margins’ including The Posh Club, The Slaughterhouse Club, Snowflake, PC☆DC and QTIBPOC Creatives.
Find Duckie on Instagram: @duckievauxhall
Thursday 7 December, 7pm: Krishna Istha
Krishna Istha is a performance artist, theatre-maker, comedian and screenwriter. They create socially conscious, form-pushing works about taboo or underrepresented experiences of gender, race and sexual politics. Currently, they write on Netflix’s Sex Education and are a recipient of the Netflix Documentary Talent Fund. More recently, they were a Barbican Centre Open Lab artist (2021-22) and an Arts Admin Bursary Artist (2020-21).
Find Krishna Istha on Instagram: @krishnaistha
Thursday 11 January, 7pm: Martin O’Brien
Martin O’Brien is an artist and zombie. He works across performance, writing and video art. His work uses long durational actions, short speculative texts and critical rants, and performance processes in order to explore death and dying, what it means to be born with a life shortening disease, and the philosophical implications of living longer than expected.
Find Martin O’Brien on Instagram: @martinobrienart
Booking information:
Venue: Tramshed, 51-53 Woolwich New Road, London, SE18 6ES:
Tickets: Free, but should be booked in advance via the links above.
Running time: Each talk will be 90 mins, running from 7pm till 8.30pm.
For ages 16+.
Access information:
This series of talks will take place at Tramshed which is fully wheelchair accessible, with accessible toilets near to the auditorium.
The talks will take place in a relaxed environment, this means the space and audience will allow for noise and movement, as well as leaving and re-entering the auditorium.
A BSL interpreter can be available upon request. Please contact [email protected], if there are access needs we can support with, or if you require an access pack.
Photos by: Christa Holka, Roxene Anderson, Manuel Vason, Cassie Leon and Yannick Lalardy.