A huge thank you to everyone who applied to our small projects fund, we would like to announce the following awards, some really exciting projects in the year ahead!
Fabrik Runway Shows and Events
Yazz Bhandari, Georgina Martin & Victoria Gill, University of Sussex
Fabrik are a start-up fashion magazine at Sussex looking to tackle feminist issues in their photoshoots, challenging the male gaze, censorship of bodies, and reversing archaic notions within the fashion industry. They have journalists who are attending fashion art exhibitions and journalists who will be writing about feminist literature for the magazine. The magazine involves historical research and representation on feminism, role reversal, literary research, which our journalists will write innovative articles for our website. The message behind their magazine is “Reclaim. Redefine. Empower.” This small project grant will contribute towards their second runway show which addresses themes from black history month and transgender awareness.
https://www.facebook.com/fabriksussex/
The Coming of the Fairies
Alice Sage, Goldsmiths
December 2020 is one hundred years since the publication of the Cottingley Fairy Photographs – the original viral selfie of two girls surrounded by fairies. The story of the so-called ‘little girls’ and their power of image-making has been overshadowed by the involvement of patriarchal establishment figures including Arthur Conan Doyle and his followers. To mark the anniversary this project will work with a group of girls aged 9 to 18 to produce self-portraits in response to the themes of image-making and image-faking. The Cottingley episode is a starting point for discussions about self-representation, public images, rights and agency. By including the creative work of girls the same age as Elsie and Frances, this exhibition aims to shift the focus of the centenary celebration back to the real authors of the photographs.
Feminism and technology Conference: depth psychology and the female self
Leslie Gardner, University of Essex in partnership with Catriona Miller, Glasgow Caledonian University and Roula Maria Dib, American University in Dubai
A conference exploring how embodied life for the female body is compromised by the ways and means of giving birth, raising children, displaying and living out identities, and gender. The conference, taking place in July 2020, wants to explore this in ways that include social media, fictional and dystopian future ways of living too within oppressed and colonised communications, and in difficult terrains. The conference aims to provide a good meeting point for newer clinicians to meet experienced clinicians ones. There will be a focus on women suffering dislocation with a featured speaker who is an analyst focusing on refugee women and another was a former parole officer and who will be focusing on texting issues for female users: bullying and abuses in her talks.
https://feminismandtechnology.wordpress.com
(In)Visible Spaces of Resistance: Queering Diasporic belonging in London
Shreeta Lakhani, SOAS
This Project aims to create a space for people of colour to discuss the gendered and racialised effects of belonging in London through a one-day conference for 50 individuals at SOAS university. The conference will be designed to bring together academics; activists and artists of colour to create a space through conversations on the effects of the practise of creating alternative spaces to belong. By creating panels and activities throughout the day across disciplines, the one day conference plans to focus not only on how to do academic research, but also how to affect political change. The event hopes to make room for a dialogue between academia and activism, and across disciplines, as a way of co-learning whilst thinking with a feminist ethics of care in order to strengthen ties between activists, academics and artists.
Interactive Art Against Abuse
Sarah Osborn, University of Sussex
A group of Sussex students are looking to get involved with the coming 16 days of activism to end violence against women by creating an interactive art piece which is informative and collaborative. They will be building a large cube painted with charcoal paint to allow individuals to share experiences anonymously, handwritten with chalk. One face will have signs of abuse written clearly (beyond the usually heteronormative and domestic examples), and another with helplines and support networks printed. The final two faces will have stories from students, which will be added to for the duration of the installation, and offer diverse experiences of abuse to show the variety and indiscriminate nature of abuse. This will be happening alongside talks from survivors, and groups such as RISE and the Survivors Network.
The next round of small projects funding will be announced shortly, and full details will be available here: https://chasefeministnetwork.wordpress.com/small-projects-fund/
Contact us: chasefeminist@gmail.com
About us: https://chasefeministnetwork.wordpress.com/about-us/
CHASE Feminist Network 