Heard And Not Seen

Here’s some images from our ‘Be Seen’ scarf day a couple of weekends ago.  As you can see, much fun was had by all and we had a host of great conversations with people from as far off as Mexico, while our Mitra snapped away.  We’re also pleased to announce, that by popular demand we’ll be extending the exhibition at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery for a while yet.  We’ve been getting lots of great feedback from visitors and are now on our third comments book!  Heard And Not Seen can be seen in Gallery 36, the ‘ways of seeing’ gallery, just past the Egyption exhibits on the third floor.  Open seven days a week, free.

Hallo, its Sandra here from Friction Arts.  Our opening event at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery for ‘Heard and Not Seen’ went very well and a big thank you to Mohsin Abbas  of the International Ramadan Festival, one of our partners, for his opening address.  Very impassioned and we will be audio streaming some of this speech soon.  There are also pictures below of the event.  A great turn out from stakeholders, community members, participants, funders alike.  The feedback, written and verbal was as ever, very positive and ‘thought provoking’; echoing the success and engagement with the audience at our previous outing at the Mailbox.

As some of you may be aware we have attracted a lot of  press attention for our ‘Heard and Not Seen’ project, which is currently on at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.  We will be on Midlands Today at 6.30pm today 14th of July.

For those many of you whom have been involved you will know that some of the press coverage has distorted what is, for us, colleagues, participants, a very important project that promotes conversation.

For those of you who haven’t been involved, or visited the exhibition yet we look forward to meeting you and finding out your thoughts and responses to the exhibition.  There are a number of ways of doing this.  You can log in here at the website and let us know, post queries or stories.  There is also a visitors book at the Exhibition site, which is gallery 36 in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.  In the exhibition itself are ribbons on one of the sculptures and people are invited to write thoughts, questions and we will regularly up date these to the website to continue conversations beyond the gallery and across the globe.  There are also facilitated discussions available for groups and individuals – on Wednesdays at 11.30 – meet in the exhibition – we will then provide the tea and buns and the space for new people of different faiths and cultures to meet and discuss contemporary concerns about religions, faiths and spirituality. You can book here on the website and it is free.

You will also have an opportunity to see our headlines in the exhibition itself. One of the sculptures is dedicated to ‘media noise’ as people continual emphasise that polarised press impact and distort access to honest debate and understanding.

The press coverage is National which is great – this will enable more people to engage with the project and increase the opportunities for real dialogue to take place.

We look forward to seeing or hearing from you – we have at least four other projects on the go at the moment, notably peace campaigner Isaura Mendes from Boston with us for two weeks from Thursday.  Do check out our main website www.frictionarts.com and join us on the 22nd of July at our HQ, The Edge to discuss ‘how do we create a future for our children free of violence’.

regards Sandra, Lee, Mitra and Zara.

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The lovely photos are by Jasroop Kaur Grewal

We’re delighted to announce the opening of Heard And Not Seen at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery on Monday 12th July at 6pm.  Please join us for conversation in Gallery 36 on floor 3 of the Museum.  We are pleased to announce that the project will be launched by Mohsin Abbas, director of the Ramadan Festival, alongside the artists, Mitra Memarzia and Sandra Hall.  Unfortunately, due to staff shortages at the gallery, we were unable to open the gallery as intended on Saturday the 10th, though we have been assured that this problem will be resolved by the end of this week.  Apologies for anyone who has made the journey to see the exhibition and been disappointed.  If you did so, please let us know and we will send you a free copy of the exhibition catalogue by way of apology.  Heard And Not Seen will be open from Saturday 17th of July at 10am.

The exhibition runs until 22nd of August, usual gallery opening times apply.

Well, we’re gearing up for another outing for ‘Heard And Not Seen’ at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in July.  The excitement is growing as we re-engage and continue to interrogate these important questions.  There are still far too few opportunities for people to have conversations about these important issues.  Is this a conspiracy to keep us from coming together?  Or is it just that artists and the media avoid engaging with these questions for fear of incurring the wrath of people with a more fundamentalist approach to Islam?  It is more important than ever that people from different communities find ways to celebrate their shared humanity, rather than focussing on their differences, and it is for this reason that we have continued to develop this project.  Let’s keep asking those ‘difficult’ questions, let’s demystify our cultures and learn to live together as we know we really should – in mutual respect and love, whatever our race, religion or cultural background.  Let’s all be heard AND seen!

Welcome to the ‘Heard and Not Seen’ blog and website. ‘Heard and Not Seen’ is an arts project by Sandra Hall and Mitra Memarzia supported by Friction Arts. The project aims to create a unique, safe space for people to meet and ask questions with each other, of each other; particularly about faith, religion and spirituality. More details about the project can be found here.

So the exhibition launch was last night and was a resounding success.  It was a great turnout, with over 200 people coming through the doors.  Councillor Rudge gave a great speech, followed by our own Sandra Hall, welcoming the audience to the celebration of all the great things that have already been achieved by the project, and it’s only the beginning.  The audience had a great time, there were all kinds of people there, definately not the usual arts audience, there were kids running about, ’suits’, police, representatives from the bbc and a great cross-section of the Brummie community.  I’ll be posting images of the exhibition on the appropriate page in a couple of days, as well as some more audio on the interviews page, so keep checking back.

We’d like to thank everyone who came to the launch, but we’d also like to urge them to return at a quieter time – there were so many people attending it was very difficult to get a real look at the work on offer!  We’re all really pleased with the way the exhibition is looking in its current incarnation and a special thanks has to go to the Mailbox for taking the risk of showing the work, when many traditional arts spaces would not.

The show runs daily (including Sundays) until the 28th of November, so we hope to see you there.