With For About 2020 - Call Out

What creative solutions have marginalised people developed to survive before Covid-19?

What creative ways of being and organising are being made now in response to Covid-19?

How do we embed and share these solutions, ways of being and organising now and into the future?

In these fast moving times we need to move both swiftly and slowly. That’s why for this year's annual Heart of Glass conference we have adapted our intended plans. Working with artist and mental health activist ‘the vacuum cleaner’, curator and agitator Cecilia Wee and a stellar line up of international artists, activists and academics, With For About 2020 creates a vital, slow and complex space between art, activism, care and social practice in response to COVID-19.

It wilfully asks - in facing this crisis, another ten years of austerity, ecological collapse, harsher borders, more racism and deeper ableism within deeply divided societies - how can artists, activists and organisations make vital change within our communities and beyond?

When?

With For About 2020 will happen over 5 weeks, lasting one hour each week.

How?

With For About 2020 will feature short video provocations, sharings of practice and projects and discussion of various responses by artists and activists, all streamed into your home. It has intentionally been designed to work around the shifting nature of these times - allowing for work care, fluctuating schedules and new contributors to be added.

Themes

Themes will be mixed together to allow a truly intersectional understanding of CARE WORK, CLASS, COLONIALISM, DISABILITY, ECOLOGY, FEMINISM, LAW, MENTAL HEALTH, MIGRATION, MUTUAL AID, INTERNATIONAL ORGANISING, LGBTQ+, RACISM, SOCIAL PRACTICE, SURVEILLANCE - all under the framework of Justice and Rights based approaches.

Each week of provocations will have space for ‘in the moment’ responses and be followed by a space for viewers to respond in an attempt to share and build on ways of doing, organising and making that resonate across communities and locations. We aim to create a radical response to WTF is happening, and confront the increasingly distressing reality so many communities continue to face.

Access

The event will try to be as accessible as possible, though we acknowledge this will be challenging with the technology and resources available. Please communicate with us about your access requirements, however you define access. Whether that is around disability, white spaces, money, access to the internet, child care, institutional transphobia or other forms of exclusion. We are not perfect, and want to do better.

Click here to read our Safer Spaces Policy.

Call for artistic/academic/activist contributors

What we are looking for:

We are looking for existing practice/projects, live projects or folx that are thinking and making the future that respond to the outline above, from anywhere in the world. We are very keen to hear about things we won’t have heard about, the unchampioned, undiscovered and low-key. Projects and practice from marginalised people that are urgent, honest, tender and vital.

How to share with us:

Send us a link to a website or video and 100 word description that shares what you do and a contact email. We can check out what you are doing. If our curation team dig it, we will contact you to see if there is a way you can participate.

Please email your submission and any queries to: criticality@heartofglass.org.uk

(We will only be able to reply to those we think fit into this call out.)

The Money:

We are asking for short films, interviews or descriptions directly to camera for which we are paying £300. We would suggest your contribution to take about a day to complete. It can be rough around the edges, from the heart is more important than super polished.

We are super keen to hear from places where COVID-19 has had a dramatic impact. For example, but not limited to:

China, South Korea, Italy, Spain, Iran, USA, Indonesia, India, Palestine, Brazil, Australia, Japan, Thailand, Philippines, Egypt, Algeria, Russia

Rolling deadline from now until June 8th.