April 2024

Special thanks to Tony McCook aka Black Crusader for permission to use actual recordings from the time. The full video is available to view online here

Vine Street Carnivals by Prashant Kansara

WARNING: THIS VIDEO CONTAINS FLASHING IMAGES

Sound System was more than a musical genre. It was a radical and transformative counterculture that celebrated the resilience of working-class immigrants in particular, and made their voices heard during one of the most openly hostile eras in this country's history. Jamaican in origin, yet able to redefine what it meant to be British for all ethnicities and show us how to fight for it. 

This is a video about the positive social impact that Sound System culture had in Hillfields – the working class neighbourhood of Coventry where I grew up. It is a representation of my memories of the time and aims to capture the vibe of those times. These outdoor performances took place outside the (now demolished) tower block Unity House, which was located very close to my home during the summers in the late 1980's and early 1990's.

March 2022

Iseda - by Taiwo ‘TAIYEWO’ Ajose

The visual exploration of 'Iseda' directly translates as Nature from Taiwo’s native language: Yoruba. Nature has acted as a place of relief, shelter and introspection for Taiwo and this experience led to the creation of the poems ILE and ORUN which gave birth to the painting entitled ISEDA.

Out of faith and curiosity, Taiwo wanted to investigate the universally beneficial qualities of nature to highlight that its healing is not exclusive to one’s identity but to all of us. Through different charities that focus on ethnic minorities in the great outdoors, Taiwo discovered that many people come outside to take a solidarity moment of peace, and a few had embraced walking in nature more since the global pandemic. Inspired by the work taken by Steppers UK for British Science Week (2021), Taiwo asked each muse for three words to describe how they felt around a walk. The answers confirmed nature to be a healing tool.

A special thank you to nature and its’ creator.

March 2021

The Mountain Garden - Video Haikus by Ryan Christopher

'The Mountain Garden’ and is an assemblage of video haikus that will immerse its viewers in a visceral space of emancipatory poetics. Work by Ryan Christopher - a Coventry-born, interdisciplinary artist working with moving image, sculpture, painting, drawing, and installation.

This commission is a collaboration with GRAIN Projects and asked artists to respond to the theme of ‘the impact of isolation (enforced or otherwise)’ which was inspired by their latest exhibition - ‘What Photography And Incarceration Have In Common With An Empty Vase’.

December 2020

Blurred - A Poem by John Bernard

Coventry-based spoken word poet John Bernard was the first artist to be awarded a micro-commission and used it to create this short, spoken word poetry film looking at the perception of people of colour and how this affects young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

This commission, in particular, aimed to attract artists to respond to themes within the recent ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking’ exhibition, which includes: personal memories as strategies of resistance; the lived experiences of people of colour; the disruption of traditional ways of viewing art; questions of where art belongs; and digital spaces as sites for resistance and representation.

The Herbert worked with arts organisation Maokwo - who aim to address the issues that minoritised artists and communities face – to shape this micro-commissioning project.