In partnership with

 

The Black Blossoms School of Art and Culture presents a new series of free online short courses.

Black Blossoms School of Art and Culture is excited to announce a partnership with Art on the Underground; a new series of short courses which are free and open to all.


The courses will expand on the ideas explored in the artworks and practices of the artists working with Art on the Underground throughout 2022, these include Joy Labinjo, Larry Achiampong, Rhea Storr and Shanti Panchal. Each course will run for four weeks and be led by a lecturer who will devise an engaging curriculum that includes an artist talk and a guest lecture.

The inspiration for the programme comes from the below statement by Kobena Mercer;

 "The aim is not to settle for the mere 'celebration' or the bureaucratic 'inclusion' of Black British achievements in the visual arts but to bring the insights that three generations of artists have so generously shared to bear on our wider understanding of transculturation as the creative driver in the messy, complex and contradictory process of world-making"

Kobena Mercer The Longest Journey: Black Diaspora Artists in Britain, 2020.

Each course will analyse;

  • How colonialism, migration and technological advancements result in the loss and creation of new identities. 

  • How this informs ideas on global cultural politics and activism(s).

  • The impact this has on visual artistic production and consumption.

Black to the Future:
Afr0-Futurism as Archival Practice

Black to the Future: Afr0-Futurism as Archival Practice, is a four-week course that considers these very questions by exploring the concept of Afr0-Futurism and Pan Africanism respectively. We will learn about the conceptual and aesthetic practice of Black artists, thinkers and multi-disciplinary practitioners whose ideas of global African identities, science and speculative fiction, space and time travel not only critiqued racial oppression but re-imagined equitable societies.

This course is taught by Janine Francois and is a response to Larry Achiampong's 2022 Art on the Underground commission, ‘PAN AFRICAN FLAGS FOR THE RELIC TRAVELLERS’ ALLIANCE (UNION)’ which re-imagines London Underground’s iconic roundel, for Westminster Underground station.

Art and Activism in the Age of Black Girl Magic

Joy Labinjo, '5 more minutes', 2021. Brixton Underground station. Commissioned by Art on the Underground. Courtesy the artist and Tiwani Contemporary. Photo: Angus Mill, 2021

Art and Activism in the Age of Black Girl Magic is a four-week course that examines the themes present in modern and contemporary artworks by Black women and Black non-binary artists. Their contributions to visual artistic production are further explored through the lens of Black feminist thought and action in social and protest movements in contemporary history.

This course is a response to Joy Labinjo’s large-scale Art on the Underground commission, '5 more minutes’ which launched at Brixton Underground station in November 2021.