Collaborative Tag is an ongoing gallery of creative work, including music, film, text and visual art. It is an artistic dialogue between survivors, carers and people experiencing mental distress who have created work in response to each other, like a game of tag. It may change and grow, before during and after the conference to reflect the development of new work and the needs and responses of the participants.
Limited Work Capability
From thedrawing on forms series Jill Eastland and Yvette Wilkie
Yvette Wilkie
Jill Eastland
Yvette Wilkie
Edinburgh FreestyleDr Zeenath Ul Islam
I call many places home including Edinburgh which I remained apart from for some time due to the pandemic. When I was finally able to return to Scotland, I was inspired to freestyle dance on top of the central Calton Hill. The words, music and movement captured in the video tie together the bittersweet emotions of homecoming and the inevitable transformations both internally in the dancer and externally in the environment. The style of dancing I have developed is called Zeena Ul Ballet and it is a fusion dance style of traditional classical Ballet, West African (Ghana) and East African dance (Uganda and Tanzania) Arabic Belly dance and Blues dancing with a Scottish highland twist! The cultural influences reflect the multicultural teachers, friends, and upbringing I have had.
The posture we have and how we move plays a part in how we are perceived by others. My aim is to create a supportive, collaborative safe space for young women to express themselves and gain confidence in their bodies. Life can be full of challenges but as we grow on this journey, we can use dance to channel our negative emotions, gain mind and body coordination, practice mindfulness and flow with mood-boosting endorphins. As a dancer, I developed Zeena Ul Ballet workshops to create a space for women from socially disadvantaged backgrounds to express themselves and grow in confidence. I have choreographed projects raising awareness for mental health, cathartic choreography to channel the daily trauma of racism, and dealing with issues of identity. Sometimes Zeena Ul Ballet takes inspiration from mathematics and adopts a uniquely interdisciplinary approach to dance.
Jane Hellings is using her short film Mum Dancing as a starting point for a second short film Manchester Dancing, as a Tag response to Zeena's film Edinburgh Freestyle. I have never had body confidence, my mum dancing is clumsy and awkward, dancing in Manchester I hope she will find some of the confidence Zeena speaks of.
What do people get up to locked down indefinitely in a Care Home? Carers Natasha and Sophie were tasked with making a Guy for Bonfire Night. Karen Parker and Jane Hellings spotted his charms, saved him from the flames and decided to put him in the movies.
Untitled Dilly Rose and Jane Hellings
Cathy Dunbar
I facilitate the weekly Cambridge Women's Resources Center Art Group. Since the beginning of the COVID19 outbreak, the art group has run every week on Zoom. One week at a loss for something to do we decided to draw each other. Drawing with a single pencil line, looking only at our subject, following the contours of the face with our eyes not looking at the page, we drew each others' portraits and then coloured them in. We loved what we drew and loved how we had been seen by the other members of the group. Our spirits were lifted.
Yarns will be woven and truths told. Film: Jai Monaghan, Helen Judge, Artists: Florencia Nannetti, Jill Eastland, Jane Hellings, Cathy Dunbar 18th October 2020 Museum of Cambridge.
This day was the culmination of the Women Unity Strength exhibition at The Museum of Cambridge we had created with Corona House, Cambridge Women’s Resources Centre and Women’s Aid. Sadly the exhibition had to be cut short due to Covid in March 2020 and we had to wait until October when things opened up a little to create this final piece.
Because of COVID rules we created the piece outside, we chose the Museum courtyard, numbers of participants were also restricted. We created a warp of wool and yarn, household objects, clothes, string, we brought our own stories and wove them in too. The whole courtyard became the loom.
We invited women who we had worked with on the exhibition and other local women that we knew, to bring an object, a story, an anecdote, to recall their experiences, and work together with us to weave them together.
The women came and it began; stories were recanted and tales told, objects brought, memories recalled, we reminisced on the past, examined the present and imagined the future, we wove these stories together using fabric, threads, found and made objects , we connected and created a strong and magical piece of fabric.
