This symposium, which is part of the Altered Landscapes exhibition programme, will discuss issues of displacement and migration, exploring how art can catalyse debate around human rights and create a dialogue around these issues. Speakers include international artists May Abdalla and Juan delGado, curator and Co-Director of Culture+Conflict, Michaela Crimmin and Áine O’Brien, Co-Director of Counterpoint Arts. The symposium will be chaired by Saphia Crowther, editor at Amnesty International.

Schedule:
14:00 Registration and refreshments
14:15 Introduction
14:20 Presentations
15:00 Break
15:15 Presentations
16:15 Break
16:30 Panel discussion
18:00 Symposium ends

The symposium will be followed at 6.30pm by a screening of Syrian short films in partnership with Bidayyat for Audiovisual Arts. The screening is free and tickets do not need to be booked. For more information click HERE

If you require a BSL interpreter or large print material on the day please contact Irini Papadimitriou, irini@watermans.org.uk to arrange in advance. There are disabled parking spaces in Watermans’ car park and the building is fully accessble. Hearing loop is available. Please see accessibility information.

The Guru Tandoori Kitchen at Watermans will be open for lunch with a £4.99 ‘eat & go’ lunch menu. Choose from a range of curries with rice, salad and a naan.

Speakers’ biographies

Juan delGado, Artist
Juan delGado works across a range of media including installation and photography and has produced an extensive body of work that explores themes of trauma, landscape, disability, dislocation and gender. delGado has exhibited widely including at ARCO’05, Madrid, End of the World Biennial, Argentina, and the 2014 Mardin Biennial, Turkey. He was selected for the 2012 BBC Big Screens programme, in 2013 he was shortlisted for the Jerwood Open Forest exhibition, and in 2014 he was awarded a major project commission by Unlimited that premièred at the Southbank Centre, London. His work has been supported by many prestigious organisations including the British Council, the Wellcome Trust, Arts Council England, Spanish Ministry of Culture, and ArtSchool Palestine.

http://www.juandelgado.co

Áine O’Brien, Co-Director, Counterpoints Arts
Áine O’Brien is Co-Founder and Co-Director of Counterpoints Arts, London. She created FOMACS (Forum on Migration and Communications) in 2007 developing creative arts and public projects focusing on migration, including Moving Worlds and Learning Lab. Áine co-founded Centre for Transcultural Research and Media Practice (2005) aligning migration research with creative arts. She serves on the Advisory Board for Centre for Cultural Studies Research, UEL and her productions to date (across documentary film, print, exhibition and curation) explore global storylines linking migration with social justice. Áine is creative producer of a cross-sector participatory arts and design project on everyday integration, ‘Everyday on Canalside’ and the film and social action programme, ‘Out of Place’.
http://counterpointsarts.org.uk

Michaela Crimmin, Co-Director, Culture + Conflict
Michaela Crimmin is a Co-Director of Culture+Conflict. She is also an independent curator and writer; and is on the academic staff of the Royal College of Art (RCA) where she teaches in the School of Humanities and has been leading a research programme, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, to build connections between academia, artists and curators, and activists working on the role of art in the context of conflict. She lectures nationally and internationally. She was Head of Arts at the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) from 1997 to 2010, a role that included initiating and directing the RSA Arts & Ecology Centre, the inspiration and experience that led to co-founding Culture+Conflict. Previous work includes coordinating the first phase of the Fourth Plinth series of temporary commissions in Londons Trafalgar Square; directing the two million pound Art for Architecture award scheme; and commissioning artists for Public Art Development Trusts pioneering work in the public domain.
http://www.cultureandconflict.org.uk

May Abdalla, Artist
May Abdalla is one half of ANAGRAM, an immersive digital theatre company which brings together physical experience and compelling documentary narrative. Examples of this include Door Into the Dark, a blindfolded sensory journey for one through the stories of people who have been profoundly lost which was awarded the Storyscapes award at Tribeca Film festival in 2015 and Nightwatchers a nighttime experience at the Tower of London about surveillance and terror using true stories from the 17th century.
Previously to setting up ANAGRAM she directed documentaries for the BBC, Channel 4 and Al Jazeera. In 2010 she ran “Give Your Vote”, a radical intervention allowing UK citizens to give their votes to people affected by British policies worldwide, which received global media coverage.
http://www.mayabdalla.com

Saphia Crowther, Editor, Amnesty International
Saphia is an Editor at the research headquarters of Amnesty International. During more than eight years at Amnesty, she has commissioned, written and edited numerous reports and books on human rights issues. During the Arab Spring, she documented the fast-moving situation in various countries in the Middle East and North Africa. She also edits Amnesty’s high-profile Annual Report, which documents the human rights situation in 160 countries annually, and has edited several books on international law for lawyers and academics.