Join us online for the premiere of sound pieces created by Rory Pilgrim with members from their RAFTS workshops for Radio Ballads
RSVP essential via rsvp@serpentinegalleries.org
A first look at RAFTS, a work in progress by Rory Pilgrim. Part of Radio Ballads, a major project which sees artists embedded long-term within frontline services in Barking & Dagenham, in partnership with New Town Culture. Funded by Mayor of London as part of London Borough of Culture.
Introduced by Pilgrim and Serpentine Civic Curator Amal Khalaf, this special preview features excerpts from two Radio RAFTS, sound pieces made with members of Green Shoes Arts in Barking & Dagenham and Project Well Being in Boise, Idaho. These Radio RAFTS explore how to maintain connection during a pandemic, and ask, in moments of change and transition, what supports and keeps us afloat?
Radio Ballads runs throughout 2020/21 and features work by Sonia Boyce, Helen Cammock and Ilona Sagar culminating in works and performances at the Serpentine and in Barking and Dagenham.
Rory Pilgrim
Rory Pilgrim (Bristol, 1988) works in a wide range of media including songwriting, composing music, film, music video, text, drawing and live performances. Centred on emancipatory concerns, Pilgrim aims to challenge the nature of how we come together, speak, listen and strive for social change through sharing and voicing personal experience. Strongly influenced by the origins of activist, feminist and socially engaged art, Pilgrim works with others through a different methods of dialogue, collaboration and workshops. In an age of increasing technological interaction, Rory’s work creates connections between activism, spirituality, music and how we form community locally and globally from both beyond and behind our screens. Solo Shows include: Between Bridges, Berlin (2019) Andriesse-Eyck Gallery, Amsterdam NL (2018), South London Gallery (2018), Rowing, London (2017), Plymouth Art Centre, Plymouth (2017), Flat Time House, London (2016), Site Gallery, Sheffield (2016) and sic! Raum für Kunst, Luzern CH (2014). In 2019, Pilgrim was the winner of the Prix de Rome.
Partners
Green Shoes Arts exists to inspire local people to make positive changes through the arts. We are a passionate team of arts facilitators who work with people of all age groups from all communities living in Barking and Dagenham. Green Shoes seeks to make arts accessible to all and promotes the many benefits that being involved in the arts can bring.
Interfaith Sanctuary Shelter serves people of all genders, races, religions, and sexual orientation, as well as families with children, by providing safe overnight emergency shelter and practical services to transition out of homelessness. Project Well Being offers us a safe place for acceptance, stability, and growth. Connection, support, and well being are our foundation.
Barking Dagenham Youth Dance is one of London’s leading providers of youth dance workshops, community arts events and career pathway activities, offering weekly dance and fitness sessions for hundreds of children and young people. BDYD also runs Bar-Ham Leaders, a youth action programme, that encourages teenagers to learn the skills to communicate their views and suggestions, with the aim to influence policy and government.
LBBD Hostel Services team provides accommodation and support for nearly 200 families and single people. We also assist with the transition in a permanent home in the private sector. We make the most of the best services provided by both the council and voluntary sector to ensure the families can access services to maintain their financial and personal well being.
The White House was set up in 2016 on Dagenham’s Becontree estate by Create London. We invite artists to live and work in the house, exploring new ways to collaborate with the local community, by becoming their neighbours. We host a public programme led by residents that ranges from poetry to painting to gardening. Our programme acts as a tool to address social, political and culturally relevant issues to our site and community, adopting approaches that challenge traditional hierarchies and aim to democratise decision-making across programming and how we run the house.
