October 2021

This Newsletter shares updates on current residencies and looks ahead to opportunities in 2022, with the announcement of Open Calls for applications for both our annual Winter Subsidised Residencies, and for Play Park, a new programme for UK-based theatre makers. 

We are delighted to welcome this month the winners of the 2021 Ivan Juritz Prize: poet Nick Makoha, artist Edward Gwyn Jones, and composer Erchao Gu. The prize is awarded annually to  postgraduate students throughout Europe and is developed in partnership with the Centre for Modern Literature and Culture at King's College London.

Our independently funded programme welcomes artist Justine Hounam, musician, producer, DJ and broadcaster Nabihah Iqbal, architectural researcher and artist Stefan Einar Laxness, architects Liam O'Shea and Andrea Marini, composer, singer and songwriter Nicolette Macleod, artist, researcher and producer Tessa Ratuszynska, and the performance company Curious Seed. 

Cryptic, the Glasgow-based internationally renowned art producing house, return this month. Cryptic's Residency Programme was established in 2012, focussing on music, sound, and multi-media, with over 65 artists taking part to date. We are delighted to host composer, improviser and collaborator Emma Smith, sound artist Kim Moore, Scottish-Portuguese artist and musician Su Shaw (SHHE), British-Rwandan music and sound artist Tanya Auclair, and Belgian Scotland-based composer and sound artist Sonia Killman.

The Making Tracks residency for musicians and composers also takes place in October, and we are very pleased to stage a workshop and a music sharing at Cove Park on 20 and 23 October respectively - scroll down for more.

We are thrilled to announce the first in-person meeting of the Nordic Alliance of Artists' Residencies on Climate Action at Cove Park in November, and, taking place in the same week, Turbulence/Emergence/Enchantment: a Compendium of Climate Literacies, an experimental intensive/symposium running in parallel with the COP26 conference in Glasgow, and bringing together artists, activists and researchers around themes ranging from ancient environmental history, marine biology and political ecology to climate fiction, art, and ecocriticism. Read on for more.

These two events signal a pivotal stage in the development of Cove Park. In its 21st year the organisation is moving beyond the boundaries of the traditional 'time, space, freedom' residency to include an enquiry-based model for facilitating cross-disciplinary work and collective intelligence around pressing global concerns. We are expanding the artforms and disciplines that are welcome to the residency, and enlarging its horizons towards other sectors, such as those of academic and scientific research, including the creative industries as a whole. On the occasion of COP26, we will launch our first and soon to become permanent enquiry focussed on the environmental crisis and the radical change that our collective intelligence can affect in terms of climate action. More information on this landmark event is given below.

Finally, we were sad to say farewell last month to two members of Cove Park's team: translator Rebecca DeWald and graphic designer Maeve Redmond. Rebecca and Maeve both took part in Cove Park residencies before joining the team to devise and produce our Literature & Translation and Craft & Design programmes respectively. They were both wonderful residents and inspiring colleagues, and we would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their significant contribution to Cove Park, and to wish them well with all their future projects.

This does mean we are now advertising for a new role at Cove Park: Programmes & Communications Producer. The deadline for applications is Friday 29 October and further information is available here.

Image: Above, Cove Park (photography, Juliana Capes); below, RAW Material Company at Cove Park, a talk by Dulcie Abrahams Altass & Fatima Bintou Rassoul Sy, September 2021. 

Introducing the Nordic Alliance of Artists' Residencies on Climate Action

NAARCA, co-devised and co-led by Cove Park and Saari Residence (Finland), aims to build a long-term bridge between Scotland and the Nordic countries around the most pressing global issue of our time. The collaboration is founded upon the geological, climatological, historical, and linguistic similarities that unite both regions, and is the starting point for a permanent, expansive and holistic network of radical cooperation. 

In addition to Cove Park and Saari Residence, The Nordic Alliance of Artists' Residencies on Climate Action brings together Arctic Culture Lab (Greenland), Artica Svalbard (Norway), Art Hub Copenhagen (Denmark), Baltic Art Center (Sweden), and Skaftfell - Center for Visual Art (Iceland) to collaborate on research, institutional change and public education around climate action. The first assembly of the alliance, taking place at Cove Park from 1-3 November, will lay the ground for our future collaborations, projects, commissions, residencies, and events, and will enable all involved to take part in the symposium Turbulence / Emergence / Enchantment.

NAARCA's initial three-year programme is generously supported by Kone Foundation and Nordic Culture Fund.

Image: The Saari Residence, maintained by Kone Foundation (photography, Otto-Ville Väätäinen, courtesy Saari Residence).

Turbulence / Emergence / Enchantment:
A Compendium of Climate Literacies

This experimental intensive/symposium takes place at Cove Park between 4-7 November 2021 and is organised in partnership with the Centre for Ancient Environmental Studies at the University of St Andrews, London-based curator Lucia Pietroiusti, TBA21-Academy, and University College Dublin.

The symposium addresses narratives and visions of climate disturbance from classical antiquity all the way to climate justice frameworks, futurisms, and cli-fi. By gathering together contributors from a wide range of different backgrounds, it criss-crosses its way through a series of lectures, performances, and film screenings that together ask the question: How can we progress towards mutual literacy between the arts, the humanities, the hard sciences, and civic responsibility?

Turbulence, Emergence, and Enchantment, with their unsettling mix of positive and negative connotations, act as guiding metaphors for the week. Turbulent are climate, geo-politics, and living beings. Emergent is metamorphosis. Enchantment is possibility of participating in the creation of just and environmentally thriving futures.

We will release the full programme and schedule during the week of 18 October, while a 'Compendium of Climate Literacies' will be released in podcast and video formats in the weeks following the symposium and COP26. In the meantime, you can find detailed information including the list of speakers and a link to book your ticket here.

Image: 'Court of Intergenerational Climate Crimes', 2021, Radha D'Souza and Jonas Staal (photography, Ruben Hamelink).

Subsidised Winter Residencies at Cove Park

Cove Park offers opportunities for individual artists and groups, cultural practitioners, academics, and researchers to take up subsidised residencies in January and February 2022. We are advertising these opportunities now, in the hope that those interested may have time to organise funding to support their residency. Please see the introductory list of funders on our website for recommendations. Further information is available here and applications should be submitted by 22 November 2021.

Image: Cove Park (Tracey Bloxham / Inside Story Photography)

The Play Park - Open Call for Applications

The Play Park is a pilot residency programme which takes shape around ideas and acts of ‘thresholding’: finding, inhabiting and expanding the edge between forms of practice, physical environments, species, social spaces, and gestures of communication. It will be led by practitioners who work on and across boundaries of theatre, dance, literature, visual arts and film, and whose own investigations have produced new forms of storytelling, interspecies collaboration and ethical reorientation. There will also be individual dialogues and facilitated movement, object manipulation and environmental research workshops on and around the Cove Park site.

The Play Park will be held over the week of Monday 28 March - Monday 4 April 2022 at Cove Park. Each of the 8 participants will be paid a fee for their contribution to the week, thanks to funding from Foyle Foundation and Garrick Charitable Trust.

We invite application from mid-career theatre-makers from across the UK who wish to explore the dramaturgy of thresholds. The Play Park will be an opportunity to think, move and be together as researchers and collaborators, curious about deepening or extending practice.

Please read the Application Guidelines for more information and details of how to apply. The deadline for applications is Monday 8 November 2022.

Image: Ruth Little at work with Mavin Khoo and Akram Khan, Jean-Louis Fernandez 2019. 

Cove Park Associates

Cove Park's new Associates programme is live! Designed to offer ongoing support and new opportunities for our former residents, this membership programme has been devised in consultation with our alumni. A pilot programme including funded residencies and paid opportunities for our Associates will begin in January 2022.

If you are a former resident and would like to join, please read more here, or contact associates@covepark.org.

Image: Cove Park, September 2021 (photography, Alan Dimmick)

Future By Design - A Celebration 

Please join us on Friday 29 October, from 3-7pm, for a celebration of Future By Design, the spectacular new Outdoor Classroom at Cove Park and its sister landscaping installation in Accra's largest public park. This special event highlights the work of the 27 students and young professionals in this international collaboration supported by British Council Architecture Design Fashion.

The recently completed Outdoor Classroom is a major commission co-designed by architectural scientist Mae-ling Lokko and architect Tom Morton (Arc Architects) with Scottish and Ghanaian cohorts of young people. The event offers an opportunity to visit the Outdoor Classroom, to meet Tom Morton and all those that worked directly on the structure and landscaping around the Classroom, and to hear from Mae-ling Lokko about the simultaneous design in Ghana of the landscape installation in the southwest corner of Accra’s Efua Sutherland Children’s Park.  

Appointed to this project in collaboration with erz, The Mackintosh School of Architecture/Glasgow School of Art, and Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh, the Scottish cohort will take part in a Pecha Kucha as part of the event, from 4pm. This will also involve their counterparts in Ghana, connected to the Ashesi Entrepreneurship Centre. The event showcases the work of all the young people involved and highlights the impact upon their practices of collaborating internationally on an innovative architectural and environmental project.  

Everyone is welcome. To attend, please visit our Eventbrite page.

Image: Above, The build of the Outdoor Classroom at Cove Park; below, the completed Outdoor Classroom, September 2021.

Making Tracks: Workshop & Open Rehearsal

As part of the Making Tracks residency, we are pleased to offer two events at Cove Park this October.

Young people (11-18) are invited to join a Music Workshop on Wednesday 20 October (from 2-3.30pm). This free event is an ideal opportunity to experiment, play and work alongside national and international professional musicians. Book your free place here.

On Saturday 23 October, from 2-4pm, people of all ages and families are welcome to join us for a live music sharing with the Making Tracks musicians. The event will be followed by a Q&A, and the opportunity to learn more about Making Tracks and the work of all involved. Find out more and reserve your free ticket here. 

Image: Making Tracks.