Flags of the Caribbean

For our BEAF Arts Summer Programme 2024, we commissioned artist Kemba Earle to produce new flags in response to the Windrush Generation and Caribbean culture. The visuals within ‘Flags of the Caribbean’ that Kemba created depict Caribbean-British culture, such as music, food, hairstyles, and carnival.

“These flags can serve both educational and celebratory purposes. Caribbean people have played a significant role in transforming British culture and it’s important to celebrate this blending of cultures. This concept also represents my Caribbean-British identity and that of many others.” Kemba Earle

Kemba Earle is an illustrator and graphic designer with Caribbean and British heritage. Working with bold colours and conceptual imagery, Kemba is interested in celebrating diversity.

This project was commissioned by Bournemouth Coastal BID and BEAF Arts Co.

Image © Kemba Earle

‘Green fingers, wind, feed(in)’ and ‘Scattered seeds, moving sanctuaries’

Within our exhibition ‘Journeys of Resilience’ at B.A.D, Barbara Majek produced three drawings titled ‘Green fingers, wind, feed(in)’ and a film titled ‘Scattered seeds, moving sanctuaries’ exploring the African diasporic intimate relationship between nature, mythology, horticulture and migration. The film will be available to watch online soon as part of our project archive.

“The meaning of ‘home’ is not always a specific location; it can feel distant or fleeting, and (or) something felt internally– remembered, or imagined.” Barbara Majek

Barbara Majek is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice-based research explores the tensions between individual and collective identities. With focus on the ‘Black’ identity across the African Diaspora, Yoruba mythology has shaped her approach to storytelling as this relates to African diasporic experiences. Exploring the circularity of time and oneness, she is interested in breaking down distinctions between material and immaterial.

Image still © Barbara Majek

Boscombe Flags

In April 2023 colourful flags filled the streets and Sovereign Shopping Centre created by artist Ian Wornast. We commissioned Ian to create a series of four flags in response to Boscombe’s architecture and history. 

Ian Wornast is an artist from ActionSpace; an exceptional visual arts development agency for learning disabled artists.

Boscombe Summer flags is an going placemaking project along Boscombe high-street funded by Bournemouth Coastal BID and supported by Boscombe Sovereign Centre.

Ian Wornast’s art practice is inspired by place and a developed sense of design. Ian has a passion for transport and the built environment around us. He is particularly inspired by London transport, its history and developments. He notices and researches changes to structures around the city and creates graphic yet personal geographic mappings in response. Iconic buildings and local landmarks get translated into Ian’s distinctive style, which uses bright colour and intricate references. He has produced work in response to areas around London and further afield including Glasgow. In 2022 he was commissioned by Art on the Underground for a poster work for Nine Elms station to respond to its dramatically evolving landscape.

Image © Roz Pike

In 2023 we built our first ever BEAF Arts Pavilion; a space for free workshops, performances and community events. Created by local designer Karolina Bilvinaite, from Bed Studio, the pavilion combined the work of artists and the community, making this a vibrant and colourful hub for the duration of the festival. Street artists Slam Daniels and Tech Moon worked together with students from SWRAC, the South West Regional Assessment Centre, supporting young people with learning differences, to create a four metre high artwork. 

Over the course of the 10 days; Keira Rathbone created a pop up exhibition of ‘typewriter eyes’, families watched the Buzztastic Bee-Balancing Blundershow, the Cabinet of Living Cinema delivered a sound workshop and screened the ‘Red turtle’ alongside a live orchestra. Throughout the week people took part in lino-printing, creative writing, printing t-shirts, up-cycling, mindful drawing, queer zine making and much more. 

Image © John Saborido

Hidden Voices: ‘Portraits, Stories and Journeys

Group exhibition featuring work by Corrianna Clarke, Maddison Collymore, Mark England, Sadaf Firoozi, Mark Perry and Nicholas Teo

Hidden Voices: ‘Portraits, Stories and Journeys was a group exhibition of selected artists following a BEAF open call, exploring intertwining narratives and portraits from the past and present through photography, film and painting. The works reflected stories of migration and journeys, identity, relationships and how we envision mental health in contemporary society.

“This was amazing. Seeing all the hard work and care that everyone put into their art and the way it affected everyone who came out to see it, was beautiful. Truly wonderful!” Audience member

Image © John Saborido

In Touch

In Touch with artists Francesca Baglione (Miss High Leg Kick), Abi Cunliffe, Lorna Rees and Steve Nice celebrated the memories of three girls on the Boscombe Hippodrome dancefloor on a night out in 1959. A multi-sensory performance show evoking a moment from the 1950s in Boscombe via music, dance, fragrance, with a particular emphasis on one of our most overlooked senses – touch. 

In Touch was commissioned following an open call for BEAF 2023. It was performed in the Sovereign Centre and B.A.D. 

Francesca Baglione (Miss High Leg Kick) is an Olivier Award winning live artist whose work is characterised by humour, unusual approaches to audience engagement, a love of spectacle, and a celebration of the everyday.

Image © John Saborido

Eye Contact

Eye Contact was a BEAF Arts commission selected from an open call, that focused on conversations with people that live in and around Boscombe. Keira creates live typewriter artworks that she describes as ‘typics’ to document the eyes of people that she encounters within communities. 

The collected eyes and stories shared were displayed in an art trail throughout the festival at local shops and venues around Boscombe as well as a large projection on the facade of a building on the high street. Keira also created live ‘typics’ in the BEAF Art Pavilion during and in the lead up to the festival. 

“Not only was it wonderful to have my eye typed but to have a wonderful conversation through it was also very special.” Participant 

Image © John Saborido

The Lock-In

The Lock-in is an ongoing monthly event for our outstanding outsider artists to try out their new uncensored work. For BEAF Arts Festival 2023 the artists performed new writing, spoken word and music from unheard voices in our theatre in B.A.D. 

“All of the acts were so diverse in their different performances but all were equally as powerful in their own way.” Audience member

“The Outsiders Project is a genuine route into writing and performing for people who wouldn’t otherwise find their way into it. It’s a magic world for a lot of people. Especially people who’ve had tough lives. Lives out of the arts. Outside the enchanted wall. The Outsiders Project is about breaking the spell. Smashing down the wall.” Damian Le Bas, writer of The Stopping Places, A Journey Through Gypsy Britain

Image © Caroline Beale Johnson

Seeking Refuge is a photographic project led by Bournemouth-based fine art photographer and community activist Caroline Beale Johnson. It shows images and words from the lives of refugees and migrants currently seeking asylum and living in Bournemouth. 

For this project, Caroline selected and worked with six emerging and established photographers to provide an insight into the lives of the displaced migrant community. The work reveals the lives of the refugees and migrants, not from afar, but from the inside.

This exhibition introduces you to seven people who left places as diverse as Syria, Venezuela, and Sudan and with lives as varied as a secondary school headteacher, a photographer with his own studio, and a student at school. 

During the time they spent together, the photographers learned about what people were escaping from, and what rich and full lives they left behind.

SNAPSHOTS OF NORMAL

In choosing the normal, incidental, and ordinary world of my high street, I also hope to celebrate the people, the place, and some of its character. Using my smartphone camera allowed me to capture people unburdened by the knowledge of a lens being cast on them, and avoided too many deliberations on composition and mise-en-scene. As such, painting ‘you as I see you’ provided the ideal reflection of what and who we are. Considering Covid-19 social restrictions, particularly when these pictures were taken, I hope to have captured life – as it is, normal or not.

Mark Perry is currently studying for an MA in Fine Art at Arts University Bournemouth.

‘into the frameless distance to the city of (no) memory’

Analogue photography/film is used to question what it means to go into exile, fleeing into that ‘frameless distance’ that’s so full of promise, hope and possibility. The project centres on Miklos Gaál’s escape from Hungary, where he swam across the Danube, and took a train to Bratislava, finally escaping across the Bratislava/Austria border.

The project also looks at Gaal-Holmes’ father’s earlier escape from Hungary in 1948. In 2018 she travelled, armed with cameras, to Budapest/ Bratislava searching for traces of the past to capture on film. 

The project is informed by W. G. Sebald’s search for the ‘nervature’ of the past, Kentridge’s premise relating to the complexity and ever-changing uncertainties of human existence, and Nigerian curator, Okwui Enwezor’s conviction that, ‘it is our job to think historically about the present, since the present is always embedded in the past.’

A photographic portrait of the people that live in, work and visit Boscombe. The series introduces the subjects from a space somewhere between social documentary and portraiture.  “I have lived here for the last decade and adore the unique alloy of the eccentric, the vibrant and the mundane that melds together to form the character of the area’s people. I try to avoid the “extraordinary within the ordinary” type of cliché when describing what I find fascinating about the people who can be met here but, in truth, that is exactly what it is.”

“And if the earthly no longer knows your name“

An immersive large-scale set of drawings in charcoal, which covered a whole wall specifically created for the B.A.D. space. The wall of drawings invited a thought-provoking interpretation on the human condition which is addressed by the artist in the form of abstract figurative self-portraits. Some of the works are wrapped in stillness whilst others rise up, confronting the viewer. Figures, heads and bodies appear in an abstracted background. The viewer may choose to be a participant, step forward and emerge themselves with their own personal reflections.

Originally from the Netherlands, Ineke Van Der Wal has been living and working in England since the early 80s. Her work has been exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally and is featured in both public and private collections.

Click Here For Artist Website

TATTOO

We are the originals. The outsiders. We scar our bodies to never forget. 

Every tattoo has a story and these have never been heard before. They’re raw, exquisite, fearless, and uncensored. Every word is written and performed by our outstanding outsider artists. 

“The Outsiders performances this year at the Kneehigh Asylum were the best things I’ve seen and heard for a decade. It has changed the way I think about the stories we tell. And that goes for every single person in the audience.”  Kneehigh Theatre

Directed by Nell Leyshon

Adult content,16+

The Outsiders Project is funded by Arts Council, Lottery, PHT, Alpine Fellowship, Sovereign Centre, BEAF, Talbot Village Trust, Recreate Dorset.

LOCK IN 

It would take more than a pandemic to stop our writers. The Lock-In is our monthly event for our outstanding outsider artists to try out their new work. Join us for new writing, spoken word, and music from unheard voices.

An astonishing evening at the theatre. A brilliant piece of storytelling – Theatre Royal, Plymouth

Adult content 16+

“with not a word spoken, The Paper Cinema crafts a fine example of Shakespeare’s quintessential work… This isn’t just theatre, but a love letter to animated process” – The Skinny

This is a digital presentation of Paper Cinema’s most recent acclaimed theatre show; a re-imagining of Macbeth as a cautionary tale for our times. With typical charm, wit, and invention the company took its audience on a journey through rugged Scottish landscapes to encounter storms, battles, betrayal, and murderous plot. Shakespeare’s tragedy was brought to life as beautifully drawn puppets, evocative music, foley, and cinematic projection combine in a captivating silent film created before your eyes.

The film is 75 minutes long and has been carefully designed to give the audience the experience of watching The Paper Cinema in real time. It uses multiple cameras to give different perspectives of the work and is shot on location to enhance the storytelling; it is an artistic work itself, not simply a film of a performance.

Fronted by the exuberance and charisma of Zimbabwean musician Kuda Matimba, Harare feature a groundbreaking line-up, mixing the buzzing acoustics of the Southern African rich-toned marimba, mbira, ringing jingling guitars, swooping basslines, irresistible dance rhythms, and uplifting vocals. 

Virtuoso marimbist Kuda Matimba was a member of Zimbabwe’s legendary Bhundu Boys; a groundbreaking force in the African music industry, they paved the way for countless artists to reach commercial success around the world.

For the final weekend of the festival we turned Churchill Gardens into a ‘community back garden’ with a weekend of art installations, family workshops and activities to engage all ages.  It brought fun and colour to the gardens for everyone to enjoy in a relaxed atmosphere to end the festival.

The centrepiece was an immersive, installation style space of arts duo, Rimski & Handkerchief who presented family performances including their bicycle piano/double bassicle, umbrella repair machine and turntable art. The stage area created by Rimski and Handkerchief operated like an outdoor venue, with additional crew, seating for the public and ongoing entertainment.

There was a variety of arts and craft workshops, music and performance acts across the gardens.  This included African drumming with Cheikh Diop, willow making with Creative Kids, bubbles with Squidge and Pop and a silent disco among other workshops and activities. 

Corrianna Clarke, Boscombe Bound

Created within and inspired by lockdown in Boscombe, the animated short ‘Boscombe Bound’ shares voices of the community, evoking the unique sense of this location and time. 

Director and Animator, Corrianna Clarke 

Audio expertise and guidance from Jo Tyler at So Niche

Check out Cora’s Instagram, Twitter and Facebook