# data[].attributes.body
"Believe it or not, I'm an artist."
"Soup cans or sunsets?"
- Nightfall (1957)

# data[].attributes.body
SOME NO'S ARE BIGGER THAN OTHERS

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
New contemporary art highlights from Axisweb features contemporary artists Stephen Livingstone, Claire de Lune, Jessica Harby and Elizabeth Wewiora

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Free Exchange On Tour: Art, Astronomy + Astrophysics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Free Exchange returns with Art, Astronomy + Astrophysics. These free, open and friendly discussions take place in the community and provide an opportunity for discussion on subjects of common interest. Following on from last year's highly popular discussion on Art + Astronomy, we have widened the topic to include astrophysics and invited two prestigious speakers to share some ideas on the subject.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Online Conversation: Filip Markiewicz | Celebration Factory

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Artist Filip Markiewicz joins NN Artistic Director Catherine Hemelryk for an informal tour of Celebration Factory. www.NNContemporaryArt.org/exhibitions/filip-markiewicz

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In searching for a treasure trove of publications springing from the avant-garde, deliberately irrational, early 20th-century European "anti-art" art movement known as Dada, where would you first look? Many corners of the world's historic cultural capitals may come right to mind, but might we suggest the University of Iowa? Even if you don't feel like traveling to the middle of the United States to plunge into an archive of highly purposeful nonsense, you can view their impressive collection of Dada periodicals (36 in total), books, leaflets, and ephemera online.

"Founded in 1979 as part of the Dada Archive and Research Center, the International Dada Archive is a scholarly resource for the study of the historic Dada movement," says its front page. The collection contains "works by and about the Dadaists including books, articles, microfilmed manuscript collections, videorecordings, sound recordings, and online resources," and in its digital form it " provides links to scanned images of original Dada-era publications in the International Dada Archive," including the influential and , as well as "many of the major periodicals of the Dada movement from Zurich, Berlin, Paris, and elsewhere, as well as books, exhibition catalogs, and broadsides by participants in the Dada movement." (Note: if you click on magazines in the collection, you can download the various pages.)

The history of the archive, written by Timothy Shipe, also addresses an important question: "Why Iowa? One answer lies in a clear affinity between the Dada movement and this University. The internationalist, multilingual, multimedia nature of Dada makes Iowa, with its International Writers' Program, its Writers' Workshop, its Center for Global Studies, its Translation Workshop and Center, its dynamic programs in music, dance, art, theater, film, literature, and languages, an especially appropriate place to house the Dada Archive. A brief glance at the history of Dada will make this affinity clear."

You can learn more about that history from the Dada material we've previously featured here on Open Culture: the video series which explains the movement (or at least explains it as well as anyone can hope to); the material we gathered in celebration of its hundredth anniversary last year; and three essential Dadaist films by Hans Richter, Man Ray, and Marcel Duchamp. That will put into clearer context the 36 journals you can peruse in the University of Iowa's Digital Dada Archive, some of which put out many issues, some of which stopped after the first, and all of which offer a glimpse of an artistic spirit, scattered across several different countries, which flared up briefly but brightly with anarchic energy, destructive creativity, a forward-looking aesthetic sense, and no small amount of humor.
Related Content: Download All 8 Issues of Dada, the Arts Journal That Publicized the Avant-Garde Movement a Century Ago (1917-21) Download Alfred Stieglitz's Proto-Dada Art Journal, 291, The First Art Magazine That Was Itself a Work of Art (1916) Dada Was Born 100 Years Ago: Celebrate the Avant-Garde Movement Launched by Hugo Ball on July 14, 1916 Three Essential Dadaist Films: Groundbreaking Works by Hans Richter, Man Ray & Marcel Duchamp The ABCs of Dada Explains the Anarchic, Irrational "Anti-Art" Movement of Dadaism
Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities and culture. He's at work on the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles, the video series The City in Cinema, the crowdfunded journalism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Angeles Review of Books' Korea Blog. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Faceboo k.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Download 36 Dadaist Magazines from the The Digital Dada Archive (Plus Other Avant-Garde Books, Leaflets & Ephemera)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In searching for a treasure trove of publications springing from the avant-garde, deliberately irrational, early 20th-century European "anti-art" art movement known as Dada, where would you first look? Many corners of the world's historic cultural capitals may come right to mind, but might we suggest the University of Iowa?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Until I left America my “Americanness” never really occurred to me. If I had any geographical identity it was smaller scale, more specific. I was working-class Midwestern. I was a Chicagoan. Moving to the middle of England eight years ago made all those distinctions moot. Everything about me was now macro.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Fermynwoods Contemporary Art, Thrapson. 218 likes · 17 talking about this. Fermynwoods Contemporary Art commissions artistic dialogue between artists and audiences, people and place.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
One. It's early September of 2015 and I'm on the island of Santorini for a literary festival. After the short reading, which takes place outdoors on a patio, the Greek audience asks questions, the first of which is, "What do you think of Donald Trump?"

Since announcing his candidacy, the reality-show star has been all over the news. Every outrageous thing he says is repeated and analyzed-like he's a real politician. I answer that I first became aware of Donald Trump in the late 1980s. That was when Alma, a Lithuanian woman I was working for, bought his book The Art of the Deal and decided he was wonderful. Shortly afterward, I saw him on Oprah, and ever since then he's always been in the background, this ridiculous blowhard, part showman and part cartoon character. I see his presidential bid as just another commercial for himself. It wouldn't surprise me if he were to name the Hamburglar as his running mate. So I say that on stage and then have to explain who the Hamburglar is.

Two. A month before the election a man picks me up at the Philadelphia airport and takes me to Red Bank, New Jersey, for a show. We get to talking and I learn his name is Michael. He is white and fifty-five and used to work for Pathmark, a supermarket chain that went bankrupt and closed the last of its branches in 2015. I ask some general questions and learn that grocery stores make the brunt of their money on junk food. "The highest markup, though, is on spices-seventy-six percent!" says Michael, adding that the most frequently stolen items are razor blades, baby formula, and big jugs of laundry detergent, which seem like they'd be pretty hard to shoplift. I mean, those things have gotten huge, like gas cans.

"Nowadays people walk out with the whole cart," Michael says. "Roll out the door saying, Just try to stop me!"

It's rare for a hired driver to overtly discuss politics, and rarer still for him or her to introduce the topic. They will sometimes skirt around it, though. We pass a Trump sign on the road and Michael acknowledges it, saying, sourly, "I just feel that for guys like us, white guys our age, if we need any help-housing or food stamps or whatever-it's the back of the line. You know what I mean?"

Well isn't that sort of where the line forms? I think. Michael's is a group I've been hearing a lot about lately. White men who, following eight years of a black president, feel forgotten.

How exactly did Obama neglect you? I want to ask but don't. Instead, I change the subject to lines in general. "I didn't wait more than a few minutes to check in for my flight this morning," I say cheerfully, not adding that I'm executive platinum on American so never have to wait for anything. When I do have to wait, I'm appalled.

Three. I donate a thousand dollars to the Hillary for America campaign and within what seems like minutes I get an email from them saying, in effect, That's great, but can we have more? Her organization is by no means unique in this regard. Everyone I donate to acts the same way, and I wind up unsubscribing from their emails and resenting them.

Four. I talk to a longtime friend of the family who tells me with great authority that Hillary Clinton is a member of the Illuminati and that she and her husband have killed scores of people, including children, who they also sexually molested.

"You're kidding, right?" I say.

He's not, and within minutes words are shooting from his mouth like water from a fire hose. It's hard to catch it all, but I do grab hold of, "You think it's a coincidence that Prince was murdered on Queen Elizabeth's birthday?"

"Who said he was murdered?" I ask.

"Oh, please," this person says. "You honestly believe he died of an 'accidental drug overdose?' "

The guy speaks to me like I'm an idiot. "And the queen had him killed ... why, exactly?" I ask. "Because his name was Prince?"

I later look at one of the websites this person relies on for information. On it, an anonymous source close to the royal family-a "Palace Insider"-reports hearing the queen saying to another Illuminati member at a tea party that before the year ends, three more world famous musicians must die.

None of the websites my friend looks at say anything bad about Donald Trump. Rather he is hailed as a man of peace. The ones they hate are George Soros, of course, and, surprisingly, Bill Gates, who has murdered more innocents than even the Clintons, apparently. My friend gets almost feverish when he talks about these people and the way they're all connected: Queen Elizabeth leads to Jay Z leads to the Centers for Disease Control leads to the faked Sandy Hook shooting and the way the government staged 9/11.

I want to laugh. Then I want him to laugh and say, "Just kidding!" But he honestly believes all this, and is frustrated that I won't believe it as well. "Wake up!" he says.

Five. An article in the New York Times suggests that Trump should run with the Hamburglar and I think, Hey, that's my line.

Six. On election night, I am in Portland, Oregon. At the start of the evening I feel confident, but come dinnertime I start to get nervous. I eat alone in the fancy hotel restaurant, watching the waiters and waitresses for clues that I am worrying over nothing. "Any news?" I keep asking, taking it for granted that, like me, they voted for Clinton. They have ironic tattoos and know about wine, who else could they have been for? I think.

Back in the room, I turn on the radio and look at the electoral map online. I go to bed, reach for my iPad. Shut my eyes, reach for my iPad. When the election is called for Trump, I lie there, unable to sleep. In the middle of the night, I go to the fitness center and watch the little TV embedded in my elliptical machine. The news had been telling me for months that Clinton was a shoo-in. Now they want me to listen as they soul search and determine how they got it so wrong. "Fuck you," I say to the little screen.

An hour later, I take a bath and get back into bed. Staring at the ceiling, wide-awake, I suddenly think of Cher and realize that what I'm feeling, she's feeling as well. So are millions of other people of course: Hugh, my sisters, all my friends except for the conspiracy theorist. Oddly, it's this woman I've never met or even seen in person, who brings me comfort. The next morning I wander the city in a daze, my eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep, thinking I'm not alone. I've got Cher.

Seven. A few days after the election, I'm in Oakland, California. It's Sunday afternoon and I notice a great many people walking toward what looks like a park, some of them carrying signs. "What's going on?" I ask a young woman. Her hair is purple in some places and green in others.

"Oh," she says. "Everyone's going to gather around Lake Merritt and hold hands. We're going to form a human chain around it." She says this as though it's going to reverse time and make Donald Trump stop being the president-elect. I cringe, thinking of how this will play on Fox News-"Watch out everyone, they're holding hands!"

Eight. I join my family on Emerald Isle for Thanksgiving and have a great screaming fight with my Republican father, who yells at one point, "Donald Trump is not an asshole!" I find this funny but at the same time surprising. Regardless of whether or not you voted for him, I thought the president-elect's identity as a despicable human being was something we could all agree on. I mean, he pretty much ran on it.

Later in our argument my father shouts, "He's the best thing that's happened to this country in years," and, "It was just locker-room talk."

"I'm in locker rooms five days a week and have never heard anyone carry on like Trump in that video," I argue. "And if I did, I wouldn't think, Wow, that guy ought to be my president. I'd think he was a creep and a loser." Then I add, repeating something I'd heard from someone else, "Besides, he wasn't in a locker room, he was at work."

Since I left the United States in 1998, I've cast absentee ballots. Americans overseas vote from the last state they lived in, which for me was New York. Then we got the house on Emerald Isle, and I changed my location to North Carolina, where I'm more inclined to feel hopeless. In 1996, in line at the grocery store in lower Manhattan, I'd look at the people in front of me thinking Bill Clinton voter, Bill Clinton voter, convicted felon, Bill Clinton voter, foreign tourist, felon, felon, Bill Clinton voter, felon.

At the supermarket I stomp off to after the fight with my father on Emerald Isle, it's Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, and then the cashier, who also voted for him. Of course, these are just my assumptions. The guy in the T-shirt that pictures a semiautomatic rifle above the message COME AND TAKE IT- the one in fatigues buying two twelve packs of beer and a tub of rice pudding-didn't necessarily vote Republican. He could have just stayed home on election day and force-fed the women he holds captive in the crawl space beneath his living room.

The morning after our argument, I come downstairs to find my father in the kitchen. "Are you still talking to me?" he asks.

I look at him as if he were single-handedly responsible for the election of Donald Trump, as if he had knowingly cast the tie-breaking vote and all of what is to come is entirely his fault. Then I say, "Yes. Of course I'm still talking to you."

He turns and plods into the living room. "Horse's ass."

Nine. On Christmas morning, at home in England, I climb into the loft space above the bathroom in search of some presents I'd wrapped months earlier. The ladder I'm using is wooden and has only two legs, which slip on my freshly waxed floor. I fall from a height of nine feet and land with a bang on my left side, fracturing eight ribs. Lying on the floor, stunned, and in the greatest pain of my life, it occurs to me that I might die before Trump assumes office and that maybe that won't be such a terrible thing. Amy runs out of the guest room then and Hugh charges up the stairs from the kitchen, both of them asking, "What happened?" and "Are you all right?"

I don't want to ruin Christmas, so say, "I'm fine. I'm fine." Fine people, though, don't need ten minutes to get off the floor.

Hugh phones the NHS-the National Health Service-and after being asked a number of preliminary questions, I'm put through to a nurse named Mary.

"Who are you again?" I ask.

"Mary," she repeats, not, I notice, Mary Steward, or whatever her last name is. Everything in America is based on lawsuits, on establishing a trail. In the U.S. I'd be told to come in immediately for X-rays, but in England they figure that unless you're unconscious, or leaking great quantities of fluid-blood, pus, et cetera-there's no point in wasting everyone's time. Mary asks me a number of questions that determine whether or not I pierced a lung, which apparently I have not. "But it really hurts when I cough," I tell her.

"Well, David," she says brightly. "Then my advice to you would be not to cough, and to have a lovely Christmas."

I later learn that what I suffered was called a blunt-force trauma. It's remarkably similar to how I felt after the election, as if I'd been slammed against a wall or hit by a car. Both pains persist, show no signs, in fact, of ever going away. The damage is permanent. I will never be the same as I was before the accident/election. A lovely Christmas is out of the question. Every day I lie on the floor and clutch my sides, stunned.

Ten. I hold on to the most unreasonable hope: The electoral college will come to its senses and say, We can't let this happen! It will turn out that Russia tampered with our voting machines. Yet nothing stops the advancing truck. On Inauguration Day, I am in Seattle. Late in the afternoon, my old friend Lyn sends me a photo of an anti-Trump sticker someone found in Japan. It's cleverly designed: three peaks that on second glance turn out to be Trump sandwiched between two Klansmen. I want to write back and say, Ha, but instead, as a joke, I respond, "Dear Lyn, I'm sorry you're so opposed to change, or too small-minded to move past your narrow assumptions. In the future, I'd appreciate your keeping things like this to yourself. David"

A minute later, I send a follow-up email that says, "Just kidding." And it bounces back, as do the next three emails I send. She's blocked me! I realize. After thirty-eight years of friendship!

I go to bed that night and lie awake, worried that she's telling everyone I'm a Trump supporter. The news will spread and by morning I'll be ruined. But it was just a joke, I say to myself in the dark room. A horrible, horrible joke.
David Sedaris is the author of nine books and lives in West Sussex, England. His most recent book is Theft By Finding: Diaries (1977-2002) .

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Number of Reasons David Sedaris Has Been Depressed Lately

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
One. It's early September of 2015 and I'm on the island of Santorini for a literary festival. After the short reading, which takes place outdoors on a patio, the Greek audience asks questions, the first of which is, "What do you think of Donald Trump?"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In addition to the diverse range of artists that stem from our artistic programme, we have a select pool of artists who more regularly deliver our education programme.

Our Associate Educators are all artists experienced in working with schools, with active DBS checks. They each have their own specialisms and areas of interest through which they are able to develop bespoke workshops for your needs.

If you are interested in working with any of our Associate Educators or have ideas of your own please contact:

Clare Abbatt
Sculpture + Landscape

Clare is an artist who specialises in sculpture and figurative work as well as working to commission. Clare's workshops place hands-on making in the context of art history, producing unexpected tangents, memorably and enjoyably shifting preconceptions.

Louise Clarke
Drawing + Discovering

Louise is an artist and curator who embraces a range of media to produce a variety of installation based outcomes, championing the role of drawing as a way of thinking, working and analysing. Hands-on workshops with Louise are as likely to involve plaster casting, projections, and printmaking as they are drawing with ink, tape, and torches. Her past workshops have even included working with live owls, dead fish, and dressing up.

Sophie Cullinan
Abject Objects

Sophie is an artist who makes interactive artworks and performances often using mundane and domestic materials to reveal forgotten histories and beauty. Workshops with Sophie frequently involve making multiples and absurd experiments. Sophie is also one of our Education Coordinators.

Emma Davies
Installation + Impermanence

Emma is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work ranges from drawing and painting to performance and installation. Emma specialises in sustainable practices, in particular re-using paper based materials. Workshops with Emma explore scale, colour and tone to create emotional and visually impactful experiences. Emma is also our Complementary Education Coordinator.

Jessica Harby
Drawing + Democracy

Jessica is an American born artist who specialises in using creativity to amplify voices and encourage self-expression. Her workshops include drawing, mess-making, sewing and zine production.

Nita Nathwani
Ceramics + Construction

Nita is a ceramic artist who explores different processes and ways of making with clay. Her work often refers to movement and construction - both in terms of the making process and to architecture. Her workshops are about constructing large works from small, mapping body movement into clay, clay animation or easily accessible firing techniques. Nita is also one of our Education Coordinators.

Sam Read
Space + Symbols

Sam's workshops take inspiration from written language (typography) and place (topography). With playful and vibrant visuals he brings "serious" disciplines like graphic design and architecture down to earth. This frequently has a digital focus and is done with a combination of model-making and drawing.

James Steventon
Art + Technology

James is our Education Officer and delivers and manages our education programme. James is the Digital Special Interest Representative for Engage, the National Association for Gallery Education, and specialises in bringing together two distinct parts of the curriculum, art and technology, in ways children find exciting, teachers find developmental and Ofsted find impressive.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Associate Educators - Fermynwoods Contemporary Art

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In addition to the diverse range of artists that stem from our artistic programme, we have a select pool of artists who more regularly deliver our education programme. Our Associate Educators are all artists experienced in working with schools, with active DBS checks. They each have their own specialisms and areas of interest through which[...]

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
CELEBRATION FACTORY

Opening night: Friday 19 May 2017, 6-8pm
Co-commissioned by NN Contemporary Art & Casino Luxembourg
Curated by Catherine Hemelryk & Kevin Muhlen

"Europe is Lost" sings the British spoken word artist Kate Tempest in her protest song of the same name.

The headlines of the international media announce the crisis, some even talk of war. The French singer Jeanne Added sings elsewhere "A war is coming". Today's Europe is evidently in a challenging period since the crisis of migrants, the rise of populist parties and terrorist attacks. Beyond these events the consumer society and the world of entertainment continues to perform. Despite the terrorist attacks, people continue to make art, attend rock concerts, go to the theatre, dance, go clubbing...

Artist Filip Markiewicz's new body of work responds to these crises in an exhibition that will evolve over the coming 18 months. The exhibition's migration is, in part, an autobiographical mirror for the artist from the project's debut at NN Contemporary Art in Northampton, home to a significant Polish diaspora, and the artist's native Luxembourg. The exhibition will be held by Casino Luxembourg in 2018 and will also include work he's preparing with the Theater Basel (CH) and a series of Euro drawings currently presented at the Kunsthalle Tübingen (D)

The Polish philosopher Zygmunt Bauman talks about a "liquid modernity" where the individual is in the centre. Nothing is fixed, the neoliberal world teaches us a new way of conceiving our existence. The aim of CELEBRATION FACTORY is to try to represent this aspect of our society through the form of entertainment. The exhibition is not intending to be a kind of political activism, but rather to develop an almost surreal language consolidating different expressions, music and celebration; to find a liquid and artistic language fitting our moving and evolving society.

Some of the works comprising the exhibition draw from a retro-futurism with a nod to Z series cinema. Political power structures are represented by a mise en scène close to the absurd where many genres are mixed. It is a phenomenon that can also be seen in our media-political society in which we distinguish less and less the star-system from the politics, and where a kind of vampirisation of contemporary pop culture takes place. Northampton is the place of origin of the post-punk band Bauhaus, whose famous song Bela Lugosi is Dead became a dark anthem of the 80s subculture.

The exhibition sees a factory of drawings with imagery including the detritus from big night's out such as Polish Zywiec beer bottles, Daily Mail's Brexit frontpage, Motörhead frontman Lemmy, Albrecht Dürer's Jesus portrait with Pepsi cans, European hymn composer and Clockwork Orange Icon Ludwig van Beethoven with a melting Volkswagen Logo. The soundtracks to these hand-drawn multiples are provided by a new film by Filip exploring Northampton's music scene. The piece was filmed over one weekend and includes conversations with Professor of Punk Roy Wallace, behind the scenes footage of Northampton's Male Voice Choir recording their new album, rappers Phundo Art, Molly Mikes & Jack Parker performing at the legendary Labour club (now known as The Lab) and avant-garde black metal band Denigrata rehearsing and more. What began as a search for Bauhaus, became a snapshot of the resilience and panoply of creativity in one British town during this time of seismic political change.
About the artist:
Luxemburger of Polish origin, Filip Markiewicz (b.1980) is a multidisciplinary artist expressing himself through, a.o., drawing, video and installations thereby creating a coherent visual body of work using diversified media. The artist, who is always looking for explanations to our daily lives, explores the omnipresence of image and puts in perspective the message they convey. Applying criticism and a certain political twist to "the news", he underlines the vacuity of our overproducing visual world where news becomes reality, and not the opposite. While capitalism has become an ideology and banks the new cathedrals of mass expression, Filip interrogates some aspects of the European populations' discontent: social welfare, migration, wars outside our borders, religious integrism, the use of national and private wealth, the value of art as a reflection of culture. His willingness to go back to the pencil and the paper emerges from the need to use drawing as a widespread technique of expression that leaves a "real" imprint in a digitalized world of abstract evidence lead by forms and colours. Markiewicz was selected to represent the Great Duchy of Luxemburg at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015) with his project Paradiso Lussemburgo, that was particularly appreciated for its cohesion though complexity and variety of artistic disciplines. (© aeroplastics)

Events

Work in ProgressSaturday 10 June 2017, 2-4pm
For artists by artists, bring your work in progress for friendly peer critique. WiP is led by Sayed Sattar Hasan and starts with one or two featured artist presentations before opening the conversation out to the regular peer critique. If you would like to be a future featured artist at WiP, email us at[email protected] .

Write Club: Funding applicationsFriday 16 June 2017, 1-2pm
Join Catherine Hemelryk for a session on preparing funding applications. Bring examples of applications you are preparing and a pen, paper, laptop or tablet.

Protest song writing workshop
Saturday 17 June 2017, 2-4pm
Join Punk Scholar and DIY filmmaker Roy Wallace for this informal workshop to introduce you to writing and performing your protest song. The workshop will explore different approaches protest songs have taken over the years from punk to folk to rap. Bring ideas and your instruments. Open to all ages (anyone under 12 must be accompanied by an adult)

Artist tour of the show with Filip Markiewicz
Sunday 18 June 2017, 1pm
Join CELEBRATION FACTORY artist Filip Markiewicz for an informal tour of the exhibition and your opportunity to ask questions. The tour will be livestreamed as part of our Online Conversations, visit www.nncontemporaryart.org/online-conversation for the link.

Northampton Music Festival
Sunday 18 June 2017
Northampton Music Festival is taking over the town with nine stages and hundreds of musicians. NN is hosting a stage in the Courtyard and NN are taking over a stall at Northampton's Market Square. RAFTSIDE, Filip Markiewicz' alter ego, will be performing live at NN.
www.northamptonmusicfestival.co.uk

Daventry Arts Festival
Saturday 24 June 2017
NN are visiting Daventry Arts Festival, screening artist films and an info stand about arts and opportunities in Northampton.

From Art to Commerce
Saturday 24 June 2017, 11am
These monthly sessions, led by Tracey Clarke, are for anyone running a creative business or looking to start one. The first hour is a general workshop and the second hour consists of one-to-one short sessions. To book a one-to-one with Tracey please email[email protected] Spaces are limited so book early to avoid disappointment.

Late opening at NN & film screening at EFF:
Somers Town (dir. Shane Meadows)
Saturday 24 June 2017, 8:45pm at Errol Flynn Filmhouse, NN1 1UD
NN is staying open late on 24 June until 8.45pm so you can catch the exhibition before going to see Somers Town at the Errol Flynn Filmhouse. Somers Town shows an unlikely friendship between East Midlands runaway Tommo and Polish immigrant Marek over the course of a hot summer in London.
Tickets available soon from the Errol Flynn Filmhouse website.

Bumps & BabesThursday 29 June 2017, 2-3pm
Thursday 27 July 2017, 2-3pm
Get messy with your baby or pre-schooler in these crayon-fuelled, finger painting sessions. Make sure you wear clothes that can handle paint!

Acoustic Courtyard: open mic night Thursday 29 June 2017, 8-10pm
Come to NN's Courtyard, bring your instrument and let's have an acoustic evening in the open air.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Filip Markiewicz - NN Contemporary Art Northampton

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Opening night: Friday 19 May 2017, 6-8pm Co-commissioned by NN Contemporary Art & Casino Luxembourg Curated by Catherine Hemelryk & Kevin Muhlen "Europe is Lost" sings the British spoken word artist Kate Tempest in her protest song of the same name. The headlines of the international media announce the crisis, some even talk of war.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The landlocked rural county of Northamptonshire is among those officially deemed the least culturally engaged in the country, and as well as Northampton includes the towns of Kettering, Corby, Wellingborough, Rushden and Daventry in its borders.

Following Northampton Museum's controversial sale of one of its Egyptian artefacts, through which it remained open but lost its Museum Association accreditation, Kettering boasts the only accredited museum in the whole of the county.

However, its gerrymandered political borders do not paint an accurate picture of the diversity of its population, with no cities but a mixture of quaint villages and ex-industrial towns (although the spirit of shoemaking and steel working endures).

The county town of Northampton is the shire's only geographic area large enough to have its own cultural quarter, which includes NN Contemporary Art, Northampton Museum & Art Gallery (boasting the largest collection of shoes in the world and currently closed due to expansion work), plus Royal & Derngate theatre complex.

Replacing their original industries, many factory buildings across the town are now home to artist studios, such as Burns Street (including artists such as Jessica and Luke Harby) and Albus 3 (Sam P Gibson, Claire Jarvis and Mark Sibley) based in the old Albion Brewery.

Following the Beeching closures to rail services in the 1960s, the county remains difficult to navigate. For some, travelling south to London and back is the easiest way to travel east to west.

Where this has fractured the natural critical mass of culture seen in other counties, amplified by the uneven distribution of wealth, many artists and arts organisations have sprung up in the gaps, establishing partnerships across artificial civic borders.

Unlike Kettering's Museum and Art Gallery, the dynamic Gallery202 is free from the bureaucracy of local authority. Run by a small collective of artists (including Graham Keddie and Sharon Read), it often pops up in temporary spaces in the area.

Working in a similar capacity across the whole of Northamptonshire with a year-long programme is Fermynwoods Contemporary Art. The organisation has worked with and employed - myself included - many artists in the county, as well as others more internationally based.

Following the closure of its steelworks, Corby has often been the much-maligned town of Northamptonshire. However, artists such as Paula Boulton and Kate Dyer continue to prove that creativity appears in many of the officially overlooked parts of the county. The former returned to her hometown in the 1980s in order to "sew flowers in the concrete"; the latter has spent over 30 years documenting and empowering the town through photography with Corby Community Arts.

Deep Roots Tall Trees is a more recently-formed Corby arts partnership led by independent cultural engineer and local dynamo Rosalind Stoddart. Working alongside singer-songwriter Barb Jungr and choir director Gareth Fuller, it combines music, arts and song to celebrate the woodland areas in the town.

Our Woods, Rooftop Arts Centre
Kate Dyer is presenting photographic highlights of over 40 Deep Roots Tall Trees events at the community led Rooftop Arts Centre, from printmaking, to experiential photography workshops, plus a recent sound, movement and light performance featuring projections by Kurt Laurenz Theinert.
Until 30 June, Rooftop Arts Centre, 9 Chisholm House, Queens Square, Corby, Northants NN17 1PZ. rooftopgalleryandworkshops.yolasite.com

The Twelfth Player, Sixfields Stadium
Royal and Derngate's theatre world clout meets Fermynwoods Contemporary Art's reputation for risk taking in the public realm and the use of new technology. Working together to commission Seven Sisters Group to create an audio-visual performance at Sixfields Stadium, home of Northampton Town Football Club, The Twelfth Player blends site-specific performance and handheld video technology over a 45-minute immersive walking tour of the stadium and through the past 70 years of the club's history.
22 June - 12 July 2017 (closed Mondays), Sixfields Stadium, Edgar Mobbs Way, Northampton, NN5 5QA. www.fermynwoods.co.uk

The Sounds of Home Community Concert, Brooke Weston Academy
Paula Boulton's recently formed The Sounds of Home Orchestra present a huge plethora of musical memories and cultures in a new musical composition for orchestra. In addition to poignant stories and a visual script created by Tony Coleman of theLAB Visuals to be projected during the suite, the event will feature new music based on the Chinese pentatonic scale, outlandishly composed by a six-year-old Polish/Slovakian resident and played on a grand piano.
23 June 2017, 7.30pm, Brooke Weston Academy, Coomb Road, Corby, NN18 8LA. thesoundsofhome.weebly.com

Celebration Factory, NN Contemporary Art & Casino Luxembourg
Co-commissioned by Casino Luxembourg, Celebration Factory sees a body of work by Filip Markiewicz reflecting on 'the resilience and panoply of creativity in one British town during this time of seismic political change', including drawings of the detritus from Polish nights out, such as Zywiec beer bottles, alongside The Daily Mail's Brexit front page.
Until 22 July 2017, Number Nine, Guildhall Road, Northampton, NN1 1DP. www.nncontemporaryart.org

1. Deep Roots Tall Trees, Natural Vestige, Thoroughsale Woods, Corby, 2017. Courtesy: Virginie Litzler
2. Filip Markiewicz, Celebration Factory, NN Contemporary Art, Northampton, 2017. Courtesy: NN Contemporary Art
3. Seven Sisters Group, The Twelfth Player, Sixfields Stadium, Northampton, 2017. Courtesy: Andy Eathorne
4. Paula Boulton, The Sounds of Home, The Core at Corby Cube, 2015. Courtesy: Kate Anderson
James Steventon was one of five a-n members who participated in the inaugural a-n Writer Development Programme which ran from June 2015 to March 2016. For more information on the writer programme, and to read more of the writers' work, visit the programme's blog on a-n.co.uk or use the a-n writer development programme tag

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Scene Report: Northamptonshire - Fractured, uneven, with artists filling the gaps - a-n The Artists Information Company

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The landlocked rural county of Northamptonshire is among those officially deemed the least culturally engaged in the country, and as well as Northampton includes the towns of Kettering, Corby, Wellingborough, Rushden and Daventry in its borders.

# data[].attributes.body
A review of a show I was in which does not mention that I was a part of the show.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In Robert Ellis's Proverbs, sight is merged with sound, as audio recordings accompany photographs made in Uganda. Presented by Belfast Exposed Photography Gallery, Ellis's photographs mix local myths, proverbs and tales passed down through generations with his documentary images; thus allowing the audio recordings to form a narrative around history, landscapes and people unfamiliar to him.

Besides the galleries located in the Copeland Park and the Bussey Building community, Hannah Barry Gallery's Oliver Griffin exhibition installed a skate-park inside the gallery space, while South London Gallery held exhibitions with Alicia Reyes McNamara and Erik Van Lieshout.

Peckham 24 succeeded in creating a 'fringe' around Photo London, initiating a festival that celebrates the artists that live and work in the city. As this is only the second iteration of Peckham 24, the festival looks set for a bright future.

Peckham 24 took place on 19th and 20th May.

Written by Lizzy Vartanian Collier, a contributor to Arteviste.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A Review of Peckham 24 in Peckham, London

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As the art world elite concluded their annual Photo London gathering at Somerset House, Peckham was just warming up by presenting a festival of exhibitions that encompassed a network of Peckham-based artists, galleries and curators. Founded by Vivienne Gamble and Jo Dennis, Peckham 24, is a