TIME, SPACE AND EMPIRE | Stoke-on-Trent & London 2024 – 2025

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TIME, SPACE AND EMPIRE

Culture& is excited to launch Time, Space and Empire, a cross-arts programme exploring the concepts of time, space, and the development of Britain’s sea power during the expansion of its former empire in relation to the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site in Southeast London and the Potteries in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. Programmes include artist interventions in heritage sites, working with community-led organisations to empower underrepresented audiences, and creating research opportunities for diverse talents. The project will also explore how the colonial economy brought changes to what was consumed and considered to be ‘good taste’

More programmes will be announced soon. Please follow us on social media and subscribe to Culture&’s newsletter for more information.

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London

Stepping Through Time: Walking Tour of Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site

Culture& is excited to launch Stepping Through Time:Walking Tour of Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site, a collaboration with Smartify that retraces the British Empire in the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site. You will stroll through Montagu House, the Royal Observatory, the Greenwich Maridian, Maze Hill, Queen’s House, the Old Royal Naval College, the Painted Hall, West Gate Globes, the Cutty Sark, St Alfege Church, and gaze upon Deptford Dockyard.

You can access the tour via your browser or download the tour beforehand via the Smartify app. The image on each of the direction stops shows the site you are looking for.

Coming Soon

Jacqueline Bishop: The Keeper of All The Secrets, at The Queen’s House, London

As part of our continuing Time, Space and Empire programme, Culture& is delighted to be partnering with Royal Museums Greenwich on the acquisition and display of contemporary artist Jacqueline Bishop’s Keeper of All The Secrets at London’s historic Queen’s House from 15 February 2025. Entry to the exhibition is free.

Bishop’s powerful and groundbreaking ceramic work engages with the artist’s Jamaican heritage, the traditional Caribbean figure of the market woman and the history of women using plants to control their own bodies to resist enslavement during colonial times.

A book containing essays about the artwork, including poems by the artist and an interview, will accompany the display.

There will be parallel events to the display exploring African Caribbean traditions of using herbs for health and wellbeing.

HERbal Health Workshop by Herbal Hackney

Join Herbal Hackney for this bespoke workshop to mark Women’s History Month.

Location
Date and Times Wednesday 12 March 2025 I 6.30pm-8.30pm
Prices £7 Adults | £5 Royal Museums Greenwich Members

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Sips of Wisdom Workshop

Celebrating the knowledge of African Caribbean herbs for women’s health

Location
Date and Times Saturday 22 March 2025 | 11.30am-1.30pm
Prices £7 Adults | £5 Royal Museums Greenwich Members

Book Now

Past Events

Stoke-on-Trent

Opening Night & Museum Late: A Long Table on Sugar, Tea, Plants and Pottery

23 August 2024, V&A Wedgwood Collection Welcome Space

We would like to thank everyone who joined us at Culture&’s TimeSpace and Empire events in Stoke-on-Trent. Special thanks to V&A Wedgwood Collection, the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, Gabriella Gay, and artist Jacqueline Bishop.

On 23 August, the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition. The public joined us at the Long Table for discussions exploring Staffordshire’s histories of slavery and abolition with the artist of The Keeper of All The Secrets herself, Jacqueline Bishop as well as a wide range of participants from Stoke-on-Trent and surrounding areas.The Keeper of All The Secrets was featured on the 23 August edition of the Stoke Sentinel. The artworks is on view at V&A Wedgwood Collection until 3 November before travelling to London’s in early 2025. Photo Credit: Sonska Studio.

Stoke-on-Trent

Jacqueline Bishop: Fauna Poetry Reading

24 August, Potteries Museum and Art Gallery: Entrance and Ceramics Gallery

Visitors joined artist Jacqueline Bishop for a poetry reading with Q&A and lively discussion on the position of black women in Caribbean society explored through her poetry and ceramics. Bishop read from her first collection of poems published in 2006, titled Fauna, which uses Caribbean flowers as metaphors to explore the lives of enslaved women.

Stoke-on-Trent

A Long Table on Sugar, Tea, Plants and Pottery

24 August, Potteries Museum and Art Gallery: Entrance and Ceramics Gallery

The public joined the artist of The Keeper of All The Secrets herself, Jacqueline Bishopat, at the Long Table for discussions exploring the broad theme of exchanging knowledge: Sugar, tea , plants and pottery. Photo Credit: Sonska Studio.

Stoke-on-Trent

Clay Craft and Chat with Emma Price and Gabriella Gay

Saturday 24 August, Potteries Museum and Art Gallery: Entrance and Ceramics Gallery

Take inspiration from Jacqueline Bishop’s work to explore women’s relationship to nature. Experience a short poetry dance film by Cynthia Coady based on the experiences of black and brown women walking in Staffordshire. Take a creative walk with artist Daby Obiechfu and poet Gabriella Gay to collect botanical inspiration to make a cyanotype print on repurposed cotton. There’ll be time for sewing and conversation at the ‘Long Table’. No experience of sewing, embroidery or cyanotype printing needed.

Inspired by Jacqueline Bishop’s new ceramic display we’ll use recycled fabric, flora and photo negatives to create a cyanotype print in this drop-in workshop. Explore pattern and composition in this exciting process with artist and milliner Holly Johnson. Photo Credit: Sonska Studio.

Stoke-on-Trent

Future Fest: Botanical Walk and Cyanotype Craft Workshops

Saturday 31 August, World of WedgwoodArtists: Cynthia Coady, Daby Obiechfu, Gabriella Gay, Holly Johnson, Emma Price

As part of TimeSpace and Empire, the workshops took inspiration from Jacqueline Bishop’s work to explore women’s relationship to nature. Visitors experienced a short poetry dance film by Cynthia Coady based on the experiences of Black and Brown women walking in Staffordshire and took a creative walk with artist Daby Obiechfu and poet Gabriella Gay to collect botanical inspiration to make a cyanotype print on repurposed cotton. The cyanotype print drop-in workshop was lead by artist and milliner Holly Johnson. Photo Credit: Sonska Studio.

London

Performance Lecture: Balfour Reparations (2024-2044) by Farah Saleh

15:00 & 19:00 Friday 13 September 2024, St Alfege Church, SE10 9JT, London

Balfour Reparations (2024-2044), a performance lecture by Palestinian dancer and choreographer Farah Saleh, took place in St Alfege Church Hall on 13 September 2024. Sound design by Lucas Chih Peng Kao.

The performance lecture investigated ways of confronting the United Kingdom’s colonial legacy in Palestine. In particular, the role of Arthur James Balfour, the country’s Prime Minister (1902-1905), Foreign Secretary (1916-1919), Chancellor and Rector of many prominent UK universities (1886-1930), in the historical denial of Palestinian political rights in their homeland. Saleh layers history, fiction, and fantasy through a lens of Critical Fabrication and Afrofuturism while engaging with and being inspired by archival material, such as documents, photos of historical sites in England, Scotland and Palestine, and videos including Balfour inaugurating the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1925 juxtaposed with Farah as a Palestinian scholar inaugurating decolonisation at a British University in 2024. Photo Credit: Sonska Studio.

4 Sept 2024, University of Greenwich

We would like to thank everyone for part taking in the TimeSpace and Monumentality Conference that took place at University of Greenwich on 4 September 2024.

Special thanks to David Waterworth, Binki Taylor, Dr Nathaniel Adam Tobias Coleman , Dr Simon Bowes, Dervish Productions, Professor Stephen Kennedy, Simon Withers, KV Duong and Dr Errol Francis for making the TimeSpace and Monumentality Conference a great success.

Through the mediums of lecture, demonstration and performance, TimeSpace and Monumentality examined the concept of Monumentality through the lens of ecology, mapping and modelling practices, the history of abolition, architecture, immersive experience and performance. Photo Credit: Sonska Studio.

Photo Credit: Sonska Studio.

London

16 July – 13 Sept 2024, Stephen Lawrence Gallery, University of Greenwich

Artists: Emmanuel Boateng; KV Duong; Funmi Lijadu; Tova McKenzie-Bassant; Anh Nguyen; Divya Sharma

Photo Credit: Sonska Studio.