_{BOOK TICKETS}

‍

‍

On Sustaining an Art Practice and Growing Community

Join us for our yearly Morphe conference, this year held in London.

A day of workshops, talks and seminars reflecting on community and sustaining an arts practice. More details to come.

‍

Confirmed speakers:

Dr Funmi Adewole Elliott (Performer, Educator and Dramaturge)

Kieran Dodds (Non-fiction Photographer)

Julia Lucero (Associate Director at Nahmad Projects, London)

Workshops:

Ruth Smith (Director of Ruth Smith Gallery, Devon)

Lydia Oak (Director of Shieldfield Art Works, Newcastle)

Performance:

BELLS (Kandice Holmes)

‍-

This event will replace the London gatherings' Friday night events this term

-

COST

We want to make this event as accessible as possible, and to pay our contributors fairly, but we are also a small charity who rely on donations and funding. We have estimated that it will cost approximately £40 per person to run this event.

We are however choosing to run the event on a donations basis, and encourage those who are able to give more to do so, and those who are not, to give what they can.

Lunch is provided with the ticket donation.

-

VENUE

The conference will take place across the whole site at St Barnabas Church in Dalston. The main talks are likely to happen in the upstairs hall which (thankfully) has heating! However it is also on the first floor of the building with no step free access.

-

Order of the Day

Morning: Talks

Lunch: Provided

Afternoon: Workshops

Evening: Performances

-

Talks:

Dr Funmi Adewole Elliott

The Arts as a Vocation: Sustaining a Lifelong ArtsPractice

If you feel called to the arts, you may understand your work as a vocation before a profession. A vocation is what you feel called to do, not simply how you earn a living. This raises important questions: what does an artistic vocation mean for livelihood, relationships with friends and family, and financial stability? How we understand an artistic vocation shapes how we engage with work, money, and community. In this talk I discuss the insights I have had gained through scripture and experience about calling, faithfulness,and sustaining an arts practice over a lifetime.

Funmi Adewole Elliott is a performer-writer.After moving from Nigeria to Britain in 1994, she toured for several years withAfrican dance drama and Physical theatre companies whilst working as an artsconsultant and as a dance advocate writing about and leading projects supporting Black dance. She lectured at De Montfort University, Leicester, for eight years before returning to full-time independent practice in 2025. FAEStudios is the platform for her work in arts consultancy, dramaturgy, pedagogy, and performance

-

Workshops:

Ruth Helen Smith is an artist based in Devon where she runs a gallery, an art residency programme, and teaches. Her paintings are loose abstractions painted en plein air and centre around the miracle of existence. Ruth began with an art historical background studying her BA and MA at The Courtauld Institute of Art, before training in painting at Heatherley’s. One of her most recent projects has been setting up an artist collective called Red Mud Arts, which has been bringing over 100 artists together through several monthly groups, to collaborate, critique and support.

‍

Performance:

BELLS led by multi-disciplinary artist Kandice Holmes will share a stripped back performance of her 'prophetic folk' storytelling, set to medieval, drone and psychedelic textures. The name is symbolic of a desire for her music to act as a clarion call, to speak truth to power, rally people together and raise up praise.

‍

‍

‍