Participants at work on a canvas. Photo: Jorine Beck.
Leaveners bring hope
Leaveners and artists collaborate on visual art installation
The Quaker arts group the Leaveners recently collaborated with Birmingham artists Jonathan Graney and Dale Hipkiss on a visual art installation called ‘Hope’.
A group of women from the refugee support organisation Restore took part in the project. They joined Leaveners programme leader Jorine Beck for a workshop at the P Café in Stirchley, Birmingham.
The women painted large canvasses in bright colours. These then formed the background for messages of hope, inspired by poems from the Leaveners’ Poets’ Corner archive on ‘Displacement: Stories of Hope and Humanity’.
‘We have just received funding to build this project further, including an exhibition with artists responding to the poetry, and a philosophy and spoken word event. This is all exciting and shows how much people are engaged with the current refugee crisis and the suffering of displaced peoples,’ Jorine told the Friend.