Artists' Conversation #8: Smooth Space meets Encounters Arts

Free Event in Torre Abbey's Learning Lab
Tues 26 May
6.30pm

all welcome, but booking advised - please contact info@smoothspace.org to reserve a place

Our next Smooth Space Artists' Conversation at Torre Abbey is with Encounters Arts who create imaginative spaces and processes for people to explore their relationships with themselves, each other, where they live and the natural world.

We are delighted to welcome Ruth Ben-Tovim (Creative Director) and Anne-Marie Culhane (Associate Artist) who have been working together since 2009 when they developed A Little Patch of Ground an intergenerational installation, performance and permaculture food growing project as part of the Year of Environment in Liverpool. Since then Encounters has produced A Little Patch of Ground 5 times in different UK towns and cities.

As well as sharing stories and images from past projects, Anne-Marie & Ruth will also talk about two new Encounters projects currently underway in Torquay, funded by the Arts Council, that they are each involved in delivering:
a) Museum of Now is a collaboration with Torquay museum working with local residents and three artists from Encounters to create objects and artefacts that have meaning for them or their communities. These will be inspired by responses to current local and global issues and the collections at Torquay Musuem. The project will culminate in an exhibition at the museum and creative public events October - December 2015.
b) Grandmothers from Paignton, Totnes, Dartmouth (the South Devon round robin route ) will come together over six months to share their experiences of being grandmothers as well as their hopes and fears for their grandchildren and the world they are inheriting. Experiences, ideas and thoughts coming from the group will be woven together to create Grandmothers, a public performance event that will tour to the three towns in October 2015

Since 2004, Encounters has been specialising in designing socially and ecologically engaged projects. Through public interventions, performance, co-authored exhibitions and uniquely tailored events, the invitation is to re-look at who and how we are in the world at this time of crisis and opportunity and together to explore new interconnected stories to live by on individual, local, city wide and global levels. Encounters are now based in South Devon and work locally and nationally.
Anne-Marie  creates events, performances and long term cross-disciplinary projects that draw people into closer connection with the seasonal cycles, the land and each other.