Reading Assembly: Care - Live Sessions
Thu 27 & Fri 28 May, 12:00-20:00
Reading Assembly: Care is a curatorial research platform that connects grass roots community groups, artists, educators, academic researchers and students from different departments of the University of Reading (Art, Film, Theatre, Television, Architecture) to come together as co-investigators on urgent issues around ‘care’. The project is based on a long-term engagement of various research groups who act as co-investigators of the theme of care in their own terms.
To care means different things for different people. There is often a great difference between the way governments measure and evaluate care work for instance, and the way we care in our everyday lives. The project aims to make every day ‘acts of care’ visible through different socially engaged artistic practices, working at the intersections of art, care and social research.
During this public engaging event on 27th - 28th of May, Reading Assembly: Care will be launched as a digital platform that connects all the different co-investigators who have been working on the programme, for the first time.
This event will be held on Zoom, to sign up to any of the sessions please register on our website.
Several sessions will also be streamed on Reading Culture Live.
Thursday Live Sessions
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm Defying the distance: Sustainable letters for loved ones
- A workshop-based session of crafting seed paper to create plantable messages
1:00 pm – 3:00 pm Cooking and Care
- Join us for 2 hours of baking, art, and conversation.
4:00 pm – 5:00 pm A Walk With Nature
- A workshop to creatively enhance your lockdown daily walks.
5:00 pm – 6:00 pm purpleSTARS Pandemic Portraits
- During the Pandemic Portraits live session, purpleSTARS will introduce recorded video portraits, and invite participants to join in listening, drawing and if you would like to, dancing. Please have some paper and drawing materials with you for the session.
6:00 pm – 7:00 pm Waiting for Flowers to Bloom: Life in Lockdown
- The screening of this 15-minute short film will be followed by a Q&A with the students involved who will further discuss self-care, studying and creating a piece of collaborative work entirely in lockdown. Please come along and join the discussion!
7:00 pm – 8:00 pm Love and Labor. Intimacy and Isolation. Care and Survival
- A performance between mothers and children in a state of lockdown Performance by Maternal Fantasies collective, accompanied with q&a with artists Isabell Spengler, Magdalena Kallenberger and curator Anna Kontopoulou.
Friday Live Sessions
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm Architecture Cares
- Please join us in this workshop, where we will be reworking the map of care Architecture students have created, remapping the city of Reading together.
3:00 pm – 4:00 pm Menstrual Care Charter
- Join us for a 10-minute live performance entitled Menstrual Care Charter, followed by an interdisciplinary Q&A with Menstrual Care Charter’s artists and menstruation experts on 28th May 3-4pm. Before, during and beyond the event, we ask Reading Assembly participants and audiences or anyone interested in the topic to contribute with their menstrual care demands, votes on demands and comments on Menstrual Care Charter’s Padlet
5:00 pm – 6:00 pm Sounding Out: Listening Session
- Join us for an audio play followed by a Q&A with the artists and performers involved here.
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm What is the sound of care and solidarity?
- Join us for an open listening session with Reading Refugee Support Group (RRSG) and Ultra-red sound artist activist collective.