Past Event
The Whitechapel Gallery is committed to making all of our events as accessible as possible for every audience member. Please contact publicprogrammes@whitechapelgallery.org if you would like to discuss a particular request and we will gladly discuss with you the best way to accommodate it.
– Information about access on site at the gallery is available here https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/visit/access/
– This includes information about Lift access; Borrowing wheelchairs & seating; Assistance Animals; Parking; Toilets and baby care facilities; Blind & Partially Sighted Visitors; Subtitles and transcripts; British Sign Language (BSL) and hearing induction loops; Deaf Messaging Service (DMS).
About This Event
– This event takes place in the Zilkha Auditorium at Whitechapel Gallery
– You must purchase a ticket to attend the event. Concession tickets are available. If you require a Personal Assistant to support your attendance, we can offer them a seat free of charge, but it must be arranged in advance.
– This event is suitable for those over the age of 16
– We are unable to provide British Sign Language interpretation for this event
– We are unable to provide live closed captioning or CART for this event.
– This event last approximately 1.5 hours. There are no rest breaks currently scheduled during this event.
– An audio recording of the event can be obtained by emailing publicprogrammes@whitechapelgallery.org following the event.
Transport
– To the best of our knowledge, there are no planned disruptions to local transport on the date of the event.
– Our nearest train station – Aldgate East Underground (1 min) is not wheelchair accessible. The closest wheelchair accessible stations are Whitechapel (15 min), Shoreditch High Street (15 min) or Liverpool Street (15 min).
– Free parking for Blue Badge holders is available at the top of Osborn Street in the pay and display booths for an unlimited period. Spaces are available on a first come, first served basis.
Artists Jasmin Bhanji and Khatun join Anna Harding, artist and former CEO of SPACE studios, and Will Jennings, Executive Director of Hypha Studios, to discuss the value of artist’s studios as creative spaces and learning environments. The group ponders what it means to re-imagine more affordable studio provisions in cities and, more broadly, what studios mean for a wide spectrum of artistic practices.
Anna worked for 16 years as Chief Executive at SPACE, a charity and social enterprise which provides studios for approx. 900 artists at 20 locations. As a champion of artists and their space in a changing city, she lead the organisation through a period in which it acquired 14 new studio premises including 3 major freehold sites, as well as providing professional development advice to over 1000 artists. She has participated extensively in planning and policy on behalf of the artist community in London and has worked closely with regeneration teams, developers and architects to find affordable and sustainable options for artists. She loves a challenge, and recently left this role at SPACE to develop her own art practice.
Harding holds a BA Hons in History and History of Art (UCL) and an MA in Art Education and Curating (Urbana-Champaign, USA). She trained and worked as a curator, working at institutions including Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Whitechapel, Hayward Gallery, Camerawork and Kettles Yard Cambridge. Prior to SPACE she set up the Masters Degree in Curating at Goldsmiths which she ran from 1995-2003. She loves writing and research and has edited several books.
Artist and educator Jasmin Bhanji’s research in art education explores the relationship between practical and theoretical modes of enquiry through performance, enactment and embodied learning. She is curious about the absences and omitted stories in the archives of art history. Considering herself a direct product of colonial and post-colonial history, she acts as a magpie, accumulating and arranging layered imagery, images of artists, artifacts, and art materials to interrogate the concept of ‘the studio’ as crafted in the persistent images of Western art history.
With a background in ceramics and in conjunction to her studio practice, Jasmin has maintained an education practice. She undertook a PGCE at UCL in 2001, an Art Psychotherapy Foundation at Goldsmiths and has worked in primary and secondary schools around London. In 2012 she moved to Nairobi, Kenya, set up a studio in her garden and worked as an Art Teacher in an international school. After moving back to London, Bhanji completed a Masters in Art and Design in Education and has since had a studio inside a secondary school in Islington.
Khatun is a Leicester-born visual artist now based in London. Working primarily with photography, moving image and mixed media, Khatun works closely with notions of identity, belonging, family and intimacy. Inspired by her dual South Asian-British identity, she constantly explores community and the fine line between culture and the heavy influence of national identity. Khatun has just completed a residency at SET studios in Woolwich, and was recently featured in Elephant Magazine’s ‘State of The Nation’ (September 2021) as one of six second-generation Artists of Colour, talking about life and work in Britain. Khatun is also currently working with Photofusion and co-facilitating film workshops for young people in Streatham.
Based in London, Will is a writer, visual artist, and educator interested in cities, architecture, and culture. He has written for the RIBA Journal, the Journal of Civic Architecture, Quietus, The Wire, and Icon. He teaches history and theory at UCL Bartlett and Greenwich University, and is director of UK cultural charity Hypha Studios which places artists into empty high street and shopping centre units for free.
