WORK films launch online + Q&A with artists on International Workers’ Day, 1 May 2020

We are pleased to announce the online launch of WORK, on International Workers’ Day: four new artists’ films that explore contemporary working lives in the middle of England.

The films will be live on the WORK website from 9am BST on Friday, 1 May 2020. Watch them here: workprojects.org.uk

Join us for a Zoom Q&A with the artists on 1 May at 7pm BST
Please register in advance here: WORK Q&A 

Made in Derby, Thrapston, Birmingham and Bolsover, the WORK films consider: the rhythms of a care worker’s day; traditional and new rural working lives – farming, forestry, and international logistics; Birmingham’s Trade Union Resource Centre film archive and collective activism; untold stories of the impact on individual lives of post-industrial economic change.

Developed and produced over two years, WORK is a collaboration between: Animate Projects; QUAD, Derby; Fermynwoods Contemporary Art, Thrapston, Northamptonshire; Vivid Projects, Birmingham; and Junction Arts, Chesterfield.

WORK is supported by Jerwood Arts and using public funding by Arts Council England.

Along with the films, the website will have interviews with the artists, two essays about WORK by Helen De Witt and Adam Pugh, and a report by Vivienne Reiss on the way the artists engaged workers in their projects. A film by Christopher Bevan about WORK will be online later this year.

The WORK films have been screening in the places they were made, including a premiere at QUAD and in the village hall at Thrapston, near Kettering. A gallery exhibition at Vivid Projects in Birmingham and screenings at Bolsover and Fineshade Wood, near Corby, have been postponed because of the Covid-19 crisis. 

The WORK website is designed by Daniel Hawley-Lingham at Urban Fugitive.

Images:
The Great Bear, Jenny Holt
a ROLE to PLAY, Esther Johnson
People Meeting in a Room, Adam Lewis-Jacob
Alongside, Dryden Goodwin