2021 F.S.A.L Arts Festival, in collaboration with Weymouth's iconic Nothe Fort.
Exploring themes of Protection and Survival using Performance, Sound, Dance, Music, Sculpture, Installation and Art.
Protection and Survival
The 2021 gathering of The friendly Society of Artistic Labourers brings together students from all disciplines within the school of Visual and Performing Arts at Weymouth College to Nothe Fort, Weymouth’s historic Sea Fort.
F.S.A.L have commissioned theme and site responsive installation artworks and performances from students.
Project lead, artist Simon Lee Dicker, has worked with established artists, makers and performers to inspire and advise students to develop and curate work on the theme of Protection and Survival for Festival 2021.
"Living through the Covid19 pandemic we have been forced to reconsider the relationship we have to others, changing the way we interact, redefining how we survive as individuals and protect society. Nothe Fort was built with the same ideas in mind, but in different circumstances. The history of protection is in the DNA of Nothe Fort, from the architecture and geographical location to the ‘Museum of Costal Defences’ that is housed underground." Simon Lee Dicker
SImon Lee Dicker
Simon Lee Dicker, artist and co founder of OSR Projects, and lead artist for F.S.A.L for the past two years. His work explores a discordant relationship with landscape, the marks we make on the natural world, often evoking ritual activity and personal narratives that involve other people in the production and presentation of work. Connecting people through artist-led activity.
Anna Chrystal Stephens
Anna Chrystal Stephens uses sculpture, action and photography to explore sustainable living strategies, self-sufficiency and the transition between nomadic and settled modes of survival.
Referring to camping as an activity representative of desperate survival but also of leisure and outdoor learning experiences, she discussed how outdoor skills and prehistoric crafts and can improve wellbeing and enhance human ecological understanding, dissolving the frontier between domesticity and wildness.
Chantal Powell
Chantal Powell creates sculptural works about the unseen aspects of our psyche.
​Curious about how we are influenced by our personal and collective unconscious, she embraces metaphors, myth and symbolic language in her making.
Her workshop to F.S.A.L looked at what it means to face the Dark Night of the Soul also known as the Night Sea Journey. Discussing how we can best protect ourselves within this critical life experience and survive confronting the Dragon within.
Carly Seller
An artist, yoga teacher and creative facilitator, Seller's visual language has evolved organically to interweave performance, moving-image, drawing, and object-making.
Her current project is a study into healing practices as modes of transformation, specifically how sound resonates in space and how it affects bodies.
Discussing modes of healing: plants and sound. Carly shared reflections and experiences of making work in military sites and finding the balance between play and risk in the performance process.
Guy Dobson
Guy Dobson is an artist and co-founder of APE Project: APE is an acronym for Art, Play, Environment, their mission is to enhance the lives of children and young people through the provision of open access play opportunities and activities.
In his workshop Guy discussed how APE Project are protecting the playground in St Pauls from developers, and how the playground is protecting the vulnerable inner city child, which in turn is protecting our fragile diverse community.
Leeming + Paterson
Meditative reflections on light, contemplative art of nature, unstructured nature of place, land: human nexus … these are but some of the themes flowing through the collective work of Leeming and Paterson.
Ted and Morag’s workshop invited discussion on how staying local, examining minutiae and repetition/familiarity can contribute to artist practise and build on connectivity between each other and a sense of belonging in our ecosystem.
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Barry Sykes
Barry Sykes is an artist who works with performance, sculpture and works on paper that examine awkwardness, absurdity, authenticity and intimacy with recent projects involving Laughter Yoga, feedback forms, carpentry and Naturism.
His workshop to F.S.A.L was informed by his recent work with students curating outside COVID safe Exhibitions. He discussed what is valuable and necessary for presenting art right now.
Rocca Holly-Namby
Rocca Holly-Nambi is an artist and cultural producer. She is the Director of b-side, an international contemporary arts organisation and biennale festival based on the Isle of
Portland.
Prior to this, Holly-Nambi has worked for the British Council as Head of Arts East Africa and with Arts and cultural organisations across Sub-Saharan Africa, Uganda and Scotland.
Rocca’s presentation for F.S.A.L asked "How are queer East African artists using visual strategies to protect themselves, to survive, but also to thrive in atmospheres of intense homophobic violence?
And what can we learn from these tactics while producing our own work, in Weymouth, today?"
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