decoloniality across art, heritage making and community building
17 July 2025
Our minds and hearts are full after a day building a shared understanding of decolonisation as part of Contested Desires. Together at The Word in South Shields we explored decoloniality as a process of learning, living and healing across contemporary art practices, heritage making and community building.
Thank you so much to everyone who joined us and contributed to the day.
We had presentations from Padma Rao, Director Sangini, and Kath Boodhai, researcher and academic, connecting colonial histories, postcolonial realities and women's activism, and giving voice to silenced or ‘othered’ narratives.
Malavika Anderson, Museum Manager at the Great North Museum: Hancock, shared the museum’s approach taking a decolonial path and actions the sector can take towards restorative and transformational change - with a focus on co-creation.
Each session included a panel with the artists who exhibited their work at the Contested Desires exhibition at the Great North Museum: Hancock. Thank you to Rafael Guendelman Hales, Elisabeth Efua Sutherland, Isaac Nana Opoko (AFROSCOPE), Andreas Mallouris, Maria Luigia Gioffrè, Paul Nataraj and Patrick Ziza.
AFROSCOPE led a workshop inviting us to create a collaborative tapestry out of our own stories, memories and experiences woven together.
The day was rich with shared experience and thinking spanning colonial histories, cultural heritage, knowledge practices, intergenerational wisdom, gender perspective and post colonial realities. Leona Vaughn, as our keynote listener, masterfully summarised these to bring the day to an end: ‘not rewriting history but building better futures.’
The day was produced by D6’s Clymene Christoforou and Andrea Carter with panel facilitation from Kath Boodhai and D6’s PhD collaborator Dawn Felicia Knox.
Thank you to chicbites.catering for providing delicious vegetarian food and to The Word team for making us so welcome.
Find out more about Contested Desires here.
Images: Amelia Read
Our minds and hearts are full after a day building a shared understanding of decolonisation as part of Contested Desires. Together at The Word in South Shields we explored decoloniality as a process of learning, living and healing across contemporary art practices, heritage making and community building.
Thank you so much to everyone who joined us and contributed to the day.
We had presentations from Padma Rao, Director Sangini, and Kath Boodhai, researcher and academic, connecting colonial histories, postcolonial realities and women's activism, and giving voice to silenced or ‘othered’ narratives.
Malavika Anderson, Museum Manager at the Great North Museum: Hancock, shared the museum’s approach taking a decolonial path and actions the sector can take towards restorative and transformational change - with a focus on co-creation.
Each session included a panel with the artists who exhibited their work at the Contested Desires exhibition at the Great North Museum: Hancock. Thank you to Rafael Guendelman Hales, Elisabeth Efua Sutherland, Isaac Nana Opoko (AFROSCOPE), Andreas Mallouris, Maria Luigia Gioffrè, Paul Nataraj and Patrick Ziza.
AFROSCOPE led a workshop inviting us to create a collaborative tapestry out of our own stories, memories and experiences woven together.
The day was rich with shared experience and thinking spanning colonial histories, cultural heritage, knowledge practices, intergenerational wisdom, gender perspective and post colonial realities. Leona Vaughn, as our keynote listener, masterfully summarised these to bring the day to an end: ‘not rewriting history but building better futures.’
The day was produced by D6’s Clymene Christoforou and Andrea Carter with panel facilitation from Kath Boodhai and D6’s PhD collaborator Dawn Felicia Knox.
Thank you to chicbites.catering for providing delicious vegetarian food and to The Word team for making us so welcome.
Find out more about Contested Desires here.
Images: Amelia Read
