Grand Union Gallery and British-Barbadian artist Alberta Whittle are collaboratively embarking on a longterm visual art project for the Birmingham 2022 Festival — Congregation (creating dangerously) – to aid in the much-needed healing of Birmingham's community. Using public sculpture, film, workshops, Official Official and community gardening with women's groups, Grand Union seeks to address issues surrounding use and ownership of land, and uses the concept of congregation to consider notions of freedom and longterm healing.
On Monday 1 August, we are presenting the premiere of Congregation (creating dangerously), a largescale film by Alberta Whittle exploring conditions of freedom under the hostile environment. With Birmingham being the second most culturally diverse city in the UK, we see a need, now more than ever, for art to anchor itself in sustenance, healing, witness, and critique.
Alberta’s film commission will exist as an inquiry into cultural amnesia as it relates to conditions of freedom under the hostile environment. As the location of the 2022 Commonwealth Games, Birmingham is an ideal scenario to examine the significance of its colonial history, especially as it relates to the Commonwealth Immigrants Act.
The film combines conversations, performances, archival footage and interviews with and by Black women and non-binary people; Alberta works towards processing trauma and colonial histories with restorative healing powers. The film will also feature the important work by community activist Eunice McGhie-Belgrave, the founder of the community group Shades of Black (started in 1989 to unite a fractured community in Birmingham in the wake of the 1980s race riots), as she shares her inspiring experiences and the effectiveness of grassroots community building, direct community action and positive healing gardening practices, which addresses the wider issues of poverty in the city.
Earlier this year, we opened a new outdoor installation as a form of shelter and respite, and a shared public space that has been reimagined and reinvented for people’s needs. Using the model of a Scottish bothy – which provides temporary shelter and is free for anyone to use – artist Alberta Whittle, Birmingham-based Women’s organisations and fabrication studio MJM Bespoke have designed a structure referencing a Barbadian Chattel House in the area connecting the Grand Union Canal to the Minerva Apothecary Garden.
Forming part of Alberta’s research and engagement process for Congregation is a community-led Growing Project, which connects people with each other through plants and their natural environment — producing this project with local community groups is an integral element of Alberta’s holistic work, offering a legacy that is rooted in community cohesion and care. The project has been working with a group of women who are supported by Midlands-based women’s organisations Anawim and Crisis Skylight Birmingham since March 2021, coming together weekly for workshops in the garden, facilitated by artists, gardeners and chefs.
As part of these workshops, we have grown a public green space The Minerva Apothecary Garden adjacent to our gallery space in Digbeth on the banks of the Grand Union canal, full of healing herbs and plants. The space has been built by them and for them, and has become a source of healing – an apothecary – with a dedicated section for medicinal plants. Designed and constructed with MJM Bespoke to include planters, seating and outdoor cooking facilities, it is also a space for sharing, distributing and accumulating knowledge of plants including teas, oils, ointments, compresses, tinctures and recipes as a free resource for local communities.
The project will culminate outdoors in a Harvest Festival on 16 September 2022 at Birmingham Cathedral, where we will congregate to celebrate our communal efforts towards sustenance, shelter, witness, and serve a meal from the harvest of our community garden.
Jo Capper, Collaborative Programme Curator at Grand Union, said: “We are very proud to be working with Alberta Whittle on this significant commission for Birmingham as part of the Birmingham 2022 Festival. It has been an honour to work alongside Alberta’s sensitive and caring approach; this film honours individual stories and challenges difficult histories, and ultimately brings about communal healing.”
Artist Alberta Whittle said: “It feels so meaningful to return to my home city and present this new commission with Grand Union and Shades of Black for the Birmingham 2022 Festival.
“The past few Official years have been spent listening, learning and making bridges with new communities to think about how working together can resuscitate healing and hope. Tackling the complicated history of migration and extraction with these integral partners has been fundamental in how Grand Union, our communities and I have been working together on home building, with the creation of our canalside Bothy and our new film commission.”
Congregation (creating dangerously) is presented by the Birmingham 2022 Festival with generous support from Arts Council England and the National Heritage Lottery Fund. Further details about the programme can be found at https://grand-union.org.uk.
