The Place I Call Home
Feeling ‘at home’ in a place embodies many things - a sense of belonging, familiarity, acceptance, independence, security and prospects. ‘Home’ is a word with a strong emotional resonance, beyond its literal meaning of the ‘place one lives’.
Home is represented by a combination of factors, affinity with the place where one resides, by the proximity of family and friends, by personal and community identity, by how one lives and works, by shared values and experiences.
Feeling ‘at home’ in a place embodies many things - a sense of belonging, familiarity, acceptance, independence, security and prospects. ‘Home’ is a word with a strong emotional resonance, beyond its literal meaning of the ‘place one lives’.
Home is represented by a combination of factors, affinity with the place where one resides, by the proximity of family and friends, by personal and community identity, by how one lives and works, by shared values and experiences.
With the huge transformational changes happening in the Gulf region and UK – geopolitical, economic, social and cultural – the question of how we create places and spaces where we feel at home is a highly pertinent one. Real estate opportunity, the immense new wealth from oil, gas and mineral extraction, globalisation and technology are powerful drivers for trade and business growth. Equally, intercultural exchange, education, innovation and creativity offer momentum for positive societal change such as increased freedom and mobility, health and wellbeing, diversity and inclusion, and environmental sustainability. These factors make our cities and neighbourhoods more liveable, our communities more vibrant and harmonious, and our sense of belonging stronger.
The Place I Call Home is an exhibition curated by David Drake, Director of Ffotogallery, the national photography agency for Wales, that uses photography and lens-based media to explore the notion of home as it relates to contemporary experiences of the Arabic diaspora living in the UK and British people living in the Gulf.
The exhibition, which will be presented in the six GCC countries and UK in 2019/20, will have three interweaving themes:
- Place-Making: how planning, design, culture, environmental and technological considerations create a better city or neighbourhood
- Interculturalism: promoting dialogue and interaction between cultures to challenge isolation and self-segregation within cultures
- Citizenship: social responsibility, leadership, hospitality, inclusion, respect and tolerance
Dreamtigers
Dreamtigers is a major new Ffotogallery project in which artists and cultural professionals from India and Wales collaborate around the making and presentation of new work that reflects how creativity, technology and a renewed sense of national identity are shaping the lives of future generations in a globalised society.
The project uses photography and lens-based media to examine both the ‘real India’ and the equally present and significant other – an Imagined India which in recent years has significantly evolved and transformed itself in the public sphere and in the minds of Indians. Likewise, Dreamtigers will show Wales as a future facing nation looking outward to the world and harnessing its creative skill, innovation and ambition to improve prospects for all its citizens.
Dreamtigers brings us together with the Nazar Foundation/Delhi Photo Festival. Central to the project is a commitment to joint working, manifest in reciprocal opportunities for artists and creative professionals from India and Wales to travel to and work in each other’s countries. The key outcomes will be creative collaboration in the form of planning, development and co-production of exhibitions, artist residency and exchange opportunities, and the development of new audiences through print and online publishing, educational programmes and digital engagement activities.
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ExhibitionKanu's Gandhi
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ExhibitionA Million Mutinies Later
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channelJaipur 2018 - Huw Alden Davies
Diffusion Festival
Diffusion: Cardiff International Festival of Photography is a biennial month-long international festival of photography taking place in Cardiff, Wales' capital city. The festival is initiated and delivered by Ffotogallery in collaboration with a wide range of local, national and international partners and supporters.
Diffusion is a celebration of photography and the photographic image, in all its forms. Whether created, published, exhibited, collected or distributed in a physical or virtual way, the photograph has the power to inspire and provoke reaction, to reflect our own experience and that of society evolving around us.
European Prospects
European Prospects: Visual Explorations in an Undiscovered Continent is a collaborative project which uses photography and contemporary art to examine questions of identity and experience in an enlarged European Union. The core partners are Ffotogallery in Cardiff, Fotosommer Stuttgart, the Lithuanian Photographers Association in Kaunas and Le Château d’Eau in Toulouse. The project offers a new space for European artists and cultural agents to share experience and practice, and achieve wider exposure in Europe for their work. The programme has received financial support from the European Cultural Foundation, The European Union Culture Programme, Wales Arts International, the State Capital Stuttgart and Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts Baden Württemberg.
Wales in Venice
For Cymru yn Fenis/Wales in Venice 2015 we present ‘…the rest is smoke’ by artist Helen Sear, an official Collateral Event of the 56th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.
Commissioned by the Arts Council of Wales and curated by Ffotogallery, ‘…the rest is smoke’ comprises a suite of new work conceived for and presented in five discrete spaces within the Santa Maria Ausiliatrice, a church and former convent in the Castello area of Venice.
