Breaks and Joins: Can Everything be Mended?

Join Sue Mayo and the Breaks and Joins Teams for this two part event in the afternoon of the 23rd May 2024.

We are excited to launch our new film, Can Everything Be Mended?, an essay film about repair as an act of resistance.

Drawn from the multi-modal creative project, Breaks and Joins, the film documents and celebrates the repair of our stuff, ourselves and our communities.

Film maker Chuck Blue Lowry, and Sue Mayo, the lead artist on Breaks and Joins, have visited menders of many kinds. Starting at a one-man repair cafe South London, the film collages a series of encounters with menders, from the orthopaedic team at Lewisham Hospital, to the ground-breaking social change organisation Civic Square, from the maintenance team at the Royal Albert Hall to individuals like the ceramicist Rachel Ho, who creates and gifts scarred pots to celebrate the marks we carry. With commissioned poetry from award winning poet Arji Manuelpillai, and a soundtrack from musician Charlie Davey, the film asks the questions, can everything be mended and whether everything should be mended? In all of these spheres we discover the beauty, resilience, curiosity and tenacity of menders, who have so much to offer the world.

The screening will be preceded by a workshop, drawing form our programme of creative workshops that allow a gentle space to explore brokenness and mending, and followed by a panel discussion to open up the conversation provoked by the film.

Timings:

2-3pm Workshop

3.30-5pm Film Screening and panel

Please note, there is seperate booking for the workshop (capacity 40 people) and the screening (60 people). Please make sure you book a ticket for both events if you want to attend the whole afternoon.

Biographies:

Raj Bhari

Raj Bhari has worked in conflict transformation and peacebuilding internationally and in the UK for over 25 years. His practice focuses on the nexus between conflict transformation, peacebuilding, applied arts and social cohesion. Raj is a Senior Peacebuilding Adviser with expertise in peacebuilding programming in Libya, Ukraine the Black Sea Region and Syria. As a senior adviser to the UK government Raj has contributed to the development of national community cohesion policy and practice in the UK. As well as designing and delivering large-scale peacebuilding programmes, Raj is also currently a senior associate with Belong, Cohesion & Faith Network UK and mentors/ supports community-facing peacebuilders, operating in challenging and hostile environments. He teaches at Goldsmiths, Rose Bruford and RADA.

Chuck Blue Lowry

Chuck specialises in art as social practice, with a particular focus on intergenerational exchange and storytelling. Her primary art form is film, and she directs, shoots and edits. She platforms the voices of those who are often under or misrepresented and has worked nationally and internationally. Chuck’s work has been presented at galleries and festivals including Tate Modern, British Film Institute, Women of the World Festival, London Short Film Festival, Battersea Arts Centre, Whitechapel Gallery and Charcoal in Hong Kong. She has been awarded ‘Best Music Video Director’ at Canned Film. Chuck lectures in Film and Performance at Central St Martin’s.

Sue Mayo

Sue Mayo is an artist who works collaboratively with communities. She has worked as a performer, writer, director, teacher and facilitator, and has taught at Rose Bruford College, Queen Mary, University of London, Central School of Speech and Drama and Goldsmiths, University of London, where she lectured for 17 years, including 10 years as Director of the Masters in Applied Theatre.

She trained at Birmingham University in Drama and additionally with Leap Confronting Conflict in dealing creatively with conflict. She is associate artist with Magic Me, the leading intergenerational arts charity, where she designed and led the Women’s Project that ran from 2004 to 2022. With an intergenerational group of women she created a resource on activism and two campaigning films, as part of a climate justice project Generation Rebellion.

Her publications include “We know”: Collective Care in Participatory Arts; chapters A Marvelous Experiment and The Artist in Collaboration in Performance and Community edited by Dr Caoimhe McAvinchey (Methuen 2012); Detail and Daring: the Art and Craft of Intergenerational Arts Work, published online November 2012 on Magic Me; In the Company of Others: Entelechy’s work with older people in Performances of Age: United Kingdom, volume 2, part 5 of The Routledge Companion to Applied Performance, edited by Ananda Breed and Tim Prentki (London and New York: Routledge, 2020).

Access:

The film will be captioned. Please let us know if you have any other access requirements: info@londonartsandhealth.org.uk

Details about Bloc (the venue) and how to access it are available here: https://www.qmul.ac.uk/bloc/

Bloc's facilities include:

• 4 wheelchair spaces (2 permanent at the back + 2 more can be added on front row)
• Accessible toilet with hoist
• Lift for wheelchairs down to stage level
• Hearing Loop Installed
• Low lighting and muted colours for neurodivergent people
• Mental Health and Physical First Aiders at events

For any access requirements questions please email: bloc@qmul.ac.uk or call +44 (0)20 7882 8910