The Digital Arts Seminar Series is a programme designed and delivered by Ideas Alliance with St Helens Library Service...

It brings together a range of speakers to talk about different issues pertinent to the (digital) arts in St Helens and provide space for people living and working in St Helens to be a part of a conversation about the future of digital arts in their Borough.

This seminar will look at innovative digital arts practice, particularly work which has responded in an interesting way to a specific place or community. This seminar will focus on what the future holds for digital arts – what new possibilities are there and do we see them as applicable to our work in St Helens? There will be 2 presentations with Q&A from speakers:

Jessica El Mal

Jessica El Mal is an English-Moroccan creative dedicated to valuing time, care and human connection in everything she works on. With a particular interest in ecology and migration, her work is both deeply personal and yet draws on the universality of the human experience through a balance of digital techniques, aesthetics and interaction. The work tends to address global structures of power through critical research, multidisciplinary projects, and speculative future imaginaries often centered around collaboration, co-curation and collective knowledge systems.

Abandon Normal Devices

Abandon Normal Devices (AND) is a nomadic commissioner and born-digital producer unafraid to enter new territories and broker new partnerships. Their portfolio includes the UK’s only roaming festival, which takes place in a new location every edition and an annual commissioning programme, which can take the form of public art, site specific film happenings and cross platform productions. Bypassing traditional formats and disciplines, their projects are essential and urgent guides to understanding the dynamic and ongoing relationship between audiences, art and technology, often providing multiple, disruptive, and profoundly different worlds to exist in.

Presentations will be followed by a group discussion around the ambitions for digital arts in St Helens, using the presentations as starting points to challenge our thinking and open up new possibilities.

Please Note: These sessions are specifically for people who live and work in St Helens. While we are happy for you to join us wherever you live - we would like residents, local artists and arts and culture organisations to join the seminars to help us think about what we have learned from the speakers and how this can help us to develop a digital arts offer for St Helens. It would be great to have your thoughts on how you have been inspired from the talks and discussions, and how this learning can support wider vision to develop digital creativity in the area.

This event will be held on Zoom and you will receive instructions on how to join the seminar once you have registered.