Many Hands - Working Class Creatives Database Social Event

Join us in the Gallery during our Heritage Festival for a Working Class Creatives Database meet up! This is an opportunity to network with like-minded people in a relaxed, informal and creative environment.

The evening will open with a performance by Jennifer Ballads followed by a group discussion with prompts given live by author Paul O’Kane based on his book Classanoia.

The discussion will focus around the concept of class migration and how people can move between social classes throughout their lives. After the discussion you will have the opportunity to view our current photography exhibition Many Hands and chat to other attendees.

You are welcome to attend if you are a member of the database, if you're interested in joining or if you'd just like to be part of the discourse!

Many Hands is Sunny Bank Mills Gallery’s first major group photography exhibition. Created in collaboration with Working Class Creatives, the show explores the role that industry plays in shaping community, identity and tradition.

The exhibition weaves together stories of working-class people from the 70s to present, through the lens of a selection of UK based artists.

About the Working Class Creatives Database

Chanelle Windas & Seren Metcalfe founded the Working Class Creatives in 2021 - an arts organisation that confronts class based issues within creative industries. They facilitate a space that puts working-class creatives at the forefront; A space for conversation, connections, and sharing of opportunities, skills and knowledge.

THE DATABASE platforms the work of over 1300 creatives. Some of their members

are featured in Many Hands at Sunny Bank Mills.

About Jennifer Ballads

Jennifer performs Victorian and Georgian Lancashire dialect work song and broadside ballads sung on the streets of Manchester.

After collaborating with Jeremy Deller at the Venice Biennale in 2015, she has performed internationally and locally to support communities to express their identity and heritage by understanding global capitalism through song. She performs, researches, collects, teaches, writes, sings and talks to make sure the tradition is preserved in a way that everyone can access.

About Paul O'Kane

Paul O’Kane is an artist, writer and senior lecturer on art and culture at Central Saint Martins College, University of the Arts London. Paul has published extensively producing numerous professional publications, including peer-reviewed articles and books, reviews, essays, and blogs, as well as stories, songs, poems, and experiments in art writing. Paul’s research, writing and lecturing in Fine Art is strongly informed by a historical model. In 2023 Paul published a book for Routledge titled History in Contemporary Art & Culture.

Prior to that he published two books titled Technologies of Romance (Parts 1 & 2) with eeodo. His Fine Art practices have focused on historical and anachronistic qualities of the photographic and videoimage. Paul completed a PhD in 2009 on the theme of ‘hesitation’ while writing as an artist in the History department of Goldsmiths College, University of London. Paul is a founder member of eeodoartists’ publishers, with whom he has published several artists’ books. He is also a long-standing member of AICA (International Association of Art Critics) for whom he has given several papers, most recently as keynote speaker, and has written reports on congresses internationally. He recently turned his historical focus in the direction of class - a lifelong interest - and published ‘Classanoia – or Falling Up – a Handbook for Class Migrants, with eeodo.

CLASSANOIA is a concept conjured by the author to open up a different space for the discussion of class. This little book contains autobiography laced with long-held thoughts and ideas wrapped in candidly expressed reflections on the theme.

The title alludes to a kind of pathology and disorientation encountered by those who feel they might be necessarily migrating from one class to another, without any signposts or satisfactory sense of arrival. Meanwhile, another newly coined concept aims to allow ‘class migration’ to share vocabulary and compare experiences with geographical migration.

Bar

Our pop up bar will be open, selling Amity's Festoon lager, crisps and a range of soft and alcoholic drinks.

Gallery Shop

The Gallery Shop will be open all evening, selling a range of books and prints relevant to the exhibition, along with our usual shop set up, featuring the work of a wide range of small businesses and makers.

Exhibiting artists in Many Hands

Amber Brown

Czesław Siegieda

Ian Beesley

Janine Wiedel

Joanne Coates

Kelly O'Brien in collaboration with Devon Osborne

Kirsty Mackay

Nudrat Afza

Sean O'Connell in collaboration with Flornicate

Victor Wedderburn

Accessibility

This event will be held in the Gallery which is located on Farsley Town Street. The main entrance on Town Street has a flight of stairs. The Gallery can also be reached by a flat access entrance to the rear of the building, through the Mills’ Main Yard. There are several disabled toilets on site, as well as free accessible parking.

Quiet spaces will be available during the event, please find a member of staff for support on the evening.

Please contact us ahead of time if you have any access requirements you'd like us to be aware of, or if you require BSL interpretation or a hearing loop for this event.