Playing Out of Place

Participation is open to all Iranians living abroad who identify, in any way, with exile.

We will meet outside the British Library in London at 11am (NW1 2DB), and walk towards UCL main campus.

Welcome to Walking Elsewhere, workshop series, exploring the relationship between bodies, public space and migration, by artist, urbanist, and researcher Saba Zavarei.

Each workshop consists of roughly one hour of walking, followed by one hour of reflection and discussion at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Bloomsbury (UCL). Sessions can be booked individually– there is no requirement to attend every workshop–though participants are warmly encouraged to join more than one, as each walk and workshop explores different routes and themes.

Please dress comfortably and bring your sense of adventure, you never know when London rain might join the walk!

The exercises draw on theatre and performance trainings, mind-mapping, counter- mapping, drift, and site-specific methods.

Week FOUR: Playing Out of Place

In what ways can play transform our encounter with unfamiliar or exclusive spaces, turning them into sites of memory, negotiation, or belonging?

In this workshop we begin in Granary Square by recalling and re-enacting childhood outdoor games. We experiment with location-based play to explore how games reshape our experience of public space, opening up new ways of relating to environments that might otherwise feel distant or closed off.