From The Ground Up: Resistant Archives: A Lecture by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley

Part of The Urgency of The Arts Lecture series 2020/21 at the Royal College of Art.

This talk is free and the artist is inviting Black Trans Community to join this event.

We have a limited number of tickets, please register your interest and we will distribute the Zoom Webinar link an hour before the lecture to all attendees.

The talk will be followed by a Q&A session with students and staff at the RCA.

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley is an artist working predominantly in digital media to communicate the experiences of being a Black Trans person. Their practice focuses on recording the lives of Black Trans people, intertwining lived experience with fiction to imaginatively retell Trans stories. Spurred on by a desire to record the "History of Trans people both living and past" their work can often be seen as a Trans archive where Black Trans people are stored for the future.

Throughout history, Black queer and Trans people have been erased from the archives. Because of this it is necessary not only to archive our existence, but also the many creative narratives we have used and continue to use to share our experiences.

Danielle's work has been shown in Focal Point, Science Gallery, MU, Barbican, Tate ,Les Urbains as well as being part of the BBZ Alternative Graduate Show at the Copeland Gallery.

An online component of their work can often be found at daniellebrathwaiteshirley.com

The Urgency of the Arts

What does arts and humanities research and practice have to offer in our current socio-political climate? The Urgency of the Arts aims to promote an understanding of the necessity – as opposed to the luxury – of the arts and to create platforms that address the invaluable tools that creative practices can provide in a drive towards developing an understanding of how the powers of creativity and culture can become the most significant agents of change. At a time of increasing violent extremism and climate disaster it is essential that the value and contribution of the arts and culture is recognised as capable of adding an important and timely voice to the shape of things in our world. Through this thinking, we hope to take the question of The Urgency of the Arts, beyond the borders of the art and design school and into the world in order to expand knowledge about how we engage creatively for impact and transformation.