Screened Wednesday 21st November 2020, 7pm. "The Outsiders Project gives voice to the unheard and marginalised through working with outsider artists and supporting their creativity. We work with members of the community of Boscombe, and the work is shown locally then shared with a wider world. The work is designed to develop authentic voices and is of exceptional quality.
In March 2019 we built a rough scaffolding theatre within a derelict 40,000 sq. foot shop in Boscombe. Capacity is 100 and 70% of our audience are first time arts events attenders: inclusion is for artists and audiences. We also run weekly creative writing workshops throughout the year with local marginalised communities. They help to develop skills, confidence and self-belief. All weekly workshops are run by trained outsider artists and are free to attend. Tattoo was going to be a play produced for the Bournemouth Emerging Arts Festival (BEAF) 2020, written and performed by local outsider artists we work with. The festival was cancelled so the show will be in 2021. In the meantime, we built a website during lockdown, gathering tattoo stories written by outsiders from many different countries, and we have created an exhibition in the streets of Boscombe. We also made our first series of short films, in which local outsiders tell the story they wrote about their tattoos."
The Outsiders Project will co-host this screening, which means the director and many of the writers-actors involved in the project will share the evening with us and join us in conversation. Tattoo (2020) is a collection of five stories which speak for themselves and as a collective voice.
It is 16 minutes long in total and we will screen it without interruption. This means we won't directly break from the film as we have in previous screenings. Instead we will be there in the chat throughout and we can hang around after to talk for a while, and there will be space to connect with those involved in the film and wider project directly. We hope to learn and enquire about the project's methods, its people, its community and flourishing. We won’t see you, you won’t see us, we will simply write to each other. We estimate we will finish around 8:15 pm (BST).
The film contains strong language and content. If you would like to know a bit more detail about the nature of this content, please do ask us and we can be more specific. As always, we aim to create a brave space* where everybody feels it is possible to share personal experiences, ask uneasy questions, type our anger and sorrows, share resources, text and songs, or simply say our peace. We invite everyone to gently consider the feelings and possible experiences of everybody else.
If you would like to join us, drop us an email by Tuesday 20th October.
We will share with you a link to the streaming platform one hour before the screening starts on Wednesday.
*We first heard of brave spaces at Mad Studies Birmingham, where it was kindly presented as an alternative to safe spaces by Allison Joseph. We suggest here our very own understanding.
Accessibility
The event is free and will take place online via the platform Metastream. You will need a good internet connection and one device, either computer, laptop, tablet or Chromebook (smartphones not supported, unfortunately). You do not need to open an account on this platform, but you will need to provide a name/nickname to enter the streaming room and the written text-only chat. We recommend using Firefox or Chrome browsers which may require to install an extension and to avoid Safari as Metastream does not support it.
The copy of the film we will be screening this time is not audio-described and has no captions. We are not planning to record the session or the written discussion on the chat. We are still learning how to make our gatherings more accessible. If you have any suggestions for how we can improve, please respond to this email and we will do our best to accommodate, this time and in future."
