Performing Arts Community Engagement (PACE)

Research Event: Circling Caribbean Dance: A Global Community Discussion

This event will take the form of a live discussion between invited popular Caribbean dance practitioners, researchers, producers and educators. Guests will share insights from their experience in the field and discuss pressing topics affecting Caribbean dance communities today. The event will be focused around a series of questions concerning the real-life impacts of the pandemic on the sector and Caribbean dance's relationship to decolonial and anti-racist agendas.

The discussion will be open to the public to participate as listeners/viewers and take part in break-out room discussions around specific themes. In creating this space for exchange, the event aims to support network connectivity between the participants and the development of future relationships and collaborations.

This is a collaborative event with Performing Arts and Community Engagement at Kingston University, London and Pop Moves, an international research group for popular dance and performance.

• Moderator: Professor Donna P. Hope
• Speakers: Kimiko Versatile, Dr Yanique Hume, Brittany Williams, Dr Adanna Kai Jones, Emily Labhart, Dr 'H' Pattern MBE. Further information on the speakers can be found on Eventbrite.
• When do you meet? Wednesday 23 June, 6pm (UK time)
• How to register? Please register here via Eventbrite.

Creative Kingston Connects

This project involved Kingston University's Performing Arts students working with local care homes and Sparko TV, an online channel for elderly people living independently, to provide activities in dance, drama and music via remote online sessions. Three groups of Music, Dance and Drama students organised a total of nine online, interactive performances for elderly people. The sessions were live-streamed and each was tailored to the abilities, memories, and achievements of the people it addressed. The sessions were each highly interactive, inviting the audiences to participate in dance movement, music appreciation, reminiscing, singing, celebration, and meditation:

Musical Stories

Involved rhythm stories, singing stories, and memory stories. Participants sang along to well-known songs such as "Edelweiss" and "Tipperary" and reminisced with music from all over the world.

A Journey of Dance

Involved chair ballet with classical piano music, a dreamy waltz, an up-tempo funk and a gentle meditation to cool-down.

Yesterday Years

Drama students drew on residents' memories of life events, including going to school in the 1940s, the moon landing, and Charles and Diana's royal wedding. It was an opportunity to reminisce, re-live and celebrate personal life events in dramatic form.

The Roseland care home, Sherwood Grange care home, and Sparko TV have all asked PACE to come back and run another series of interactive performances.

Research Event: Beyond language: The communicative potential of movement and sound in post-war contexts

In this curated conversation, Dr Beatrice Jarvis (Kingston University London) and Grace Schwindt (Goldsmiths College) will come together to explore approaches to healing and resettlement processes. Referring to their professional experience and artistic research, they will investigate the potential of creative and embodied approaches using sound and movement in post-conflict recovery and refugee responses. The conversation will be moderated by Professor Meg Jensen (Kingston University London).

Dr Beatrice Jarvis is Lecturer in Dance at Kingston University London and is a creative facilitator, choreographer and researcher. Drawing from Somatic practices and working extensively with improvisation, Beatrice works across a diverse range of community settings, nationally and internationally, to explore through site-based and studio practices the social power and potential of embodied movement practices. Her socio-choreographic research has been profiled within Pina Bausch Symposium, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, dOCUMENTA (13), National School of Art Bucharest, Galway Dance Festival. 

Grace Schwindt is an artist working with film, performance, sculpture and drawing. Her process often originates from conversations with different communities with whom she analyses the role that bodies and language play in the construction of history and memory. Her work is currently on view as part of the exhibition "Refugees: Forced to Flee" at the Imperial War Museum in London. She has previously been presented at The Showroom, Tate Britain, Whitechapel Gallery in London, Museum of Contemporary Arts in Vigo, Volksbühne in Berlin, Kaaitheater in Brussels and the Istanbul Biennale. She works as Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Professor Meg Jensen is Professor of English Literature and Creative Writing at Kingston University London. Her research centres on representations of trauma in various forms of autobiographically-based art, from novels to poetry to painting. She has published on the work of writers including Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf, Vladimir Nabokov, Jack Kerouac and Louisa May Alcott. Her most recent publication is The Art and Science of Trauma and the Autobiographical: Negotiated Truths.

• When do you meet? Wednesday 21 April, 4pm
• How do I register? Please register here.

Gamelan Project (ongoing)

This collaborative community engagement project centers on a series of workshops on the Performing Arts Department's (Music) Javanese gamelan ensemble, led by an ethnomusicologist, (Dr Maria Mendonça, from Kenyon College in Ohio, USA) with groups of young people from Anstee Bridge, a local alternative learning programme for young people.

Another strand of the project involves the MA Music Education Course Leader (Dr Cynthia Stephens-Himonides) and her students enrolled in the MA in Music Education programme, who participate in a series of classes with the ethnomusicologist on Javanese gamelan performance and workshop techniques, before assisting with the workshop sessions with the young people.

This research project investigates how inclusive music education can be provided through participatory community music and the impact of this context on both the young people and the intercultural competence development of the MA Music Education students.

Bodies of Knowledge Volume 1: Dancehall

Organised in collaboration with Open Book, this course offers women the opportunity of a critical engagement with popular dance styles through practical dance workshops and contextual discussion sessions.

Dancehall is a popular dance style from Jamaica, initially developed in the late 1970s, which continues to thrive across the globe. This dance style has often been a site of struggle, resistance and empowerment for women who seek out visibility, pleasure and community through the dance practice.

This programme will involve feminine dancehall movement workshops with leading dance teacher Jess Baddie. It also involves participation in adjacent discussions focused on specific topics and readings related to the practical dancehall workshops. Topics will include areas such as gender and sexuality politics, race, empire, postcolonialism, appropriation and power.

• When do you meet? Wednesdays 12–1pm (dance workshop) and 2–3pm (seminar)
• How do I register? Email: pace@kingston.ac.uk to register and get your online link.
• How much is it? FREE

The Kingston Community Choir

The Kingston Community Choir is a local inclusive community choir run in partnership with the charity Voices of Hope and led by choir leader Sarah Clay. Sarah is also the Founder and CEO of the charity.

To join the choir, there is no need to read music and there are no auditions – just a friendly welcoming environment for those who love to sing. 

The choir launches on 4 October with a free taster session and will meet once a week in the Courtyard at Town House, Kingston University's landmark building at Penrhyn Road, Kingston. The choir will work towards an end-of-season performance on 4 December in Kingston. 

• When do you meet? Mondays 7–8:30pm from 4 October 
• Where do you meet? Courtyard, Town House, Penrhyn Road, Kingston KT1 2EE
• How do I register? Email: pace@kingston.ac.uk for further information and to register.
• How much is it? £6/£3 concessions per session. Bursaries available.

Acid Grass Records

Acid Grass Records is the Visconti Studio's in-house record label and is a student led collective of music producers. The group record, mix and perform original contemporary popular music, with a focus on creative uses of music technology. The name derives from the acid grasslands found close to the Visconti Studio. The students designed their own logo for their record label.

• When do you meet? Wednesday 4–7pm from 6 October
• Where do you meet? The Visconti Studio, Kingston Hill, Kingston KT2 7LB
• How do I register? Email: m.gatt@kingston.ac.uk for further information.
• How much is it? Free

Kingston University Stylophone Orchestra (KUSO)

Kingston University Stylophone Orchestra (KUSO) is sponsored by analogue synth manufacturer Dubreq. Formed in January 2019, to date it is the first and only Stylophone orchestra in the world. They have performed at the International Youth Arts Festival (IYAF) for a Royal audience, the Stanley Picker Gallery and recorded an arrangement of Space Oddity by David Bowie, produced by legend Tony Visconti.

• When do you meet? While COVID-19 measures are in place, we are meeting and collaborating virtually online on an album project which will release in Spring 2021.
• How do I register? Email l.kardos@kingston.ac.uk for further information on how to take part.
• How much is it? Free