The Friday Files - news to inform and inspire
An Inconvenient Black History of British Musical Theatre 1900-1950- Tuesday 21st September at 7:30 pm, Wigmore Hall, London
The Canada-UK Foundation in honored to sponsor this concert, which celebrates the heritage and importance of Black music and performance to the prestigious Wigmore Hall and the wider British musical theatre industries. Canadian academic and practitioner Sean Mayes and British research Dr. Sarah K. Whitfield (Senior Lecturer in Musical Theatre, the University of Wolverhampton) will also launch their new book An Inconvenient Black History of British Musical Theatre 1900-1950 (Methuen Drama). Through innovative hybrid concert and discussion form, Mayes and Whitfield will discuss the hidden history the book uncovers, the urgency of uncovering the work of Black creative practitioners, and what it means for the future.
Sean Mayes is a New York music director active both in New York City and Toronto, with a background in London and the UK. He is an active member of the Broadway music community as a vocal coach, accompanist, orchestrator-arranger and pit musician. He is a Part-Time Professor in Musical Theatre at Sheridan College, Canada, and has published on the history of music directing and the role of Black music directors on Broadway.
Sarah K. Whitfield is a Senior Lecturer in Musical Theatre at the University of Wolverhampton. Her research focuses on exploring the historiography of musical theatre, and recovering the work that women and minoritised groups have done through archival research and digital humanities. She has published widely on collaborative practice in musical theatre, film musicals, and in queer fan studies. Her most recent book is the edited collection Reframing the Musical: Race, Culture and Identity (2019).
West End performer Jonathan Andrew Hume (Come from Away, The Lion King) and emerging soprano Esme Sears will join Mayes in performances of songs and repertoire that re-centre Black musical experience. The concert is directed by Shanté Campbell.
Tickets will go quickly - be sure to grab yours from August 16th - https://wigmore-hall.org.uk/whats-on/an-inconvenient-black-history-of-british-musical-theatre-1900-1950-202109211930
Canadian artist Ella Morton's award-winning compositions that put climate change into perspective
Dreamlike sceneries of both grandeur and fragility are what Canadian artist Ella Morton’s photo series, The Dissolving Landscape, offers viewers at first glance. Each photograph portrays an aspect of the Arctic and Subarctic regions of Canada and Nordic Europe in striking tonalities, layered with unearthly textures that mimic delicately thin veils, rippling and folding into itself as it threatens to tear.
The process Ella uses is mordançage, a technique that alters silver gelatin prints by lifting areas of black to create the veiling effect. It’s a process that involves degradation, appropriately applied to Ella’s images in order to formulate striking stories about environmental degradation. It is this poetic coupling of process and narrative that landed her First Place for the CENTER Environmental Award, an international award recognising outstanding photography related to the environment.
The project The Dissolving Landscape began in 2016 when Ella participated in The Arctic Circle Program, a residency where artists sail around Svalbard, Norway for two weeks on a tall ship.
Ella Morton, Tilting Storm, Chromira print from mordançage, 24” x 30,” 2018
“On this journey, I brought 4x5 colour film that I had soaked in different acidic solutions. The warping effects on the film evoked both the sublime and fragile qualities of Svalbard’s Arctic landscape.”
After this, Ella began experimenting with mordançage on images captured in Finland and Newfoundland before shooting analogue photos and footage in Nunavut in 2019.
“With both the colour film soaking and mordançage approaches, I wanted to communicate the magic of the landscapes I was capturing, as well as their uncertain future.”
The landscapes depicted have a transient quality, not fully situated within the temporal resonance of lived life, but not so far off that it can’t be understood in this way. The images suggest the changeability of these scenes, of how land and water are contingent on a stability that humans have stolen.
Ella Morton, Temporary Research Site, Chromira print from mordançage, 24” x 30,” 2019.
Speaking on her many practice-led journeys to remote regions, Ella says, “There were definitely moments that stood out, and there were also realisations that took longer to understand, but that was equally impactful. While in Nunavut, I learned more about our dark colonial history in Canada- how husky dogs were slaughtered in the Arctic in the 1960s to force Inuit into communities so that the government could affirm Arctic sovereignty in the midst of Cold War politics. As disturbing as this story was, it also made clear to me the resilience of the Inuit in terms of how they have stayed connected to their culture and identity since then.”
Ella’s photo project is an important reminder of what we are collectively fighting against, and what we are aiming to preserve. “It has been a privilege to learn about these landscapes and the people who live there. I have especially been provoked to think more deeply about the experiences of Indigenous people in Canada, which are inextricably tied to issues of the land and climate change.”
Ella travelled to Newfoundland this summer to shoot a new short film centred on urgent environmental issues. You can stay up to date with her projects by following her on Instagram.
The Canada-UK Foundation & Eccles Centre Fellowships 2021-2022
The Canada-UK Foundation and the Eccles Centre at the British Library are offering two £5000 Fellowships for 2021-2022.
We are keen to hear from all kinds of serious researchers who are based in Canada and working on projects in Canadian studies, including transnational or comparative approaches to Canadian studies. These researchers will have the potential to produce something new, exciting and challenging as a result of their engagement with the Canadian collections of the British Library.
The Fellowships are aimed equally at applicants from academic backgrounds working on scholarly research and creative practitioners working on artistic and cultural projects. This means that research towards a doctoral degree, an academic monograph or article, a poetry collection, a theatre production, a body of painting or sculpture, a new fashion collection … all these kinds of projects, and more, will be considered.
Each Fellowship is a fixed amount of £5,000 and is intended to cover flights, accommodation and other costs associated with a research trip to the British Library. It is expected that the Fellowship will support around two months’ work in the Library. The Fellowship lasts for one year and Fellows will make their research trip(s) between January 2022 and December 2022.
For more information, please see Eccles Centre Fellowships and Awards www.bl.uk/ecclescentre. Please request an application form from jean.petrovic@bl.uk. The deadline for applications to be submitted is 30 September 2021 at 12.00 (BST).