Past Artist’s Curricula

2023-24
It’s My Life, Don’t You Forget
the vacuum cleaner

In 2022, we invited artist, activist and disability advocate the vacuum cleaner to work alongside the Associates to develop and deliver a project, , entitled It’s My Life, Don’t You Forget, in collaboration with the communities at The Beacon, a NHS mental healthcare space in Ramsgate, Kent.

The Associates delivered a programme of 10 workshops at the Beacon between January – April 2024 that foreground outpatient and staff members needs and creative ideas, and utilise each Associate’s artistic practice and specialist skills including poetry, performance, audio and video production, animation, painting and textiles. Each workshop created a space in which participants can platform and share their own experiences and advocate for their needs.

2022-23
When The World Looks Back At You
Saelia Aparicio

In 2022, we invited artist Saelia Aparicio to develop a multi-disciplinary curriculum that explored the hybrid, a recurring figure within their work that moves beyond the confines of binary language and terminology that classifies and prescribes nature; human and other. The hybrid formed a starting point to unpack experiences and perspectives on the anthropocene, counter culture and science fiction, biomimicry and fluidity.

During the year the Associates looked at the environment as a sentient being and landscape, with empathy and consideration, and as a space that reflects both Associates individual and collective art practice and production methods. 

Guests included Tai Shani, Richard Malone, Alex Margo Arden, Mire Lee, Attua Aparicio, Fernando Laposse and Shenece Oretha.

2021-22
Care, Caretaking, Maintenance and Stewardship
Assemble

2020
La Poupe
Anthea Hamilton

In 2020, we invited artist Anthea Hamilton to conceive and lead a bespoke curriculum which took the collaborative nature of her practice and the iconic figure of the sailor as starting points. For two months, the curriculum (which was relocated online) worked across scriptwriting, film production, costume making and performance, inviting a number of guest practitioners to share their approaches and methodologies.

Guests included Tate curator Linsey Young, choreographer and movement director Delphine Gaborit, writer Sally O’Really, artist, filmmaker and 2019 OSE alumnus Rhona Foster, and designer René Scheibenbauer.

2019
Margate is a campus
åbäke & Sophie Dejode

The 2019 artist-led curriculum was a bit shorter this year, but it had a long-lasting impact. It was a week-long workshop led by artists åbäke and Sophie Dejode at the beginning of the year, which took strong thematic cues from John Carpenter’s 1988 film ‘They Live’. The workshop focused on how the Associates might treat Margate as a resource for their year with us, and how any stranger may become a potential collaborator. The week culminated in a performative dinner event in the canteen of our then new home at the Adult Education Centre, set to an interweaving score of soundscapes made by the Associates and the original soundtrack to the film.

The title of the workshop was ‘Margate is a campus’, which served as an idea and theme for the whole year – thinking of the town, its gardens, beaches, parks, shops, libraries, community centres, bars and cafes as places of art and knowledge production, and of course social interactions.

2018
Emperor Qin’s Mausoleum
Marguerite Humeau

In 2018, Marguerite Humeau led Term 1’s curriculum with ‘Emperor Qin’s Mausoleum‘ , a 3 month-long collective project on the quest for eternal life. The project took as its starting point the hedonistic mausoleum that China’s first Emperor Qin (259-210 BC) commissioned for his afterlife. Marguerite Humeau and her guests åbäke, Owen Watson, Lucia Stuart, Sophie Mallett and Dr. Philip Gore – who work in the fields of art, design, architecture, botany and embalming – led a series of skills-based workshops, talks and excursions open to the Associates and members of the public. Those informed the collective making of a public project, which took the form of a scripted walk in Botany Bay, during which one encountered sounds, poetry, sculptures, performances and objects of uncertain nature.

2017
The Nightingale
Matthew Darbyshire

In 2017, Matthew Darbyshire conceived a curriculum attempting to diffuse the customary specialisms of process, performance, conceptual, installation, critical, community and public art.

Weekly workshops, whose outcome gradually accumulated into a collectively conceived “total artwork”, were run by practitioners including Melissa Appleton, Yemi Awosile, Lucy Beech, Pablo Bronstein, Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, Nicolas Deshayes, Chris Jones, Milo van der Maaden, Sophie Mallet, Tom Morton, Eddie Peake, Trish Scott and Jessica Warboys. Through its tongue in cheek appropriation of a theatre production’s constituents, Darbyshire’s curriculum paid particular attention to experimentation, location, identity, environment, economy, technology and materiality.

2016
Olivia Plender & Ed Webb-Ingall

In 2016, we asked artist Olivia Plender and filmmaker and researcher Ed Webb-Ingall to put together a curriculum revolving around models of collaboration, authorship, the politics of the voice, feminisms and how artists approach history. Practitioners from the fields of theatre, film, visual art, sound, community organising, activism and radical pedagogy were invited to deliver workshops and seminars alongside Olivia Plender and Ed Webb-Ingall.

Those were: Barby Asante, Oreet Ashery, Sonia Boyce, Carry Gorney, Janna Graham, Ciara Phillips, Frances Rifkin, Ultra Red and Rehanna Zaman.

Collaborations with external organisations

The OSE Associates have been invited by various institutions to show work and curate events. Host venues have included the Frac Grand Large in Dunkerque, France, Whitstable Biennale, Turner Contemporary and Well Projects in Margate, Guest Projects in London and the William Morris Gallery in London on invitation by Create London, . The Associates have also taken part in festivals such as Art Licks Weekend, the Margate Festival and Antiuniversity Now.

In 2019 the OSE Associates took participated in ‘‘Like a gassy big ball or something fluid‘, a month-long residency at Well Projects. Drawing on material ranging from 90s tape packs & the local rave scene, the subtle aesthetic connections between images and industries and a 14 foot expedition across a back garden, the works created by the Associates and other participants of the residency built an interconnected reflection of local environments, evergreen memories and social relations.

In 2018, OSE collaborated with Limbo in Margate to host four week-long residencies for up to four OSE Associates at a time. The residencies each culminated in an open crit, a public launch and a weekend-long presentation at Limbo. The Limbo-OSE Residencies enabled the Associates to experiment with ideas, research and forms, and to present their work in a professional setting.

In June 2016, we were hosted by the Merz Barn in the Lake District. During the week-long artist retreat, the Associates explored the local area and possible future collaboration with Merz Barn, leading a reading group and excursions to places including the neolithic axe factory and the cathedral cave pictured below.

In July 2014, July 2015 and September 2016, we were invited by Teresa Gleadowe for a residency at CAST in Helston, Cornwall. The week-long programme of discussions and workshops allowed the Associates time to reflect on their projects at OSE, and develop new events and works in an entirely different context, together with practitioners, thinkers and many residents of Cornwall. In exchange, OSE was happy to welcome CAST to our home in London, for a week in October 2014. The week was centred around another talks and events programme, including a talk by artist Paul Chaney on his ‘lizard exit plan’. You can read Associate Jonathan Hoskins’s reflections on the first residency here.

In 2014, the Year 1 Associates worked with AND publishing to develop a reader that reflected on their time at Open School East and the models of learning experienced there. This project which included several sessions on collaborative editing and publishing was supported by ArtQuest and Hato Press. A PDF of the application is available here.

In March 2014, we undertook a three-day workshop at Performing Arts Forum (PAF), St Erme, France, in the context of the project ‘Composing Differences‘ curated by Virginie Bobin. We invited practitioners Esther Salmona and Guillaume Fayard to lead the workshop and the retreat was made possible through funding by Fluxus.