People’s Pavilion Festival
Project
People’s Pavilion Festival 2021
Client
Beyond the Box Initiative
Location
East London
The People’s Pavilion Cultural Producer Programme connected with our People’s Pavilion Festival, working with young East Londoners aged 14-25 interested in cultural production and festival curation.
Insights gathered from our young creative researchers revealed that a significant barrier to accessing cultural experiences was the lack of representation within cultural institutions. In response, we curated an online masterclass series across various creative arts disciplines. This series featured leading industry practitioners and producers who reflected the racial diversity of East London, aiming to inspire a new generation of cultural producers.
Masterclass
Design to inspire the hidden creative talents of East London, Beyond the Box produced a series of online masterclasses in collaboration with ten leading cultural institutions and 19 producers and curators.
Each masterclass offered industry insights, detailing approaches to co-production and co-design, and sharing personal career journeys into the creative sector. Accompanying each online masterclass was a 10-track playlist curated by one of our cultural producers, with songs selected to match the week's theme. Over the ten episodes, 120 young people attended.
The series featured masterclasses from some of the UK’s leading cultural organisations and creatives, including The BBC Proms, V&A Museum, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group, Studio Wayne McGregor, British Pavilion Designers for Venice Biennale - Unscene Architecture, Museum of London, London College of Fashion, ENSPIRE Management, The Royal Institute of British Architects, and Bloomberg Media Studios.
Cultural Exchange - Liverpool
As part of the project, we wanted the young cultural producers to engage with peers outside of London, sharing creative ideas and expanding their cultural networks. Through another Beyond The Box project in Liverpool, we organized a study trip to the Liverpool Docks and the National Museum of Liverpool to visit a temporary pavilion we had built on the waterfront.
During the visit, the young producers met with a team of young creatives from Liverpool for a cultural exchange. The temporary installation, titled Sankofa Docks, explored the history of the docks and their role in the international slave trade. The pavilion featured a soundscape by artist Peter Adjaye, inscriptions from the museum archives detailed by architect Jayden Ali, and a performance space for artistic activations. We were treated to a special performance by local artists Capoeira For All, followed by a facilitated dialogue of exchange between the young producers from London and Liverpool.
Envision East Festival
The young cultural producers put their skills into action to produce a 10-day festival at The People’s Pavilion.
We collaborated with an impressive array of cultural and creative partners to bring the festival to life. Highlights included the Lund Point photographic exhibition in partnership with the V&A Museum and artist Brendan Barry, live performances by Poetic Unity, and immersive DJ sets by Space Black featuring projected archival images from the Black Cultural Archives. Local East London group Your Are Capoeria performed, and workshops were held with the Royal Drawing School and Vogue tutor Tony Tran. Music was provided by DJ Mark-Ashley Dupé, and other activities included henna artistry and wellbeing sessions with YSM8, photography workshops with Brunel Johnson, and performances by Sunny Steel Band.
The festival also featured panel talks with Resolve Collective, Urban Symbiotics, and PoOr Collective, as well as an LGBT inclusive day with special guests such as Lady Phyll, founder of UK Black Pride, legendary model and activist Winn Austin, artist BamBam, Stonewall Housing advocate Joshua Asare, and a special screening of the short film ‘There’s Always a Black Issue Dear’.
BBC Proms
In celebration of the achievements of all the young cultural producers on the project, and their incredible resilience during a challenging period due to the coronavirus pandemic, we treated the team to a special trip to a Night at the Proms, generously gifted by the BBC Proms team.
The evening was filled with fantastic live music and cultural experiences, providing a wonderful way to commemorate the success of the programme.
The Producers
