Nov 03 2023 80 mins
In this episode we are at Friction Arts in Birmingham talking to Sandra Hall Artistic Director and co-founder of Friction Arts (alongside Lee Griffiths) and artists Natalie Mason and Savhanha Small Wyn.
For 30 years, Friction has produced an ambitious programme of creative work, often in partnership or collaboration with artists from all kinds of disciplines; currently it includes Birmingham’s only free visual art club for young people delivered by professional artists, a ground-breaking multicultural music programme in schools and community settings, our Culture Club for young people, A Word From the Wise – a programme celebrating the work of elders and older artists, currently through our ‘Home’ project, Walking Over Coals, with an artist development programme for emerging, emerged and submerging artists and an ever-evolving series of site-specific performances and interventions in a variety of settings like their between-lockdown show ‘Quiet Carnival’.
Natalie Mason is a performer-composer, facilitator and researcher.Natalie has been directing the Multicultural Music Making project (MMM) she created in partnership with Friction Arts. As a multi-instrumentalist, Natalie has performed and recorded internationally at the BBC Proms, FIFA World Cup, Symphony Hall and Real World Studios. She has been commissioned as a composer by Surge Orchestra, Flatpack Film Festival and Dorcha, with her music played on BBC Radio 3. She is a member of avant-pop experimental duo Kamura Obscura, co-curates alternative music night Club Integral Midlands Branch and recently completed a national tour with The Nightingales.
Savhanha Small Wyn, a poet, writer and mum to two under two of Vietnamese-Jamaican-British heritage. Savhanha is a poet and writer and has been published in the Visual Verse with my poem 'Pieces', and have since had three more published on their site ('A Knight's Tale', 'Firewatch', and 'Spring'), along with a piece published on Spare Parts Lit and another on Halu Halo Journal, and two more pieces to be published during 2023. Since having her children Savhanha has realised the difficulties of freelancing and childcare which inspired her to launch an Arts zine online called RECESSES, a multi-media zine that focuses on work that's been rejected, forgotten, or is new and experimental.