RESOLVE

“PLUS ONE” with Bloc Projects is an inter-city “open studio” and six week residency that we launched in July 2025, inviting three practitioners based in the three cities of Northern England – Sheffield, Leeds, and Manchester – to use the gallery as a space for lab-style workshop testing, trans-local knowledge exchange, and creative expression that necessitated communal invitation or what we describe as “bringing your people with you”.

We wanted to test what the “Nurturing Ecologies” framework looked like as a space in Sheffield; to ask, what might the spatial infrastructure to resource community-focused creative practice look and feel like?

Guided by this question, we built an “open studio” in the gallery space of Bloc Projects, once again using materials we had foraged and salvaged from cultural spaces and organisations across Sheffield. It became a space for assembly but also one to foster connection and facilitate deep collaboration, containing utilities to support various practices (such as a scanner, paints, desks and office chairs) as well as tools for exhibition and performance.

The project builds interregional connections by facilitating and resourcing not only the work of the “PLUS ONE” residents, photographer, Ai Narapol (), musician and sound artist, Petrelli Purple (), and visual artist, Ella Mayamothi (), but by using their burgeoning practices to further nurture the creative ecologies of Sheffield and their respective cities.

The project had a number of public-facing aspects in addition to the residencies, such as workshops, showcases, and artist presentations. But the paragon of this was the open programming for community organisations across the city, such as and the Sheffield Universities Palestine Student Encampments, where they were invited to use the space throughout. Here, we sought to unravel the idea of the residency as an exclusionary mechanism for individual artistic development and instead play with its porous, communal potential.

We spent September in the Atlantic Ocean building “The Gallavantation of the Promise” for , a knowledge exchange project and site-specific installation series that attempts to image and imagine the vocation of diasporic gallivanting in the Azores.

“Gallivanting”, a pejorative description of purposeful, even desirous unproductivity, was the lens through which we sought to interrogate our position on the archipelago. It bears a strangely vocational dimension (vocare, “to call”), questioning to what and whom are we called? Gallivanting resonates with acutely diasporic contexts, including our own. This is not just in being the go-to verb for disapproving West African and Caribbean mothers to wayward children, but as an explicit rupture, or reinterpretation, of the “diasporic promise”. It alludes to quotidian loves and labours that do not fit comfortably within normative modes of appraising mobility; unveiling popular illusions of the “good (im)migrant”, “invasive species”, or “mother tongue”.

In the archipelago, to gallivant then facetiously introduces a new vocation: a recovery of ‘place’ that speaks to how the intransigent movement of settlers, slaves, sailors, plants, fashions, tectonic plates, Calafones, ex-convicts, film crews, crafts people, Nelly Furtado, continuously reshape the experience and perception - the promise - of Azorean landscapes, language, and lives

In order to present a vision of situated practice, we built a space at from borrowed materials that have moved to and through the landscapes of São Miguel and afterwards will return - from its volcanic soils to its Japanese cedars. This space centred a series of “scenographies” across the island and its archives, captured beautifully by , opening our thinking to demonstrate an epistemology, or a way of knowing, that is itself gallant.

We are indebted to the love and labours of the whole W&T team; to MBrum, Herdeiros de Agostinho Medeiros and Lotaçor for lending materials; to to whom this project is largely dedicated; to the wonderful curators ; and finally, to our raison d’être, our beating heart,

LIBRARY LATES, coming to a library near you 📚Join RESOLVE + invited practitioners for upcoming evenings of conversation, making and learning at the library.

★ This series of fall public programme events will be happening at three local Richmond Libraries: Whitton, East Sheen and Ham. Each Library Late will focus on a different theme that is explored with invited practitioners from RESOLVE’s ecology.

★ On Thurs 11th Sept from 6-9PM at Whitton Library, join us for our first LIBRARY LATE with invited practitioner Avni Patel for an evening of play!

★ Whitton Library
★ 141 Nelson Rd, Twickenham TW2 7BB
★ Thursday, 11th Sept 2025
★ 6-9PM

📕6-7pm: Open Activity w/ Food + Drink
📗7-8pm: Talk + Q&A
📘8-9pm: Chat + Music

★ All are welcome, free entry
★ Bookings encouraged, contact us [email protected]

☆ About the Library Lates
These evenings are part of our project, Tending to the Centres, a collaborative programme and series of site-specific installations that invites local communities to reimagine their relationship with three libraries in Richmond as part of this year’s Richmond Arts & Ideas Festival. Since earlier this year, our project has included:

* ‘Library Logs’ workshops where local library goers imagine themselves as libraries: what experiences, memories, passions would you borrow and lend?
* ‘Brief Making’ workshops
* ‘Co-Design & Build’ workshops
* More to share on Tending to the Centres.
* Stay tuned for the next Library Lates in October!

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☆ About Avni Patel
Avni is driven by making meaningful connections between people and ideas; values like empathy, collaboration, embodiment and joy; and shifting power balances to forefront underrepresented voices. She’s always learning—recently at Of Public Interest Lab (Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm) on creating new forms of welcome, and ROOTS: Biopower and Resistance, exploring food, culture and power in a global context (she also picked up and dropped roller-skating pretty fact). She has no formal arts training and is mostly found, behind the scenes.

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☆ Poster film images by

This Wed 13th and Thurs 14th Aug, PLUS ONE, RESOLVE and Bloc Projects will be giving away all the materials used in the show. We will be holding a drop-in giveaway event at the gallery all day, 12pm - 7pm.

No new or first-use materials were used - everything in the space has either been repurposed or upcycled. Giveaway items include: bookshelves, tables, chairs, window panes, and plenty of wood.

These were amassed before the programme from various places in and around Sheffield, with thanks in particular to , , and

You are also welcome to come to our gallery on 12 Aug (today), 12am - 5pm while we de-install the space. This will allow you to preview and earmark items, and make any necessary transport arrangements to take them away.

Free and open to all. Everything must go!

📸 Photos from the build by

🌐 ARTIST SHOWCASE / CLOSING EVENT 🪢

Join us for an evening of sharing and insight as we close out our artist-in-residence strand of the PLUS ONE programme at on Fri 8 August, 6-8pm. Free and open to all! Link to book in bio 💘

After a month working with and alongside RESOLVE Collective and Bloc Projects, artists Ai Narapol , Ella Mayamothi Sommeil and Pertrelli Purple will present their various works-in-progress. The group will set the scene on project themes related to migration, personal histories of race / class through photography, video and open conversations. Each artist will talk us through the key, overarching ideas of their research and development.

Don't miss out!

🍽 Join us this Thursday at 5:30pm for a very special workshop at for
with the inspirational .kasmani 🌿

Many plants, herbs and flowers are used in traditional methods of healing across cultures, inherited from our elders, families and communities. The warm turmeric and milk, the nettle tea, the bone broth, the tastes and sensations we may have taken for granted, but whose value and capacity for physical, emotional and mental wellbeing, we now recognise. Piloted during the Nurturing Ecologies residency in 2023, Recipes for Healing is a zine project about the preservation of this knowledge as generations move and grow.

In the Gardens for Healing workshop we will consider how these recipes can be translated into physical spaces by asking what would your ideal garden or space for healing be like? And how can we nurture our imaginations to dream better for ourselves as collectives?

Eventbrite Link in Bio! 💛🤞🏿

About Shaheen Kasmani:

Shaheen Kasmani is an artist, creative producer, curator and educator. With a MA in Visual Traditional & Islamic Arts, her interests lie in narratives around coloniality and heritage, art, architecture and patterns. Shaheen was the lead curator for the Ramadan Pavilion at the V&A Museum, and co-curated The Past is Now exhibition at Birmingham Museum, has exhibited her work in the UK and Europe, and guest lectures at universities in the US.

Join us at PLUS ONE this Thursday for an evening of collective reflection and creative response as we honour the legacy of historian, educator and racial justice activist Mark Hutchinson, and trace the revolutionary Black histories embedded in Sheffield’s past and present.

This workshop is part of the way/mark/ing programme and draws on archival recordings of Mark’s voice and materials from his research. We’ll explore the importance of Marks work and how his research into visiting figures like Olaudah Equiano, who spoke in Sheffield in 1790, are connected to the long lineage of abolitionist and anti-racist activism in the city: from coal miners’ strikes to Palestine solidarity today.

Through collage, remixing, and sound, we’ll engage in a somatic and imaginative process of “cartography”, mapping grief, memory and resistance. Using historic and contemporary material, we will collectively ask:

✏️ What does it mean to honour radical legacies?
✏️ How do we create space for collective grief in a time of protest repression?
✏️ What liberatory futures can we imagine for Sheffield?

No art experience needed come as you are. All materials provided.

📆 Thursday 24th July
⏰ 6-8pm
🏠 Bloc Projects, 71 Eyre Street, Sheffield, S1 4RN
🎟️ Ticket link in bio!

Bloc Projects and RESOLVE Collective are delighted to launch PLUS ONE, a multi-strand programme of artist development, community resourcing and event series.

We invite you to a free screening of Nurturing Ecologies by White Teeth at our gallery-turned-studio space.

Date: Friday 4th July
Time: 6pm - 9pm
Place: Bloc Projects Gallery

Commissioned to respond to RESOLVE Collective’s 2023 Nurturing Ecologies residency, White Teeth presents a visual reflection that traces the energy, relationships, and care that shaped a week of Black and PoC-led relationship building in Sheffield. Blending original documentation with new interviews and their own visual language, the work returns to the residency not to reconstruct it, but to explore what it sparked—offering a layered portrait of a gathering, rooted in creative exchange and place-based connection.

teeth.98 are an audio-visual art practice formed by archivist & curator Ella Barrett () and filmmaker & photographer Jashan Walton (). Grounded in visual documentation, oral histories and community centred practices, they seek to uncover untold stories of the global majority. Experimenting with mediums of archive, their installation work conveys time textually, approaching history as physical and present, linking to ideas of ‘a living archive’.

Their work has respectively been shown by Site Gallery (2025), Mixmag (2024), Worldwide F.M (2024), DocFest (2024), Dig Where You Stand (2024) No Bounds (2024), SADACCA (2023).

🎟️ Ticket link in bio to RSVP!

Join us in Croydon this Saturday 10th May 2pm - 4pm for the last chance to catch ’Archives Can Be Anything!’, - an exhibition we built with s inspirational Croydon Young Archivists!

It is an exhibition of artworks, zines, films and poetry at , co-created, designed, and built by ten local 14-18 year olds - Adjoa, Aurora, Emma-Lu, Ewan, Fizza, Prince, Randal, Rayhaan, Sumaiya & Taisia - and curated by wonderful Francesca Telling in response to Croydon’s archives and local history collections!

At the closing event there will be drop-in activities for all ages led by the Young Archivists, including:

📜 Poetry Busking with Fizza 🖋️
Get your own personalised poem by Young Archivist Fizza! Come and share a story of your heritage, family history or memories of Croydon, and Fizza will write you a poem inspired by it. You might even want to bring a photograph or object from your personal archive for Fizza to respond to.

💭 Dream-boarding with Aurora and Emma-Lu💫
What are your hopes for the future of Croydon? Let’s have a think together about what should be done with all of Croydon’s empty and closed-down spaces. Will the Whitgift ever become a Westfield? What if we used the Allders building as a youth club? Could the Nestle tower transform into community housing? It’s up to you to decide!

📛 Badge collage with Randal 👋
Come and make collages with copies of materials from our archives, and turn them into badges to take home with you! Cut up and reassemble Croydon’s local history to make something that represents your story – then wear it with pride!

👕 Free merch 👜
There will be free Archives Can Be Anything inspired badges, tote bags and t-shirts available to take away with you! Limited stock and first-come-first-served, so don’t miss out!

Address: 9 Katherine St, Croydon CR0 1NX

🤝🏿 Entre nous 🤝🏽

In February, “Collective Joy - Learning flamboyance!“, curated by the inimitable launched at in Paris, featuring our installation and public laboratory, “Entre nous”.

The project explores collective joy at the intersection of play, co-creation, network-building, and resource redistribution. It is driven by one central question: how can we imagine and build infrastructures that nurture joy?

The installation invites the public to push autonomous play in a space of rules and regulation, assembling and disassembling physical structures created from building materials from the Palais de Tokyo: undoing and unlearning. It platforms the work of our hearts, , where, through workshops with young people in Corbeil-Essonnes, we are co-designing inter-peripheral exhibition displays for Le Morillon à Montreuil!

“Entre nous” also features a library of some of our favourite co-defendants, , , , , .archives and others.

We are indebted to the work of Amandine and also other PdT staff, Charlotte Frenay, .albouy , Michel Pari-Bonfils, Maëva Gomez, and Marion Buchloh. And we have to shout our beautiful, burgeoning gang of Paris compadres , , , .serrano.studio , , , & .

🛻 You Get A Car [Everybody Gets A Car] 🚚

For much of this year, alongside our dearest co-conspirator we worked with communities across Liverpool to redistribute and reuse materials from ’s temporary closure and building decant.

This process became You Get a Car [Everybody Gets a Car], an experimental exhibition and institutional critique at Tate Liverpool and and a citywide material redistribution that redirected materials, furniture, and knowledge from Tate Liverpool in support of community-focused creative practice across the city, from Waterloo to Toxteth, Anfield to Stoneycroft and over the Mersey to the Wirral.

The project took on so many different dimensions as we fell in love with Liverpool. Beyond the exhibition space, with our co-D’s Cathal Elliot and the superhuman Tate Liverpool Art Handler crew, we constructed fit-outs for community groups and redistributed materials for local people from community centres, street markets, public libraries, law centres, and everything in between.

Though the exhibition ended in July, our first online offering from the project are clips from a series of videos we commissioned by L8's inimitable . These feature the integral community work of some of our friends and collaborators, .tool.library, , , .4.change, , and .

We cannot forget that so much of this social justice work took place during the continuously unfolding genocide in Gaza and also in Sudan and Congo. We cannot stop using our position to organise, agitate, and dissent for these liberation causes and we used our voice where we could in the exhibition to highlight the silence and complicity of the institution. We're thankful to the audience and gallery staff in Liverpool for reciprocating and facilitating this.

More YGAC posts, more collaborators, and MUCH more thank you’s to come!