Join us for drop-in gardening activities in the Primary garden - with an opportunity to learn more about growing vegetables, fruit, flowers and dye plants, and gardening in small urban spaces.
Join us as the studio audience for a live performance of the last reality TV food show on the planet! The Kitchen Network delves into the politics of food as entertainment, exploring how it's become detached from the realities of its production and its role in climate collapse. Unfolding as the final reality TV food competition on Earth, this performance piece uses humour to examine the divide between online food cultures and their disconnection to wider issues of class, gender, and geography.
How did the willful daughter of a Himalayan forest guard become Monsanto’s worst nightmare? The Seeds of Vandana Shiva tells the remarkable life story of Gandhian eco-activist Dr. Vandana Shiva, how she stood up to the corporate Goliaths of industrial agriculture, rose to prominence in the food justice movement, and inspired an international crusade for change.
Join researcher and graphic designer Saria Digregorio for Hacking Labels, a practical workshop to explore fictional visions for community-led food systems and prototype interactive food labels to shape and share recipes for food systems transformation.
Join Micha from The Witches Kitchen for a communal meal, using ingredients that have traditional healing properties. Food will be sourced locally and during the meal, Micha will share the stories behind the recipes. We'll discuss how the food we eat support our health and how local communities can get better access to healthy ingredients.
Join us at Windmill Community Gardens for a plant and seed swap. Bring along spare seeds and plants you’d like to swap. If you don’t have any, you are welcome to take plants home and give a donation if you are able.
Through art practice, how can we foster different cultural practices, political imaginations, networks of mutuality and relations, and even modes of world (un)making? In this talk, artist duo FRAUD will present their ongoing project EURO–VISION, a research-led inquiry that explores the concept of ‘extraction’ through the lens of artistic practice.
Oneiric Kitchen is a collaborative project by artist-filmmaker Chiemi Shimada and wellbeing practitioner Susie Cunningham. This workshop is for participants aged 13-18 interested in exploring their sleep experiences. We are keen to connect with participants who have experience of sleep conditions.
Exhibitions should not necessarily be fixed; they have the potential for change. To explore this idea, Primary is engaging in a reflective process of exhibition-making. The exhibition will initially comprise three pre-existing works by artists Ashley Holmes, Jasleen Kaur, and Jala Wahid, before it is transformed.
Meet with the Future Machine and celebrate the blossoming cherry trees for the sixth year. For 2024 we are going to attempt to rewild Christ Church Gardens by asking you to bring along your own puppet creatures and cardboard plants made from recycled waste.
A hands-on workshop getting to know the common Birch tree – exploring culinary, medicinal, and crafts uses. The session will start with a sharing of stories, information and folklore about birch, with tea to taste. In the second half, we will make a birch leaf product for you to take home.
Artist, activist and researcher Luiza Prado De O. Martins will join Engagement Curator Rebecca Beinart in conversation around the work they are developing as part of Primary’s spring Nourishment season. Luiza Prado’s The Kitchen Network delves into the politics of food as entertainment, exploring how it's become detached from the realities of its production and its role in climate collapse.
Join young people from Radford for a super hero parade with costumes and lanterns created during workshop sessions over the past month.
This is a workshop about confidence.
You might have writer’s block, you might have an upcoming public speaking engagement, you might be feeling low about your creative ideas in general or you might be scared of talking on the phone. Either way, this workshop is for you!
Each Begets Each is a collaborative exhibition of new work by Khaya Job and Wingshan Smith. Together, they delve into realms of friendship, myth-making, play, rituals, conversations and sound. By interrogating and performing archetypes of femininity, the pair engage in the audacious task of imagining a divinity for themselves to create new possibilities for identity and community.
Unlock the secrets to a thriving creative career. Join arts insider Ceri Hand must-attend in-person session at Primary where she'll share her wisdom and experience. With practical tips and advice, you'll learn how to best work, articulate it effectively, build champions and earn money doing what you love.
Bewildered by budgets? Freaked out by numbers? Triggered by maths? Don’t worry, we’ve got you! A good budget is the foundation of a good project. Build your confidence in this hands on workshop focussed on budgets and how to make tools like Excel or Google Sheets work for you!
Social Practice Social is back! Join us online for the first meet up on the year. This session will be a chance to catch up, and share current and upcoming projects.
Social Practice Social is a regular discussion forum for artists, programmers, community organisers, activists, and others working with participation, collaboration, public space, or social change.
In this project, hard science meets science fiction, with the Ready Room providing space for cells to relax, strategize and entertain. Recalling HeLa’s dubious genesis, the exhibition contemplates alternate forms of building society – what if the HeLa cells have found a better way to live? Sonya Dyer’s work intertwines speculative fiction, hard science and mythologies to propose new ways of conceiving where the centre is located in fictional narratives of the future.
A Material Romance presents new work by Will Harvey with text contribution by Jana Dardouk as part of To & Fro. Will and Jana took the opportunity of connecting to critique the pace of mass consumption by confronting the consequences of its waste and debris. Both artists work within the common ground of art and architecture, their practices seek to challenge our cultural perspectives of ‘waste’.
From audio description to closed captions, alt-text and remote viewing, artist and writer Jamila Prowse will provide examples from her own practice as well as artists who inspire her, to consider how access adjustments can be an integral art form as opposed to an add on or afterthought.
After a three-year break join us for the return of the hugely popular Uncanny Christmas, our annual fundraiser planned and executed by our resident community. For one night only experience Found Utopia, Primary’s antidote to the traditional Christmas party.
During the Covid-19 pandemic and spanning various lockdowns Primary and Bethlem Gallery collaborated on a remote artist-to-artist support programme. Participating artists will share creative outcomes alongside discussing their experiences of connecting and developing new work together.
Bookkeeper Neisa Reid joins us to deliver an artist development focused session on financial recording, tax, and self-assessment. This is an excellent opportunity for artists, makers, and creatives to learn or be refreshed on the necessary skills to manage being self-employed.
Join artist Abbas Zahedi and co-founder of Square Root Soda, Ed Taylor, for a session focused around citrus. The workshop will take the form of a sharing circle, where participants are encouraged to think and write creatively together. You are invited to bring and share your own reflections and texts on citrus.
Join artist Saintly Amok to grind and cook with grains harvested from Primary's garden this autumn. The heritage grains of wheat, barley, oats and rye were sown in spring during the 'Seed Sankalpa' event in the spring.
Join Jade and Roo’s Slow Reading Group where we read together, out loud and slowly, and discuss topics such as care, reciprocity, complaint, community, and culture. Our reading material will be taken from texts and books that inspired the making of Roo’s exhibition, Courses for Dis-Course(s), currently showing at Primary and previously presented at GLOAM.
A playful, hands-on workshop with Georgina Barney from Plant Dye Studio to explore some of the remarkable uses of the Sumac tree.
Primary Lates are back! Join us on Friday 27 October and enjoy exhibitions across Primary and independent galleries TG, Forth and Beam, all located in our building.
Join Primary, Himmah and Nottz Garden Project for a shared meal using veg grown on plots in Radford. During this informal event, we’ll share food prepared by local cooks and discuss some of the key themes from the Nourishment programme. Enjoy a delicious home-cooked meal and meet other people interested in food justice, growing and sustainable food.
Are you curious about fungi and keen to learn more about how to cultivate them? Would you like to be able to grow your own mushrooms at home? The ‘Dirty Cultures’ workshop will be led by artist Matt Gale who will introduce you to all of the stages of fungi cultivation.
You're invited to a workshop by Roseanna Dias, where you can learn about incorporating rest and care practices into your creative work. This workshop will discuss the importance of self-care and collective care, as well as the broader context in which we seek change.
In Courses for Dis-Course(s), artist Roo Dhissou conjures up a space, for dining, eating, cooking and gathering that manifest in a sort of kitchen, dining room, café, restaurant, chill space. The project includes a series of exhibitions and dining events for British South Asian artists.
A new multi-media installation featuring two experimental films. THE WALL is a surreal and absurdist take on housing inequality and its psychological effects. It explores how the same problems - overcrowding, ‘revenge evictions’, mould and vermin - have played out from the medieval era to the present day. Hyperopia is a psychedelic two channel video installation which uses script, disorientating film and editing techniques.
Join us through the summer to for gardening activities in the primary garden - with an opportunity to learn more about growing vegetables, fruit, flowers and dye plants, and gardening in small urban spaces. You can also drop in for a coffee and a chat to enjoy our outdoor space.
Led by Harry Blackett from An Endless Supply, this workshop will begin with a short introduction to all things web including top tips on how to build a site, where to host, and what to think about when putting one together in terms of structure, layout and visual identity.
Come along to a screening of short films by artist Matthew Arthur Williams, followed by a Q&A chaired by Primary curator Jade Foster. During September, Matthew is in residence at Primary as part of our Work in Common series.
Oneiric Kitchen is a new collaborative project by adolescent counsellor and wellbeing practitioner Susie Cunningham and artist-filmmaker Chiemi Shimada. Susie and Chiemi provide therapeutic cooking workshops for people with sleep disorders. Susie is a patient with an incurable sleep disorder.
Join British-Nigerian multidisciplinary artist Nwando Ebizie and UK-based curator, writer and producer Saziso Phiri for an informal in conversation. During September Nwando is in residence at Primary as part of our Work in Common series.
