Workshop Village Letters Workshops Meera Shakti Osborne

As part of the exhibition Village Letters’ public programme, the artist Meera Shakti Osborne will lead a series of workshops for students from Paddington Academy and Millbank Academy, thinking through ideas of ‘village culture’ and inviting students to imagine and map out their own villages. The works created at the workshops will compose a publication developed by Meera in collaboration with artist Prafulla Mohanti. 

During the sessions, iniva’s Curator Beatriz Lobo will take students on a guided tour of the Village Letters exhibition at Stuart Hall Library. This will be followed by creative writing, drawing and collage activities guided by Meera. Exploring colour and form, the students will answer questions such as ‘What is home?’, ‘Have you been to a village?’ and ‘What around you is changing?’. 

Meera mentions: ​​I like being in spaces with young people where we can have reflective and caring conversations. What does home mean to you? Where do you feel safe? How can making art help us answer these questions? bell hooks says in Art On My Mind that ‘the function of art is to do more than tell it like it is-it’s to imagine what is possible’ and this is exactly the idea that Prafulla and I have tried to carve out during this programme. 

In January 2023, Meera is going to Nanpur, Prafulla Mohanti’s village in India. Together, they will create new works that will compose the publication. In March 2023, we will host a public event to launch the publication, bringing together the students from both schools, parents, educators and iniva’s communities. 

Programme

10 October 2022: Workshop with Paddington Academy

14 November 2022: Workshop with Milbank Academy

27 February 2023: Workshop with Milbank Academy

About the Artist

Meera Shakti Osborne is an artist and community organiser from London. Meera’s work focuses on collective healing through creative self-expression. Meera is interested in the use of art as a tool to create historical documents that represent feelings and the inbetween stuff that often gets left out of history making. They work in sound, oil paint, textile, breathing, talking and dancing. Meera has worked with Nottingham Contemporary, iniva, NewBridge Project, Royal College of Art, Peckham Platform, Focal Point Gallery, The Gap Arts Project, The Drawing Room and Reprezent FM. Meera graduated in Design at Central School of Speech and Drama in 2015 and Cairo Institute of Liberal Arts and Science in 2018.