Workshop Creative Mapping: Design and Architecture Lab Meneesha Kellay

iniva’s Creative Mapping: Design and Architecture Lab is a gathering dedicated to artists, designers and architects from the global majority. The lab is an opportunity for practitioners to access library and archival material from the Stuart Hall Library’s collection, and help shape iniva’s future programmes according to their needs and ambitions. 

Taking place in the context of Dharma Taylor’s exhibition Materials Speak, this event is a continuation of our exploration initiated during the Stuart Hall Library Artists’ Residency with the designer. Since then, we have been committed to making iniva’s programme more interdisciplinary across visual practices and understanding how iniva can better serve and integrate design and architecture into its programme.

Convened by Meneesha Kellay with contributions from Charlene Prempeh, Nate Agbetu and Nana Biamah-Ofosu.

Agenda:

[12:00] Welcome to iniva’s Creative Mapping: Led by iniva’s Artistic Director Sepake Angiama, explore the vision behind this gathering and the journey from the Stuart Hall Residency to the present.

[12:30] Practice in Focus: introduction workshop session led by Nate Agbetu

[13:15] Lunch Break – lunch provided

[14:30] Readings for the Future: Led by Nana Biamah-Ofosu, this workshop session is an opportunity to explore materials and resources currently housed in the Stuart Hall Library and iniva’s archive. Utilising Stuart Hall’s text ‘Constituting an Archive’ as a catalyst for discourse, participants will navigate through its ideas, prompting reflections on their own creative practices within the realm of design and architecture.

[15:30]  Closing Remarks and Networking Reception: Reflect on the day, share insights from sessions, and connect with fellow participants over refreshments. Charlene Prempeh will also respond to the day with a written contribution. 

RSVP

Admission is free but we have very limited spaces for this event. If you’d like to join, please email Beatriz Lobo beatriz@iniva.org.

About the contributors

Meneesha Kellay is a curator working across art, architecture, design, and performance. Currently the Senior Curator, Contemporary Programme at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), she supports emerging creative practice through commissioning displays, installations, performances, and events. Meneesha is also co-curator of the British Pavilion at the International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia 2023 which received a Special Mention Award. Previously she was Public Programmes Curator at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), Assistant Director of the AA Night School at the Architectural Association and led Open House London. She has worked on projects for the Africa Architecture Awards and the Baltic Pavilion at the International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia 2016

Charlene Prempeh is the founder of A Vibe Called Tech, a creative studio and art consultancy that is dedicated to approaching creativity through an intersectional lens. Charlene is also a Financial Times HTSI columnist and contributing editor who writes about design, travel, and culture. After studying PPE at Oxford University, she began a career in marketing and worked at some of the UK’s most prominent media platforms and art institutions including the BBC, The Guardian, and Frieze. Charlene currently consults for the Royal Academy of Arts on partnerships and development, is on the board for Tate Enterprise, and is Chair of the Frieze 91 committee. Charlene’s debut book, Now You See Me: 100 Years of Black Design was published by Prestel in 2023.

Nate Agbetu is a cultural curator and educator who highlights emergent thinking through research, art and speculative design. Their practice exists in the liminal space between culture and social innovation, manifesting in the form of everything from community gardens to films, lectures and arts programming – imagining new futures through creativity and knowledge exchange.

Nana Biamah-Ofosu is an architect, writer and director of YAA Projects, an architecture, design and research practice dedicated to exploring counter-histories, material and diasporic culture, through making, speaking and writing architecture. YAA Projects engages in intelligent and contextually rich projects, centring peripheral identities to create a more inclusive, holistic understanding of the built environment. Recent projects include Tropical Modernism: Architecture and Power in West Africa at the 18th Venice Biennale which was selected as part of ArchDaily’s ‘Top 2023 Pavilions and Installations Interrogating Architecture of the Global South’, the ArchiAfrika Pavilion and Althea McNish: Colour is Mine, which was included in The Guardian’s ‘Best Designs and Designers of 2023’.

Image: Books from Stuart Hall Library, 2024.