METHODOLOGY

This Provocation is a culmination of forty hours’ worth of conversations, one-to-one sessions with twenty independent artists of East, Southeast, mixed heritage(s) and of the Asian diaspora across Britain on race, racism, injustices in the landscape of movement,dance and body practices as well as their lived experiences. 

 

The conversations were guided by open questions carefully devised through two focus groups with Thea Stanton and Xie Jin Hao respectively. The Provocation acknowledges what we are exploring is vast. However, it offers a portal into the lived experiences of the artists alongside the emotional and mental labour, and at times trauma that come with these experiences (Jarral, 2020). The Provocation acknowledges, welcomes and respects the differences within the artists contributing to the project and aims to encapsulate a fraction of the wealth of knowledge, hefty onus of anti-racist and anti-oppressive works for people of the global majority daily. 

This Provocation is presented under four main themes and they are: 1) personal experiences in relation to the wider society, 2) safety / precarity, 3) access to arts and the value of the arts and finally 4) forward looking and imaginings. Each of these sections apart from forward looking and imaginings are followed by a call to action as invitations to industry professionals to begin actioning the changes within their realm of work.