What's it like to intern at Affinity Festival?

Collabor-8 collective are a group of young people aged 15-25 in Nottingham City who meet once a week at Nottingham Contemporary and work on youth programming for the gallery, and plan amazing social events like Affinity Festival.

What's it like to intern at Affinity Festival?

I had such a brilliant time at Affinity Festival at Nottingham Contemporary this month. The two day long festival featured live entertainment, music, performance, poetry, dance, and various exciting workshops. I even took part in a workshop making light-up jewellery for the night time entertainment! Another great feature was the short film competition, which was designed to showcase young talent in Nottingham, young people from Collabora-8 chose a winner, 'All Persons Fictitious' by Fine Art student Christina Cushing. A luxurious cinema was created for the showing of the films, with popcorn and herbal tea, it was one of my favourite parts of the event.

I spoke to Dommy Phizackilea, an intern and member of Collabor-8, who saw the project through from start to finish.

What's it's like to be part of collabor-8?

I won't lie, it can be a lot of work sometimes. It's quite a commitment, but a lot of fun. I've had some opportunities through it that I wouldn't have had elsewhere. I've been all over the place with them as a representative, and I really matter, as we all do, we're all important and we're all equal and that's really nice.

What kind of role did you take on in your position as intern and with the festival?

In my internship I was sort of a go-between for the group and the staff at the gallery. I started off by programming public events using the group's ideas and the staff's know-how. I then moved on to creating youth interpretation for the season of exhibitions that were to support the festival. Again working closely with the group, we put forward the idea of a 'zine' which was a first for the gallery. I then, worked with a talented graphics artist, Lena El-Kholy to actually realise the zine which has been hugely successful. We smashed all targets for numbers and we were surprise visited by the Paul Hamlin Foundation and Arts Council England. It's the first thing I've ever done in life where I've turned around and said "this is a success". It's amazing.

What's next for collabor-8?

We've got another zine coming out in December which will have a closing event which currently is looking to be something like a workshop, so that's something to look out for! And we've got another two collabor-8 collective organised walks through in the gallery, next one is on the 25th of November.


nottinghamcontemporary.org/affinity

Author

Meridith Dickin

Meridith Dickin Youth Network

An Arts Award Youth Network Associate from the East Midlands. A visual arts student.

Recent posts by this author

View more posts by Meridith Dickin

0 Comments

Post A Comment

You must be signed in to post a comment. Click here to sign in now

You might also like

Harriet Loffler, curator at the Women’s Art Collection, explains the relational nature of women’s art

Harriet Loffler, curator at the Women’s Art Collection, explains the relational nature of women’s art

by Sienna James

Read now