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Description
WomanUp! podcast speaks to and about artists, academics, writers and activists, midwives, carers and more all (m)others and all womxn. Those challenging ideas and ideals, questioning assumptions and provoking social change.
Originally created under the Desperate Artwives collective, Woman Up! is a podcast dedicated to creating a living archive of these people and this work, that anyone can access. We find those trying to change current structures founded on biases that have to do with gender, caring responsibilities, race, and the integration of the private and the public space. We have conversations about lived experiences, achievements, and aspirations and we will share campaigns and awareness around crucial intersectional struggles and subjects.
Series 4 included 6 episodes produced in partnership with the innovative Procreate ProjectWoman Up! is produced by Artists Amy Dignam and Susan Merrick
Special thanks:
Althea Greenan and The Women’s Art Library at Goldsmiths College for providing us space and equipment to record for S1 and S2 as well as support for the project;
Rosemary Schonfeld and OVA for the use of their track Early in the Evening, and to the Women’s Liberation Music Archive for storing such inspirational music that we can then find!
Mike Dignam for remixing the track
56 Episodes
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This is our last Woman Up! On Tour episode for 2023. We would like to take this opportunity to send a massive thanks to all organizations that worked with us this year and all the amazing artists that shared their work with us, reminding us of what's possible to create and achieve even when challenged. Thanks to Jess Gell for her amazing video skills and acegrams for making it all possible. And lastly THANK YOU! Thank you to all our incredible listeners, you've been an am...
In this episode we are in Margate at Liminal Gallery talking to founder and curator Louise Fitzjohn and Margate based artists Mercedes Workmen and Catherine Chinatree. Liminal Gallery represents contemporary artists working across the UK and Ireland. Its main ethos is to present an all-round snapshot of what is happening right now in contemporary art, showcasing artists at all stages of their careers working across all mediums. Mercedes is a self-taught artist; predominantly...
In this episode we are at Friction Arts in Birmingham talking to Sandra Hall Artistic Director and co-founder of Friction Arts (alongside Lee Griffiths) and artists Natalie Mason and Savhanha Small Wyn. For 30 years, Friction has produced an ambitious programme of creative work, often in partnership or collaboration with artists from all kinds of disciplines; currently it includes Birmingham’s only free visual art club for young people delivered by professional artists, a ground-breaking mu...
In this Woman Up! On Tour episode we went to Brighton and spent time at the incredible Quiet Down There studio talking to thee inspiring women Lucy Jeffries, AFLO.the poet and Alina Hazadeh. . Quiet Down There offers people routes to expressing and developing their own creativity – outside of the traditional structures of the arts. They work in markets, charity shops, laundrettes and other spaces where people already are. They are ambitious for the communities that they collaborat...
In this episode recorded at Artlink in Hull we spoke to Jemma Brown, Sam Metz and Lydia Shearsmith. . Jemma is a creative producer and a specialist working with diverse communities to plan and produce current, relevant, and inclusive artwork to engage and enlighten. She holds a First Class BA Honours in Contemporary Fine Art Practice, is an Arts and Graphics Teacher (QTLS status), and Freelance Artist. . Sam is an artist who researches, creates and reflects on the concept of what they r...
In this episode we went to Rogue Artists Studios in Manchester and spoke to ecxeptional artists Laura Yuile and Anna FC Smith . Laura’s multidisciplinary practice explores the entanglements between domestic and urban space through matters of community, sustainability, and obsolescence, and the effects of globalisation and technological development. She exhibits internationally and alongside gallery-based exhibitions and events, she has organised a number of projects that filter into the every...
Woman up! On Tour - Manchester Art Gallery New Episode Alert! 🎧 We're thrilled to bring you an extraordinary peek into the art world of Manchester! 🗣️ Join us on this captivating podcast episode as we sit down with the remarkable senior curator Natasha Howes and sensational artists, Susie MacMurray and Mary Griffiths! 🗣️ Get ready to be immersed in their artistic journeys, creative visions, and the stories behind their awe-inspiring work. From the curator's curation process to the artis...
In this episode we talk to artist and founder of A.M.M.A.A (The Archive for Mapping Mother Artists in Asia) Ruchika Wason Singh along two other wonderful artists Alka Mathur and Aparajita Jain Mahajan . A.M.M.A.A. simply means mother. It is also a space, for mapping mother artists in Asia and their art practice. A.M.M.A.A. is an initiative by Indian artist Ruchika Wason Singh, to document the different aspects of their art making and its possible relations with motherhood ....
Spilt Milk Gallery CIC is a social enterprise based in Edinburgh whose mission is to support the work of artists who identify as mothers, and to empower mothers in our community through artist-led activities. They support and advocate for artists mothers through an international membership network, an online and pop-up exhibitions programme, peer support, mentoring and professional development opportunities. They support mothers and families in the local community through creative works...
Pauline de Souza is the founder and director of Diversity Art Forum. She is a writer and is Senior Lecturer in the Visual Arts Cluster, Fine Art Department at the University of East London, She, is the programmer for Cultural Manoeuvres at the University of East London and Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Pauline is involved in the Beacon Collective and sits on the TATE British Artists Network Steering Group. She has written for Feminist Visual Culture, Women Artists and ...
Syowia Kyambi is an interdisciplinary artist and curator whose media spans across photography, video, drawing, sound, sculpture and performance installation. She holds an MFA from Transart Institute (2020) and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2002). Syowia is based in Nairobi and of Kenyan/German origin. In Kyambi’s artistic practice history collapses into the contemporary through the interventions of mischievous and disruptive interlocutory agents who interrogate the le...
Guests: - Oleksandra Kushchenko (Sasha), born in 1988 in Kharkiv, moved to Lviv in 2009. Art critic, art historian, and author of a series of lectures "(Her)story of Art" (2019) and "(Her)story of Photography" (2020) organized together with the Feminist Workshop (Lviv). Ph.D. student at the Lviv National Academy of Arts. Lecturer of the course "Visual Culture" at the Ukrainian Catholic University. Since 2014, the founder and editor of the project "ArtLvivOnline". https://www.instagram....
In this month's Woman Up! we speak to one of Britain's leading art writers Hettie Judah. . Hettie is currently working on a Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition and on a book on art and motherhood. . In this episode, Hettie talks to us about both her current work on issues surrounding artists with children, and her personal experience of combining her professional career, and parenting responsibilities. . 'There were artists who’d received awards for women artists that felt like th...
Dr Frances Hatherley is a writer, researcher and curator. Her writing provokes critical engagements with working-class women’s subjectivities, creativities, art works, and notions of a classed-aesthetics. In 2018 she was awarded her PhD from Middlesex University titled “Sublime Dissension: A Working-Class Anti-Pygmalion Aesthetics of the Female Grotesque” examining the intersections of class and gender in the formations of grotesque, and sublime femininities in art and visual culture. She has...
In Woman Up! Series 4 episode 2 we talked to Sasha Kanster, external affairs manager and educational projects manager for the Feminist Workshop organisation based in Lviv, Ukraine. . Sasha says ' I think a lot of people will find there is no space for art, they will need to do more practical things and feel pressure about it …. But some people also understand that art is the only way that we can deal with trauma at a collective level. I don't think we can go as a whole country to therapy! Bu...
In this first episode of our re-launch we interviewed Annya Sand co-founder of the WAAW London a new initiative aiming to create more representation for female artists inviting London Art's galleries and non-commercial art institutions to exclusively showcase women artists during the week of the 8th to 15th of June. 'What I try to do is to find a sustainable solution to the lack of representation of female artists... If a gallery says no to us we don’t let them off the hook so easily, ...
Leni Dothan is an Israeli-born artist, architect and researcher based in London, dealing with the overlooked representations of women – especially mothers – in art history and contemporary culture. Through the prism of a mother to a boy, a foreigner in the West, she creates sculptures, photographs, videos and installations that suggest new narratives other than the perfect and ideal mother-and-child relationship. Dothan completed her MFA and PhD at the Slade School of Fine Art, London. Leni a...
Lauren Craig (She/her/hers) is a social-media shy, internet-curious cultural futurist based in London. Her practice draws on her experiences as an artist, curator, researcher, birth/death doula and celebrant. She has founded and directed five creative organisations with a background in ethical, social and environmental entrepreneurship and reproductive justice. Her practice moves with slow depth between performance, installation, art writing, moving image and photography. Through archiv...
Felicity Allen is a British artist and writer who makes paintings, books and films, often collaboratively. Her current work is mainly focussed on two durational projects. For one she is developing her concept of the Disoeuvre (as a feminist alternative to conventional ideas of an artist’s oeuvre); for the other she produces series of Dialogic Portraits. She has just completed her most recent Dialogic Portraits project, including her film Figure to Ground: a site losing its system (trailer: ht...
Desperate Artwives Woman Up! podcast takeover Stopping the Fucking Wheel.Original broadcasted live at the Missing Mother conference (University of Bolton, UK) on Friday 23rd April 2021.Missing Mother conference in collaboration with Desperate Artwives present a special ‘takeover’ woman up! episode in the form of a semi structured panel talk discussion focused on the development and continued need for women led platforms and organizations supporting artists who are also mothers and carers over...
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