University of Birmingham Workshop Inspires New Sound Art Piece Honoring Stuart Hall

A creative response to the workshop ‘Sounds of Being and Belonging’ facilitated by artist Jaz Morrison, IdentiTEA is a multi-layered sound piece featuring audio-snippets from interviews with workshop participants, an excerpt from Stuart Hall’s essay ‘Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities’ (1991) read by artist Jaz Morrison, and ambient recordings of the workshop itself. It explores the lived experiences of a diverse group of people in Birmingham, and how their personal experiences of migration, racial inequality and minority have influenced what belonging and identity means to them.

‘Sounds of Being and Belonging’ was one in a series of workshops that used the work of famed academic Stuart Hall, who pioneered the field of cultural studies, as a catalyst for creative exploration of Britain’s cultural mosaic. The workshops were developed by a team of researchers at the University of Birmingham, led by Dr Deniz Sözen, Lecturer in Art History, including Ingrid Abrahams, Dr Kavita Bhanot, Tina Hofman, Katherine Parsons, Dr Mirian Alves de Souza, Savita Vij, and Aurella Yussuf, as well the artists Jaz Morisson, Shane Shambhu, and Mia Sugunasingha.

Attendees questioned assumptions such as that we now live in a ‘post-racial Britain’ where racism is a thing of the past, or that we have moved from a ‘city of empire’ to a ‘multicultural melting pot’ with Birmingham as a poster child. Through co-learning and exploration of their own lived experiences, the workshop attendees were able to develop striking creative responses to their conversations.

Representing the team of researchers that collectively conceived and led the workshops, Dr Sözen said: “Departing from Hall’s work, the workshops set out to explore the often-messy lived experiences and realities in a city like Birmingham with such changing and diverse identities. Our aim was to explore in what ways Stuart Hall’s ideas on identity resonated with the current discourse and the lived experience of people in Birmingham. In collaboration with artists, the workshops aimed to open up a space for people to come together beyond the confines of academia. Taking place in different locations across the city, the workshops provided an intimate space for participants to share their thoughts, discuss, and creatively engage with Stuart Hall’s work through the lens of their own lived experience of identity, belonging, and the politics of representation in this city.”

The three workshops, Sounds of Being and Belonging, Feeling like Familiar Strangers, and Reading Critically to Write Creatively, were funded by the University of Birmingham Interdisciplinary incubator “Rethinking the Fateful Triangle in an Age of Democratic Decay: Race, Ethnicity, Nation”.