Michael Clark: Cosmic Dancer
Creative Responses

Celebrating some of the creative responses from our Community and School Partners to our 2020 exhibition.

Headway East London enjoying their 'Cosmic Collage' workshop

We run a Community View for each of our Art Gallery exhibitions - these are interactive, private view events run with and for our Community Partners. During the pandemic, these have been reimagined online for people to enjoy at home. For Michael Clark: Cosmic Dancer, we produced a series of activities that gave an insight into the exhibition, alongside creative activities inspired by the wonderful world of Michael Clark. We also ran some socially distanced and live online workshops of these activities.

We asked our Community Partners - Accumulate, Barbican Community Ambassadors, Corali, The Garden School, The Sydney Russell School, Headway East London and Nova - to gather creative responses to these activities from their members and have displayed their artworks for you to enjoy below.

The works you'll see are in response to two activities: Making Moves, a dance activity created by Michael Clark Company's Kate Coyne; and Cosmic Collage, an art activity devised by Mitchel Ceney from Accumulate. We're also pleased to share a short film documenting Shape Makers, a series of workshops that took place in the Barbican Theatre with Michael Clark Company and Headway East London.

Making Moves

Kate Coyne, Associate Director of Michael Clark Company, created activities that invited the groups to explore a different way of moving their body. They encouraged people to be creative in response to everyday objects, like a bicycle chain or an album cover.

Watch these short films to see some of the wonderful dance footage our Community Partners shared.

Featuring dancers: Alice, Bethan, Claudia, Fiona, Jackie, Nicole, Graham, Sasha, and Sophie.

Featuring students from The Garden School

Cosmic Collage

Mitchel Ceney, an artist from ‘The Art School for the Homeless’ Accumulate, was inspired by photos and posters from the exhibition and the collage-style of some of Michael Clark Company’s performance posters. He created an activity that guided people to use bits and pieces they might find at home to create their own collage. We also worked with Accumulate to send out art-packs to hostels and Mitchel hosted live workshops with other community groups.

Click on each thumbnail to view each image full screen.

John, Accumulate

Calvin, Headway East London

Billy, Headway East London

Chris, Headway East London

Audrey, Headway East London

Ken, Headway East London

Mike, Headway East London

Sarah, Headway East London

Sandra, Headway East London

Sam, Headway East London

Simon, Headway East London

Ahmed, Nova New Opportunities

Amirah, Nova New Opportunities

Ayoub, Nova New Opportunities

Mimi, Nova New Opportunities

Minna, Nova New Opportunities

Asim, Nova New Opportunities

Zainab Fatima, Nova New Opportunities

Sumaya, Nova New Opportunities

Mohamed, Nova New Opportunities

Sumaya, Nova New Opportunities

This gallery displays the artworks created by students from The Sydney Russell School:

Meet the Shape Makers - a dance project with Michael Clark Company and Headway East London

A brand-new dance troupe took its bow on the Barbican stage, when members of the dance group at brain injury charity Headway East London were invited to take part in a series of workshops led by Kate Coyne, Associate Director at Michael Clark Company.

In Autumn 2020, forming part of Barbican Creative Learning’s rich programme of events responding to the Barbican Art Gallery exhibition, Michael Clark: Cosmic Dancer, these vibrant workshops saw participants exploring ways to use their bodies to create shapes, respond to music, and express themselves through movement.

Eleven participants took part in small groups across three separate workshops at both the Barbican and Headway East London’s centre in Haggerston. Kate talked to them about working at Michael Clark Company and led the group as they used dance and movement to explore their creativity.

Watch the short film:

Read the full story

'The Barbican was empty, so it was very weird being there…If there was another workshop, I would definitely want to do it again - I loved it!'

Linda Martin, Headway East London dancer

'Kate's dance experience really helped to facilitate wonderful creative responses from members and a clear joy for movement, in ways that had not previously been considered.'

Fiona Allan, Physiotherapist at Headway East London

'I loved working with the Headway members. Their joy in dancing was infectious, and the enthusiasm and generosity of their energy and creativity was a complete delight.'

Kate Coyne, Associate Director at Michael Clark Company

Dancers and Artists were from the following groups

Accumulate
Accumulate is ‘The Art School for the Homeless’ - they provide creative workshops to homeless people who are living in hostels or temporary accommodation in London to support their wellbeing, learning and creative development. They are also one of our Communities-in-Residence, running creative workshops for their members in the centre.

Website / Twitter / Instagram

Barbican Community Ambassadors
We work with a group of Community Ambassadors: individuals from across London who are actively engaged with their community and passionate about the arts. Ambassadors reach out to communities to promote the Barbican, especially those who haven’t heard of us before. Ambassadors’ knowledge and expertise help to shape our offers for local communities and to identify potential partnerships, ensuring that everyone has access to our arts and learning offer.

Website

Corali
Corali is a leader in dance created by artists with learning disabilities. They explore the relationship between performers with and without a learning disability, between dance and other art forms, and between professional and participatory artwork. They make and tour great performances and love to share their creative practice with other people.

Website / Vimeo / Twitter / Instagram

The Garden School
The Garden School is an outstanding school in the London borough of Hackney offering education for 4-16 year olds with highly specialised provisions for learners with autism. They believe that every child should be recognised and respected as unique.

Website / Twitter

Headway East London
Headway East London is a local charity supporting people who have been affected by brain injury. The charity’s vision is to build a society where people with brain injury are valued, respected, and able to fulfill their potential to lead full and active lives. Headway East London are the Barbican’s first Community Collaborator.

Read about our partnership with Headway East London

Website / Studio / Twitter / Instagram

Nova New Opportunities
Nova is a small diverse charity with a big reach and novel approach to social change. Nova does two things at its core - grassroots support with its local community in North Kensington and the hosting of regular dialogue events, sharing insights and lived experiences to highlight systemic injustice. Nova believes that by working together, the UK has the potential to grow into the most socially cohesive and inclusive society in the world.

Website / Twitter / Instagram

The Sydney Russell School

The Sydney Russell School is an Outstanding all-through, co-educational comprehensive school in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. They aim to deliver a carefully crafted curriculum which provides students the currency needed to succeed in later life. The Sydney Russel School strives to develop the cultural capital and character of their students, through providing a diverse experience with a range of opportunities which they otherwise would not have accessed.

The Sydney Russell School has been partnered with Barbican Creative Learning since 2016 as part of their Associate Schools programme. The aim of the programme is to embed an ethos of creative and cultural education within each Associate School that continues beyond the life of the programme itself.

Website / Twitter / Instagram

Activities were created by

Making Moves by Kate Coyne from Michael Clark Company

Kate Coyne was a dancer in Michael Clark Company for over 15 years and is now its Associate Director. Having trained at The Royal Ballet School, she went on to dance for major UK contemporary dance companies including London Contemporary Dance Theatre, Rambert Dance Company, DV8 and Jeremy James and Dancers. With an interest in dance in its many forms, her work in creative engagement programmes for Michael Clark Company highlights the different aspects of Clark’s work that make it so accessible to dance, art, fashion, and music audiences.

Cosmic Collage by Mitchel Ceney from Accumulate

Mitchel is an artist who has been attending Accumulate workshops for almost a year. He loves drawing. Through an Accumulate scholarship, he is currently at Ravensbourne University London on the Access To Higher Education Course and hoping to go on to study Illustration to degree level next year. Mitchel enjoys telling stories through any medium and especially likes collage for its immediacy, vibrancy, and accessibility, as ‘anyone can do it, using just about anything.’

About Barbican Guildhall Creative Learning

Barbican Guildhall Creative Learning is a creative alliance pioneering new models for cultural learning across the art forms. Our mission is Creative Skills for Life and every year we deliver more than 40 programmes and events alongside 150 partners to over 29,000 participants.

Take part

With thanks

We are thankful to the above artist facilitators and their organisations for the engaging activities they created. We are also very grateful to all the artists who shared their dances and artwork with us, and the community groups that supported them to get creative in lockdown.

We are very grateful for the generosity of the supporters that make the Barbican Creative Learning programme possible, including: The 29th May 1961 Charitable Trust; Arts Council England; Austin & Hope Pilkington Trust; John S Cohen Foundation; Edge Foundation; Esmée Fairbairn Foundation; SHM Foundation; UBS and Wellcome.

We are also grateful for the support of the Barbican Patrons, contributors to the Barbican Fund, and all who donate when purchasing a ticket and visiting the Barbican.