Writers and artists wanted for first ever Liverpool Biennial Summer Sessions

Writers, artists, curators and academics are invited to apply for a place on the inaugural Liverpool Biennial Summer Sessions, with two full bursaries on offer.

A collaboration between University of Liverpool’s Centre for New and International Writing and Liverpool Biennial, the Summer Sessions are an opportunity to develop your craft, meet contemporaries and learn from some prominent names in the fields of art and literature. The programme is part of and runs during Liverpool Biennial 2016, the largest contemporary visual art festival in the UK, which takes place from 9 July until 16 October.

Literary innovation

Dr Sandeep Parmar, who is co-director of the Centre for New and International Writing and part of the Liverpool Biennial 2016 curatorial faculty, said: “’The School of the Arts‘ Centre for New and International Writing is delighted to collaborate with Liverpool Biennial.

“Our focus on literary innovation and global literatures, combined with a rethinking of boundaries between literary and visual arts, makes a major contribution to the Biennial programme through creative writing teaching and exciting public events with world-renowned writers and artists.”

”This is a timely opportunity for cultural practitioners from across the globe to engage with our thinking and develop their practice and ideas further in a supportive environment”

Liverpool Biennial Summer Sessions is a ten-day transdisciplinary programme for artists, writers, curators, academics and arts practitioners, on the theme of portals: time-travel, alternate/parallel universes, migration, and interdisciplinary connections between different practices.

Through a series of dynamic sessions, workshops and walking tours of the city, participants will explore a range of topics, focusing on the broad concept of portals. Participants will engage with Liverpool Biennial 2016’s overarching structure, in which a story is narrated as a series of concurrent episodes across the city, and the Centre for New and International Writing’s research into global literatures and formal innovation.

The summer school faculty includes the poet, cultural theorist and curator Ranjit Hoskote; literary critic David Hering; artists Lucy Beech and Samson Kambalu; poets/critics Juliana Spahr, Sandeep Parmar and Deryn Rees-Jones; and other members of Liverpool Biennial’s curatorial faculty for 2016.

Bursaries

Sally Tallant, Director of Liverpool Biennial,  said “We are very excited to work with the Centre for New and International Writing to present our first ever international residential Summer Sessions in Liverpool. It is a timely opportunity for cultural practitioners from across the globe to engage with our thinking and develop their practice and ideas further in a supportive environment.”

There are 20 places available on the Liverpool Biennial Summer Sessions programme, with one residential and one non-residential bursary on offer. The non-residential bursary is for a Liverpool resident only. Successful applicants will automatically be considered for the bursaries and all bursaries will be awarded on merit.

The Liverpool Biennial Summer Sessions run from August 3-12 and the closing date for applications is 1pm on June 17. For full details on how to apply, please visit https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/new-and-international-writing/liverpool-biennial-summer-sessions/

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