Yvo van de Vat in orange

Identity: a twin town collaboration

You are invited to the launch of ‘Identity’, a collaboration between artists from Hastings and Dordrecht, twin towns since 1982. The collaboration is in response to the City of Dordrecht’s six-month event to mark the 400th anniversary of the Synod of Dort, an international religious assembly held in Dordrecht, which led to the first translation of the Bible into Dutch. Christine Gist writes.

I was one of the Hastings’ artists invited by Yvo van der Vat to participate in a 10-day residency/project in Dordrecht during November 2018. We will be working in the various locations in the city centre alongside artists from Dordrecht’s other twin towns: Recklinghausen (Germany) and Varna (Bulgaria).

As I’ve been curating projects and events at The SPACE since 2013 (and from 2009 to 2013 at a disused site at the end of Kings Rd), I thought it made sense for artists associated with Dordrecht to do something here, along with the four of us who will work in Dordrecht. We are working on site over the next three days with the launch on Friday 5 October.

the many faces of Yvo van de Vat

Yvo van der Vat has worked in Hastings and St Leonards before: in 2013 he participated in ‘Ici et Là – Here and There’, a cross-border project with Dunkerque – and in 2015 created a ‘guerilla’ action at The SPACE, installing a Dordrecht waste bin.

During ‘Identity’, a series of workshops will take place with children and clients from the Links Project and other migrant communities. The work produced may be exhibited elsewhere or combined with the artists’ projects at The SPACE.

Participating artists:

the many faces of ‘Beyond the Walls’ is an Arts Council-funded programme that supports the projects and events I’m curating in 2018/19 in Hastings/St Leonards, Brighton, Saint-Omer and the Dordrecht project. ‘Identity’ is being realised with the support of the National Lottery through Arts Council England, Hastings Borough Council and the Lions Club of Hastings.

Sharon Haward’s image for Dordrecht

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