amanda haynes
writer + creative + culture
Selected Social Projects
How I curated and co-created an exhibition to explore the lived human experiences of people in Coventry, the city with the highest refugee population in the UK.
WELCOME HOME was an interactive exhibition exploring what ‘Home’ means to people living in Coventry, a city with the highest refugee population in the UK. Designed as a walk-in living room furnished with much loved items from people living in Coventry- from traditional dress, to wedding photos to fruits & vegetables- the intimate, moody event challenged prejudiced public narratives about migration and mobile people.
Created by Warwick University students as part of the MA Arts & Enterprise, the exhibition's layout and location attracted 200 walk-in visitors in 2 days. The research and development exhibition was informed by urban research methods and the idea of migration as mobility. As part of the programme team, I worked on strategic planning, public engagement, conceptualising the exhibition & public event, and engaging exhibition participants from the public and local university. How I helped:
-
Lead curation of the exhibition space
-
Strategised with a multicultural team to engage the local community in our project creation process
-
Wrote and developed copy for exhibition educational materials and marketing materials
Working with the topic of 'home', I curated the space and art as a walk-in living room where visitors could sit down, chat, grab a coffee and share more about what home means to themselves and their neighbours, in their own words. Part-workshop, part-meeting point, the room was designed with furniture and personal items that represented home, loaned to us by people living in the city. Our tiny budget of 500 pounds was used to engage local talent for the event. The space also used photography to visually anchor participants' personal stories to their shared place – the city of Coventry. At the entrance, a sign said WELCOME HOME in the multiple languages spoken in this UK city.
Project: Mobile Creativity - Pathways to Human Development, Warwick University (M.A.)
Team: Andrea, Asmat, Iulia, Maite, MengxiaoLi, MengYuan, PengyuLiu, ShuchangLu
YiyiZhu, LishuXu, Triny, ZihanZhu, Amanda
