In October 2021, we will finally be re-opening with our new building, 3 beautiful cinemas, a new gallery and a new restaurant. Whilst we can’t share all the details just yet – we can promise you this – Warwick Arts Centre is coming back.
But first there are the summer months, and, with the recent government announcement that we can return to live indoor events – there’s a chance for you to experience some much missed live theatre – and reveal the tantalising façade and the sheer size of the new entrance.
Although the hand-picked events we are staging are fully formed, the building won’t be fully open. We’ll have social distancing measures in place and a warm welcome from our staff who are looking forward to seeing our visitors again. Do let us introduce you to the nearly finished… but not quite fully kitted out… Warwick Arts Centre.
The events will include:
The Language of Kindness
A new stage adaptation based on Christie Watson’s best-selling memoir
Adapted and directed by Sasha Milavic Davies and James Yeatman
Design Zoë Hurwitz. Sound Gareth Fry. Video Hayley Egan
Thu 20 – Sat 23 May 7.30pm, Sat 20 May 2.30pm
Based on Christie Watson’s 20 years of experience working as a nurse for the NHS, this ensemble-style piece of dance-theatre and real stories will be a celebration, a joy-filled, emotion-laden homage to nurses and frontline health-workers.
Christie Watson’s memoir The Language of Kindness was written after a career spanning 20 years as a nurse. It was featured as a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week and a Guardian, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Times Book of the Year and was in the top 50 best-selling books of 2019. It has been translated into 23 languages.
“It made me cry. It made me think. It made me laugh” Adam Kay author of This is Going to Hurt
Join us as we celebrate a workforce, who, until recently, have been the unsung heroes of the health service. Danny Boyle meets Pina Bausch in a production where the performers bring to life the realities of working in the NHS and the challenges that come with the job, most recently during the current Covid-19 pandemic
Presented by Wayward Productions in a co-production with Assembly Hall Tunbridge Wells, Complicité and Warwick Arts Centre in association with Shoreditch Town Hall and Guy Chapman
Roar on the Other Side of Silence
A community visual arts project
7 May – 17 June 2022
To celebrate the re-opening of our Mead Gallery this autumn, this summer we will be coordinating a community project that will contribute to an exhibition entitled Middlemarch: The Other Side of Silence.
The Mead Gallery is not just an exhibition space. It is a space where communities and artists come together to share ideas and experiences and to make new exhibitions. George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch has inspired us to examine the lives of women in Coventry today. Published 150 years ago, the novel asks its readers to hear ‘the roar the other side of silence’ – all the thoughts and feelings that are never shared. The project is led by Dawinder Bansal, an artist whose work celebrates the ‘hidden’ lives and ‘unhistoric acts’ of communities.
Our search for the ‘roar’ extends in a series of interventions throughout the city from May 2021, inviting women to share their stories. In Summer 2022 a major new exhibition will feature a new commission from Dawinder Bansal that draws on the narratives we discover.
Dawinder Basal is a fellow at the Royal Society of Arts, serves on the Diversity Board at ITV Central and is an Arts Advisor to the Jerwood Arts Foundation. Her recent commissions include: We Found Love In The 80s (Barbican 2020) , Asian Women & Cars: The Road to Independence (Multistory 2019, V&A 2020), Jambo Cinema (BFI for London Film Festival 2020, New Art Exchange 2020, Barbican 2019) and The Making of a South Asian Wedding (National Festival of Making 2018).
Watch this space for more details and how to book.
