Vivid Projects is pleased to announce the 2021 Black Hole Club cohort of sixteen ambitious, talented and risk-taking individuals and groups from across the East and West Midlands region. Focussed on collaboration and exchange, Black Hole Club is an artists development programme created by Vivid Projects in 2014, that provides space for sharing skills, testing ideas and reaching audiences through live and online platforms. The cohort is selected from an annual open call, and is supported by producer Cathy Wade and company curatorial associates.

The Black Hole Club 2021 participants are: Adwoa Owusu-Barnieh, Alis Oldfield, Ambie Drew, Ambience Factory, De’Anne Crooks, Eleanor Morgan, Emily Scarrott, Jacob Carter, Jas Singh, Joseph Winsborrow, Kühle Wampe,Larissa Shaw, Leanne O’Connor, Lily Wales, Rosa Postlethwaite and Sharon & Rupi.

The testing of work and its dissemination is a critical outcome for the Black Hole Club cohort. This year we are focussed on facilitation for the cohort to share their practices and research, utilising space onsite and online to test new work  and build their networks and audiences. Areas to be explored in 2021 include ART_OFFICE_DOC an online platform for ongoing processes, conversations & collaborations with invited guests that explores how artists can inhabit and bend office documents and cultures. We also reveal DOOM, a co-authoring of works for the longest day of the year focused as guttural outpourings, performance, propositions, annihilation and utter despair.

Black Hole Club’s recent projects include :Cut Copy Remix a series of artistic interventions, exhibitions and events with Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery & Cold War Steve, guest editorship of Artists Newsletter #1: The 1980s, an exploration of topics from artist’s working rights and identity politics, to activism, digital arts practice, and accessibility; and production of the Mayday Reader an online documentation of practice and exchange.

The ongoing life of the practices and projects Black Hole Club engages in are co-authored by the group on a shared online platform that is open to individual and collective interests.

 We look forward to sharing more throughout 2021.