1927 bursary recipients 2023
1927 are delighted to announce the recipients of our 2023 Bursaries for Artists:
Adrian & Neelam Saredia-Brayley, Dean Stalham, Flora Parrott, MCDC & Sara Trillo.
As a homage to our early days and the people who helped us out, every year 1927 offers small cash bursaries to help artists develop a piece of original, sublime, heart-wrenching, political and unique performance, cross artform or hybrid creative work. Alongside the cash bursary, 1927 offers each recipient mentoring.
To support our neighbouring creatives, the recipients of our 2023 Artists Bursaries are all Kent-based Artists and creatives.
Credit: Photo of Neelam is by Alice Bryant and photo of Adrian is a still from a film by Spark Film Production
Adrian & Neelam Saredia-Brayley
Neelam Saredia-Brayley is an award-winning, queer, Indian poet and multi-disciplinary creative. In 2020 Neelam was awarded the Apples and Snakes: Jerwood Arts | Poetry in Performance Award. Neelam’s debut poetry collection RANI was published by Verve in 2022.
Adrian Saredia-Brayley is a queer illustrator, comic artist, and creator of live art and film. Working in a mixture of traditional and digital mediums, he enjoys creating punk, sci-fi themed work with strong, queer and female characters.
RANI - Film (working title)
A series of short films featuring audio recordings from Neelam’s debut poetry collection RANI with digital illustrations by Adrian, and original and archive footage.
The book delves into stories that are often unheard and unwritten – of brown women in the corners of rooms, hidden behind photograph frames, in the borrowed trauma-blood from generations past and present. It is a manifesto on how to turn your body into a forest fire; into a Goddess with tiger skin.
The films will be available to watch on YouTube and will be shared across social media platforms.
Dean Stalham
Dean is a 59-year-old father of five, working and living in Margate. He is a community artist and writer and works for the national charity Stretch, which gives artistic experiences to those who wouldn’t normally be able to access them. Vulnerable groups and invisible communities. Dean started writing after seeing a play, his first one, during a prison sentence. He was in for handling six million pounds worth of contemporary art. 4 Warhols, 13 Chaghalls and 33 Dali’s. For the first time in Deans life? He was turned on by art. He went in to prison with no formal qualifications. He left with an A level in Art, 3 national union of journalism awards and a BTEC in radio production. Since his release in 2006 Dean has had 6 full length plays on at venues across UK - including the Royal Court and Strangeways prison. Dean considers himself to be an outsider artist and he is proud to be one.
A2B2C.I.D
Dean has just finished writing a memoir A2B2C.I.D With the help, expert guidance and support the wonderful he is endeavouring to pull, like teeth from it, a powerful, thought provoking, life changing, inspirational, challenging, one man play.
Credit: George Eksts
flora parrott
Flora Parrott is a visual artist working in sculpture and textiles. Recent works have been inspired by subterranean landscapes, which provide a framework through which to study surface behaviours and structures: Thinking through the unknown, lostness, shelter and geologic time frames. The work is inherently collaborative, often developed with other artists and academics. An ongoing collaboration with South African writer, Lindiwe Matshikiza has been shown as part of Sonia Boyce’s ‘In The Castle Of My Skin’.
Collaboration with Lindiwe Mathikiza
This bursary will support Flora and Lindiwe’s collaboration developing a new interdisciplinary performance.
MCDC
Michaela Cisarikova Dance Company
MCDC is a Folkestone based dance company which creates visual, accessible dance work and has a passion for bringing it into unusual settings for people to enjoy, feel inspired and connect with. MCDC’s experimental style fuses elements of contemporary dance, physical theatre and Michaela’s own hip-hop influence of fast & controlled movement.
MCDC uses a very collaborative approach and multidisciplinary art forms to bring new visuals and an aesthetic essence to their work, which are often interactive.
Their mission is to challenge creativity; explore and bring contemporary dance and hip-hop essence to people & unconventional spaces and to build relationships and memorable experiences through dance.
In Clouds
In Clouds is a family friendly and interdisciplinary dance piece exploring imagination and transformation through the imagery of clouds. It will bring dance to unusual locations by appearing in small spaces in urban and rural areas such as shop windows, attracting passers-by through interactive and immersive creative play. MCDC is taking on a new challenge and pushing the boundaries between the space, audience, imagination, and dance.
Credit: Bend & Snap, Katie hutch photography
Credit: Sara Trillo
Sara Trillo
Sara is a visual artist researching neglected landscape features which were once rich in mythologies. In addition to gallery/exhibition output, Sara leads public walks sharing locations and their histories and narratives with her audience. On these walks Sara wears and carries sculptural work she has made: cloaks that function as maps, handheld artefacts used to perform small rituals, and tiny talismanic objects, which give participants in the spirit of a pilgrimage token.
WOE WATER
Woe Water is a series of dramatised walks inspired by the Nailbourne. This is a winterbourne stream which periodically flows above ground, and which in legend, floods at times of national crisis. Sara will be following the water course between Bekesbourne and Lyminge, wearing a costume that alludes to rising waters, and telling stories and performing rituals to participants. A film of the walk and a forum for sharing Nailbourne anecdotes will be available digitally.
1927’s Bursaries for Artists are open to emerging and peer-artists based in Kent, who have made work previously with a particular emphasis on artists who are playing with form or have a brilliant story to tell.