“Creative Interruptions” Multi-Arts project in Preetnagar, Punjab, India and in London, UK
Dr. Anne Murphy has been active in recent years in the integration of cultural history projects with the visual arts. This past year, this work included her participation in a project entitled “Creative Interruptions” (2016-9). This project was funded by an Arts and Humanities Research Council research grant (UK) that was held jointly at five UK universities in partnership with a range of organisations. The overall project was located in the UK, Palestine and India, but the project strand lead by Churnjeet Mahn (University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland), with Dr. Murphy as team member, worked with local organizations in Punjab. The project sought to explore how research and practice can be enhanced through collaboration, and how the creative arts can enhance and influence heritage management. The location of our work was Preet Nagar, a site founded in the 1930s by a modern Punjabi language author Gurbakhsh Singh as an intentional arts community; in this, it intersects with Dr. Murphy’s current monograph project on modern Punjabi literature. A set of artist’s residencies took place in Fall 2018 in Preet Nagar that resulted in an exhibition, the “Preet Nagar Mela,” in February 2019 at Preet Nagar and June 2019 at the British Film Institute in London, UK.
The “Creative Interruptions” project is being built upon in 2019-20 to address both sides of the Indo-Pakistan border in the two Punjabs. Funded by a Canada Council for the Arts grant to the South Asian Canadian Histories Association, of which Dr. Murphy is a co-Founder, this extension project brings together three Canadian and two Pakistani artists for artists’ residencies in Lahore, Pakistan at partner organization, Beaconhouse National University, in December 2019. Work produced in the residencies will then be brought together with the work created in Creative Interruptions, Indian Punjab for an exhibition from May to September 2020 at The Reach Gallery and Museum in Abbotsford, BC, Canada.