Celebrate the festive season with this special evening event at Kettle’s Yard. Enjoy our Making New Worlds: Li Yuan-chia & Friends exhibition after-hours, visit the Kettle’s Yard shop for some Christmas shopping, and enjoy a treat in our café. You can also expect a selection of carols and Christmas songs from local choir, BEATITUDE.

Join us at the Museum for a special performance-based Taruwa evening.

This group exhibition is based on the pioneering vision of artist Li Yuan-chia (1929 – 1994) and the LYC Museum & Art Gallery which he founded and ran between 1972 and 1983 in the Cumbrian village of Banks, alongside Hadrian’s Wall.

Conversations between whales in the oceans, the low throb of ship engines, bursts of vibrations excited by earthquakes…we cannot hear these vibrations as sounds, but what if we could? This art-science collaboration translates the waveform information contained within seismic data traces into spatial surround sound, revealing the captivating sounds of the Earth.

Join Jackie Kay and Imtiaz Dharker for two poetry performances to celebrate the opening of Real Families. Jackie Kay was the National Poet for Scotland whose collection The Adoption Papers won the Forward Poetry prize. Imtiaz Dharker is a poet, artist, filmmaker who was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for poetry. Her latest collection is Luck is the Hook.

Bar & exhibition open: 18.30 | Event: 19.00 | Book signing: 20.00

With Ruqayya Bryce and Sonita Alleyne.

This session explores the themes in the Black Atlantic through music and conversation. Using the evocative power of music and sound, the session explores memory and a sense of identity both personal and collective, while also acting as a tool for processing complex emotions.

With Ruqayya Bryce and Wanja Kimani.

What does it mean to responsibly manage stories, objects and the collection and acquisition of them, and how do we choose who and what to remember? How should institutions engage with differing interpretations of history? This conversation will ask these questions and focus on how institutions can navigate the challenges around managing contentious histories.

With Ruqayya Bryce and Darold Cuba.

How can we have a more comprehensive understanding of our histories? How might this impact national identity? What is the balance between acknowledging the difficult chapters alongside the more positive ones? How do we trace these legacies into our understandings of who we are collectively? With both memory and identity in dispute, what are the ways we need to discuss these questions to be inclusive of the spectrum of historical behaviours and how they shape contemporary society’s ideas of itself?

With Ruqayya Bryce and Adiva Lawrence.

Do we need reparative justice, and if so, what forms might it take? Why is the idea of reparations to the descendants of the enslaved so divisive? What does it mean for the descendants of enslavers, do they owe anything? The overall aim is to hold a conversation where we can listen and share knowledge and ideas. For people resistant to acknowledging the contribution of the institutions of slavery to Britain’s wealth, power and prestige; how can we have this discussion in a way that opens doors as opposed to closing them?

Bringing together more than 120 artworks spanning painting, photography, sculpture and film, Real Families: Stories of Change asks us to consider what makes a family today, and the impact our families have on us, through the eyes of contemporary artists.