Danielle Teale's Collective IDentity Project Announces Details For Its Touring Exhibition

Following its launch in Spring 2021, Danielle Teale's innovative Collective IDentity Project (CID Project), working with dancers with Parkinson's across the UK, now moves into its next phase with the announcement of details for its touring exhibition Who we are now, and then... as it makes a sensitive and supportive return to in-person activity.

Who we are now, and then... is a specially curated exhibition of visual art, photography and film work sharing perspectives on identity from the lives of dancers with Parkinson's. The exhibition will feature three commissioned artists who will present new creations alongside photographic work captured in dancers homes by Sara Hibbert and the screening of a new documentary film directed by Danielle Teale and Jaka Skapin.

The commissioned artists are Emma Brown, a visual artist with a focus on printmaking and illustration, Edwina Kung, a fine artist who explores how we respond to our surroundings to make meaningful relationships and David Armes who works with letterpress and focuses on print, language and geography.

Working with CILIP, the libraries association, the 14-venue tour will take in hospitals, libraries and arts centres across the UK. Launching during Libraries Week (4 - 10 Oct) the exhibition will open across two locations in East London, at Poplar Union and Idea Store Bow.

The full exhibition will tour to Poplar Union, East London (3 - 19 Oct), Wimbledon Library, South West London (30 Nov - 11 Dec), Fleetwood Library, Lancaster (8 - 27 Jan), The Point, Eastleigh (5 - 18 Feb), and Colchester Library, Essex (4 - 29 Mar).

To accommodate the wide range of settings and to make the exhibition as accessible to as many people as possible, a smaller adapted version will also tour to 9 venues in areas the CID Project currently works. A digital version of the exhibition will also launch during the autumn, providing a fully accessible virtual space with artworks digitally assessed for optimum viewing along with audio description. Running alongside the exhibition will be a full events programme including talks, workshops and insight evenings will take place, details to be confirmed shortly.

This next phase of the CID Project also marks the return to in-person activity, which sees Danielle Teale and musician Jaka Skapin, deliver 1:1 workshops with dancers with Parkinson's in their own homes and gardens ahead of a planned return to in-person group classes later in the year.

Of their experience of the CID Project a dancer said: "This is a collaborative, explorative process and soon we are all in the zone responding, improvising, sweating and laughing... and searching out our creative selves." While another commented, "Both of us realise how much we have missed these friends, these teachers, these artists who treat us as artists too."

Working with seven national partners in London, Essex, Hampshire and Lancaster, Danielle Teale's Collective IDentity Project brings together dance, music, visual arts and research with dancers with Parkinson's to explore our sense of identity, collectivity and compassion. After a year of isolation and the challenges that we have all faced, this project is steeped in personal attention, and the values of care and collaboration.

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