Arty Parties

An interdisciplinary arts project in Artsadmin’s neighbouring school which explored seeing the world in different ways and celebrating difference.

Lead artist Tarik Elmoutawakil spent a week in February 2022 working alongside artists Ella Golt, Jacob V Joyce and Rudy Loewe to activate Arty Parties, a project with the children of Canon Barnett Primary School in Aldgate East.

The artists and Artsadmin team worked with the school over multiple terms, using interdisciplinary arts such as dance, performance, music, costume and prop making, to explore the idea of radically refashioning our environments. 

The theme of Arty Parties was one of world building; seeing the world in different ways and celebrating difference. For the first iteration of the project, children from Year 1 and Year 2 worked in collaboration with the artists to dream up alternate versions of themselves and our world. Children were encouraged to be agents of change taking influence from ancestry, personal and global histories and creating the possibility of alternative futures.

Arty Parties was our largest collaboration with our neighbours Canon Barnett Primary School to date. Previous projects include Monuments of Tower Hamlets, Playing Up and Look Out.

Watch the artists in conversation

In 2020, Engagement Producer at Artsadmin, Siobhan McGrath, hosted a conversation between artists Tarik Elmoutawakil, Ella Golt, Jacob V Joyce and Rudy Loewe about Arty Parties. The conversation spans the value of arts education, the politics of partying, making art with children and much more.

Jump to sections of their chat:
4:09 – What is Arty Parties?
16:23 – Hanging with the Kids
27:11 – Kids as Collaborators
31:14 – The Politics of the Party
38:15 – Intergenerational Play

Arty Parties was commissioned and produced by Artsadmin with support from Create To Connect > Create to Impact through the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.