HYBR1D ART J0URNAL

AudioPULP Audio Pop Up Library Project Listening list from the soft launch on 26th Sept @ BAA :: BAA Listening List :: -Thank You for Arguing -Small Change -How to Be an Artist -Writing Down the Bones -The Art of Creative Thinking -The Creative Habit -The War of Art -The Artist's Journey -Big Magic -Rest -Insanely Gifted -Post-Truth -Out of the Wreckage -The Force of Nonviolence -The Future Is Disabled -Care Work -Doing Time -Nonviolent Communication -Philosophy Between the Lines -Breakfast with Seneca -A Guide to the Good Life -The Little Book of Hygge -The Meaning of it All -The Antidote -The Beginning of Infinity -Talking While Female & Other Dangerous Acts -Wade in the Water: Poems -Selected Poems of Hannah More -A Piece of Good News -The Crafty Poet -Nature Poem -Utopia for Realists -Women Of The Klondike -Revolting! -They're Not Listening -Autocracy, Inc -And the Weak Suffer What They Must? -Trade Wars Are Class Wars -The Open Society and Its Enemies -Feminist, Queer, Crip -Notes on Resistance

You will find features on the following popping up in the journal in the coming weeks: Foreshadowing:: DEC24 EOP Winter Fair Reverse Heist Season 1 Episode 1 ...a couple of things happened here, 1: Art for Daydreams (see all of the daydreams) 2: Reverse Heist Ethos (will explain :P) [at Eastside Projects] PRE ISSUE 2 LAUNCH:: 26th Sep AudioPULP :: Soft Launch on our first outing with the audiobook pop up library project... we received the following response to one of our curated titles (Post-Truth) = SMASH THE CONTROL MACHINE. [at BAA] PRE ISSUE 2 LAUNCH:: 10th Oct Hidden :: Motion House Hippodrome Creatives were invited to the pre-show event, which included speeches from Birmingham Hippodrome and Motionhouse in celebration of their Curtain Raiser featuring the dancers of tomorrow. After the main show, there was a Q&A session. [at Birmingham Hippodrome] ISSUE TWO LAUNCH!! 11th Oct //01902 x The Industry Spot x Sunday Best x DJ AJ Online we gatecrashed the Sunday Best x Industry Spot x DJ AG Online event at 01902, and then they gatecrashed the Queens Square! our exquisite corpse collaborative poem which started with the words 'SMASH THE CONTROL MACHINE' received a couple of contributions including 'JUST BE KIND' :) [at 01902 + outside!] ISSUE TWO :: SCREENING #1 :: 13th Oct for our first journal screening, we gatecrashed the Dance Umbrella Festival and enjoyed the digital international film selection... we even did a spot of spontaneous tap dancing at 01902! [at 01902] OUTDOOR PAINTING GROUP :: 14th Oct The journal was treated to an artwork created during the weekly Wolverhampton Outdoor Painting Session on the 14th... the group usually meet at 01902 before heading off on their painterly adventure [at outside!] ISSUE TWO :: ZOOM WATCH PARTY #1 :: 15th Oct next up we zoomed into ...to disability justice now: a conversation between LLPS, Annanda DeSilva, Gem Hall and Wy Joung Kou. Tangled Arts and DASH joined forces to bring us this uplifting and very real talk... The HAJ Editor and 01902 ghosts also tuned into the Future is Disabled Audiobook in the lead up to the Watch Party. [at 01902] ISSUE TWO :: BYOB #1 + Special Gatecrashin Guests We held our first ever BYOB - Bring Your Own Beamer event... where the only person to rock up with a beamer was the journal's editor! To be fair... we did have another artist who signed up as soon as the invite went out (a whole 5 days before the event)... but it felt out of order to not give a heads up to the artist re the lack of sign ups... so we've decided to postpone... which I reckon is a good thing, as the amount of work and resi's this particular artist currently has on is bananas, they def needed a second to chill before their next residency on Monday! We'll be on next week... but this time I'm going to remane it to... BRING YOUR OWN PROJECTOR (as everyone was like 'what's a beamer?' on Saturday... #LessonLearnt #IndustryLingoAlert) ...but rather excitedly... I rocked up to a modified red double decker bus parked up right outside the gallery.... gatecrashin is catchin on! :) [at 01902 + outside] Also, something big is en route.... THE (mini) FREE LIBRARY OF (nowhere near) EVERYTHING ...catchy title, innit? It's gonna be awesome, fingers crossed plans go to plan.... stay tunned. over&out(4now) Ps: yup... we'll also be sorting out a physical schedule of sorts soon :) Sonia EDITOR + CMM (...chief mischief maker, just in case you were wonderin!)

@ 19.10.25 HYBR1D ART J0URNAL virtual | digital | physical We launched issue two of the HYBR1D ART J0URNAL at 01902 last week... and wow, let's just say it's been a busy week! Unlike issue one where there was a month of so dedicated to pre-planning, with issue two we've jumped into the deep end knowing that the nature of our journal allows for this, and in some ways was designed to operate like this... an organic ever evolving beautiful beast of a thing this journal is. The HYBR1D ART J0URNAL has gatecrashed into the 01902 gallery and will be this issue's physical edition of the journal, the aim is to invite the local community in Wolverhampton to share short stories, poetry and prose and be a part of our left field experimental journal which blurs the lines between publication, art installation and library. From the shores of Dover, the HYBR1D ART J0URNAL was launched - an experimental art zine which lived across physical, digital and virtual realms for three months in 2022. Issue one of the journal leaned into the digital and virtual realms - it was an international collaboration with artists, thinkers and makers covering photography, poetry, music, fashion and digital art from the UK, US, Brazil, Germany and Australia. Issue one's physical included a printed copy of the journal released at the end of the quarter, and an April Fool's special... a physical poster book or artified QR codes which would transport viewers to a constantly refreshed virtual installations courtesy of our Hybrid Rotation Schedule, Weekly Virtual Huddles on Sunday, articles and our 3D readers freebie. And while we are planning to stay connected and work internationally, it felt important that issue two would balance the debut issue with a hyperlocal focus... Wolverhampton and the West Midlands has the sort of energy the journal loves working with - creatively ambitious, audacious and with a London sized chip on its shoulder. So, back to week one of issue two! When the opportunity popped up to house the journal at 01902 and we leapt at it, and it's been all go, go, gooooo since then (since then = 3rd October).

HYBR1D ART J0URNAL ISSUE 02

WELCOME TO ISSUE 02 11TH OCTOBER 2025 to 10TH JANUARY 2026 YOU ARE IN THE VIRTUAL EDITION! OPEN 24/7

OUTDOOR PAINTING GROUP

LOOK AROUND YOU (USE THE ARROWS OR YOUR MOUSE) :)

Wk1: Our Space. For the launch event on October 11th we created a physical installation with about 25 meters of tracing paper. It dangles from the ceiling, drapes itself over the gallery walls and emerges from canvases and easels… as with everything in our evolving journal, its a work in progress, but it felt like an appropriate visual representation of the journals aims. Over the past week visitors at the 01902 gallery space have doodled the walls (well, the tracing paper on the walls!) and expressed their thoughts with markers pens and doodled as they chilled for a moment or two. It’s a tapestry of the space, of our space. We began with a selections of daydreams gathered at the EOP Winter Fair 2024 at Eastside Projects (2025 submissions are currently open for artists who’d like to sell their art and keep 100% of the proceeds) and a prompt, a baton passed on to us from the AudioPULP soft launch in Digbeth’s BAA last month – SMASH THE CONTROL MACHINE… Wolverhampton appears to be collectively saying “if you love yourself + each other… the machine will collapse by itself” …unexpected, yet delightful. We’re looking forward to seeing how this community installation evolves over the issue. THIS INSTALLATION IN PROGRESS FEATURES: Eleisse, @priscillacameron_, @neon_pony__, @leeyeewah.e, @lyndonsband, @sonng.ajm, Rethink Mental Illness Crew, #NOWT2025 (Navigating Our Womanhood Together Crew), Zahra Writes Poems,

See more in the physical edition of the journal @01902.urbanrooms in Queens Square, Wolverhampton.

DAYDREAMS, DOODLES & POETRY

A Provocation by Selina Thompson, Artistic Director and CEO of Selina Thompson Ltd For Collective 2025, Selina Thompson was one of a series of speakers and facilitators that launched this year’s programme with twelve members of this year’s Collective at a residential in Solihull from 29th September to 2nd October. This guest blog post shares Selina’s reflections on the challenges and opportunities of collective leadership in 2025. Collective is leadership programme, that explores collaborative and collective approaches to sector change for those traditionally excluded from senior roles in the cultural sector. Collective takes an intersectional approach and aims to avoid working in a deficit model, focusing instead on the structures that limit and exclude. As a programme, Collective accumulates and builds each year, with the cohort maintaining a relationship with Culture Central to embed, share and support change. Through this iterative and collaborative programme, we want to make strategies and actions together for change. Collective, alongside Culture Central’s other programmes, activities and networks is integral to our role and commitment in supporting change. So I should start by introducing myself. My name is Selina Thompson, I’m an artist and writer and the AD and CEO of Selina Thompson Ltd, a performance company which will be ten years old next year. I am disabled, and Black and a woman, and these are things that factor into my leadership, and how we choose to run our company. I am committed to care, and the company’s values centre integrity, equity, dignity and the importance of art. We also place sustainability high on our priorities; in particular, sustainable ways of working with the mind, body and soul in performance. We believe that the structure is the thing – the space where an experimental approach can truly live, and we try to lead from a principle of finding the best answer, not on having certain people holding authority on answers because of where they sit in a structure. We are not always successful at this! In the past couple of years especially we have made lots of mistakes. But these are the aspirations. I’ve been asked to speak about the challenges and opportunities of leadership: and to my mind, these are the same thing. They are chinks of possibility where change becomes necessary – and sometimes that feels heady and exhilarating, like the opportunity to work in ways you have always wanted to try, and in other ways that feel nauseous and terrifying, like finding that the way you have always worked is no longer an option for you. But the chink of possibility, which can go either way, is always the same. So we’re going to use the word challenge here, but I always mean opportunity. And when I say opportunity I always mean challenge. So what are the challeng-portunities of leadership in 2025? The first thing I wrote down when considering the challenges of leadership was how not to be overwhelmed into stillness. Stillness is maybe not the right word – maybe I mean inertia. Stillness, held, can be a real strength in leadership. And you’ve got to know the difference. But how does one remain engaged in the world, when the world is so violent and frightening, and aspire to change it? When you drive past the flags, which further down the road become a bloody protest outside the hotel, when you return from the protest about Gaza to a news report on how aid cannot get through the borders to alleviate the famine, when the left in-fighting escalates in tandem with Reform’s electoral success, when each new day is an announcement from Trump or Putin or both, when no country seems safe from a slick slide to the right, and still the planet is burning, burning, burning. How exactly does one look at all this and not become paralysed by fear? I don’t have an answer to this (it’s not the part of the talk for answers yet. And I’m terrible at answers, there will be no answers, I’m more interested in a leadership built out of questions, listening, and the structures for the best questions and the best listening). I wanted to name this as the greatest challenge (or at least the one I wrestle with most intensely) to keep moving, to maintain action beyond dialogue and stay engaged in struggle in whatever way you can. Like most challenges, it can be broken down into a series of smaller challenges. Maybe this is really the challenge of picking your battles and then maintaining a commitment to them. There is much to be said for a dogged commitment to one issue, to carefully measuring your energy and the energy of your organisation and deciding that it will flow in one key direction, and stay that course, even as other things come up. To being devoted to a single issue above all else, and acknowledging that your energy is finite. This is particularly valid in a context in which we all have to do less with more, because that is what is continually asked of us. How do we push back against this? Because its unsustainable at its core. We know now that there is less money than there was, and that that money sits in the hands of fewer people and organisations – if the National Theatre is reducing some of its teams from 24 to 7, where does that leave the rest of us? How do we have grace about this when working in arts and culture can already be perceived as the realm of a privileged few: especially the privileged few that get to lead? Some challenges are disguised as opportunities and vice versa. What is it to be a leader at a moment in time when we are really questioning what leadership is and what it should look like? Old models – like that of a single white man drenched in charisma leading everybody else (while a group of women bustle about just beneath him doing all the actual *work*) – feel increasingly antiquated (or do they? I still see it all around…). So what are the new models of co leadership that we want to build? What are the mistakes we must make along the way? What are the red herrings, the things that seem new but are actually business as usual? One of the biggest challenges of any kind of change is that an old model can be replaced by a new one - but all the assumptions and culture that surrounded the old model can remain in place. How is change more than skin deep? How are changes embedded in an organisation systemically and procedurally, so that they are not vulnerable to changes in team members? Our workplaces look and feel different. I keep thinking about workplaces that use generative AI, and what its increasing impingement into daily life tells us about the speed and intensity of technological change, and our capacity to keep our ethics and values ahead of these changes. Of all the ways in which those working in the mainstream of culture didn’t heed the warnings and worryings of those on the fringes. What do we assume is the flow of knowledge, and how can we think outside of those assumptions? How do we spot canaries in coal mines quicker? You must be wondering why someone with so many questions and so few solutions has been invited to speak with you. So I think the last time I was here – and remember they invited me back! - I spoke about how all the challenges are – not the same as ever – but how constant challenge is the nature of leadership, and those stakes are only going to get higher, those changes more intense. And maybe a little bit I kind of told folks to suck it up? Oh god that’s really mean. But I think I was speaking from a place where every year I have been in the arts ecology – so since about 2012 – I have listened to folks talk about things being bad, worse than ever, the worst they’ve have ever been. And when that’s all you’ve heard, it starts to lose its meaning. So I don’t think folks should suck anything up, there should be space for grief and for dread and for panic. But I do think we need to be resilient and pragmatic about change, and somewhat stoic. And by stoic I don’t mean without emotion – there should always be time for us to feel what we need to feel in fullness – but I do mean accepting of times being difficult now with greater difficulty to come. And if you are called to lead, you are also called to bear that in very specific ways. So we have to be resilient as leaders. What is the key to that? It can’t be creating models where we don’t fail, or burn out or are flawless, as we know this is impossible, and our leaders have to model what is sustainable, and realistic. Perhaps it is that we commit to murmuration and leadership that shapeshifts. Perhaps it is that we commit to building strong friendships between leaders so that we can fall on each other when we need to. Perhaps we need leaders that speak with their vulnerabilities first, and encourage us to perceive them as strengths, also. Perhaps our leadership looks like living a rich and fulfilling civic life, so that we know that all of our activisms, all of our standing up to and for and against doesn’t have to come from one source, rather, it can come from many. I’ve been having some leadership coaching recently. Which feels extremely decadent, the richest of treats. When I was asked what I needed to be a resilient leader, I was struck by how dependent I was on other people and also being able to be fully human with other people. I wanted transparency, collaboration and vulnerability. I wanted to be held and encouraged to put my ego to the side, and I wanted accountability and feedback. I wanted more time for dreaming. I was surprised by the delicacy of these requests in some ways. But in other ways, they feel in keeping with all the goals of the company, and with the kind of person I want to be in other parts of my life. So maybe consistency is part of what we need to be resilient leaders. Or maybe resilience is overrated. Maybe there is something stiff, and rigid, and liked a clenched jaw about always being ready to ride the next wave – and our time would be better spent being wave like, and soft, embracing uncertainty with a deep breath and a turn to an ally or comrade. Maybe that is the big one, the core challeng-pourtunity. To be like water, loose and flowing in response to change. When I wrote this, I immediately thought ‘but I am an earth sign – in many ways the opposite of water. I’m solid, and firm and fixed’ – but this isn’t true of soil flowing through my fingers, or the oozing gooey slide of mud. And I thought about how another challenge-pourtunity of leadership is to see yourself in a whole new way, to rethink your assumptions about yourself, and about leadership itself to make something new, to reach new depths of knowledge about yourself and the world around you. And that felt like a good provocation to end on.

a provocation.

Originally written for and published by Create Central https://www.culturecentral.co.uk More about the Collective: https://www.culturecentral.co.uk/collective (ps. the editor of the HYBR1D ART JOURNAL is part of the third (& final for now) cohort) More about Selena Thompson: https://selinathompson.co.uk

FEATHERS

THE THING WITH FEATHERS