This bursary opportunity will enable me to complete editing the video with the assistance of Marouane Bahrar a filmmaker and photographer based at GML film and photography studios. I will be engaging with a wider community of artists and cultural practitioners, sourcing galleries and organisations who can hopefully provide me with the platform to show the new video.
The an: travel bursary support allows me to immerse and advance as an artist within this optimistic developing country which I believe is currently at a crossroads of the arts.
Through spending time in Morocco I have acquired limited but reasonable Arabic and communication skills, during this trip I will further expand this knowledge and gain confidence as a traveling artist through challenges of negotiating new experiences and situations. The opportunity to travel more this time will increase my understanding of Moroccan culture and present new developing ideas.
Through collaborating and sourcing Moroccan artists and organisations my aim is to infiltrate the developing Moroccan art scene, especially in Morocco’s capital city of Rabat.
I arrived 15th June in Marrakech for a months stay in Morocco after a delayed flight and taxi transfer from Manchester airport organised by Easyjet to Gatwick.
Considering one of the aims was to network it was a fortuitous journey as I made two good contacts. The first is Alice Morrison who has lived in Marrakech for the past two years; she is a writer and traveler and had recently published a book titled ‘Dodging Elephants’. We had a common personal history of redundancy and therefore with her new freedom she published a book of adventure partaking in the longest bike race on earth. My adventure was a Fine Art Degree at Bolton University, one of the best experiences of my life.
The second contact was Mohamed Nour who owns ‘Riadbledna’ Guest House http://www.riadbledna.com alongside organising travel excursions in Marrakech. He asked me to photograph his Riad for a new updated website, however after understanding I already had the an: travel project in place he suggested October and of course I said ‘Yes’.
I boarded an early morning flight to Marrakech, during the 3.5 hours I met Karim and we chatted about art and life and his fondness of abstract painting and he then sent me some examples of his work.
