Spike Island are excited to introduce a new thematic framework for the Spike Island Associates programme.

From September 2025, the Spike Island Associates programme will be developed in alignment with the seasonal gallery exhibitions. In addition to the core offer around professional practice, the thematic programme will activate research questions and rehearse ideas and methodologies inspired by the shows on view. We will develop Associates as a site for collective knowledge production and for exploring contemporary critical debates and artistic practices.

This Autumn, we launch Rooting / Uprooting, the first strand within this new framework, to echo and expand on themes explored in exhibitions by Nour Jaouda and Dan Lie. Together, the terms ‘rooting’ and ‘uprooting’ evoke cyclical processes speaking to the slowness and resilience of the natural world, as much as to patterns of human migrations. Through a rich programme of events including talks, workshops, one-to-one sessions, group crits and more, participants are invited to reflect on issues of displacement, belonging, grief and resilience and their intersections with post-colonial geographies, productivity and labour, and our entangled relationships with more-than-human worlds – whether ecological or spiritual.

Highlights include a speculative writing workshop and collaborative performance by artist and researcher Dennis Dizon, inviting participants to mediate feelings of loss and grief between human and more-than-human worlds; a talk by curator Anna Colin on eco-centric ways of practicing futures and “gardening time” (Odell, 2023), drawing references from the fields of art, regenerative agriculture, radical pedagogy, and social justice; a seminar exploring conventional narratives of place, memory and identity, organised in collaboration with researchers from Migration Mobilities Bristol (MMB), a Research Institute of the University of Bristol; and a group crit led by artist Karimah Ashadu, tying into her explorations of labour, patriarchy and post-colonial geographies.

See the full programme of events and sign up to Spike Island Associates here.