GlobalGRACE Brazil in partnership with Promundo, Observatório de Favelas, Instituto de Relações Internacionais/PUC-Rio, Centro de Estudos Sociais/Universidade de Coimbra, and Instituto Maria e João Aleixo´s UNIperiferias has launched a free-standing course and discussion group on rethinking gender through the lens of masculinities. Bringing together artists, researchers, professors, and community organizers, these Wednesday night exchanges aim to open space to dialogue about intersectional expressions of masculinities, as a structuring force of the contemporary gender order, so often ignored and unnamed as the other side of gender relations. IMJA´s UNIperiferias is a university in construction in the favela of Maré in Rio de Janeiro, which seeks to broaden our perspectives and renew modes of learning, teaching, and research.

The 2nd GlobalGrace-UP National LGBTQ Writers' Workshop was held on July 23-28, 2019 at the University of the Philippines-Diliman. This year's workshop focused on fiction, and it is sponsored by the University of the Philippines, together with Goldsmiths, University of London.

The Sex Workers Theatre Group a collaborative project between SWEAT, African Gender Institute, Centre for Theatre, Dance & Performance Studies, Theatre Arts Admin Collective with support from Global Grace will be debuting a stage show titled "Intando Yam: My Choice" which was devised out of a 2-month training process in Improvisation and Theatre of the Oppressed methodologies. The show is episodic and looks at the stories, struggles and experiences of sex workers in Cape Town. Show your support by showing up to one of the shows.

"Gender in Museums: Changes and challenges"

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This year’s Conference and Exhibition will feature keynotes and sessions on the theme ‘Sustainable and Ethical Museums in a Globalised World.’ The programme is designed to provoke debate, exchange new practice, and inspire activism in the face of local and global challenges.

The wide-ranging ideas on the agenda include: how to wean the cultural sector off fossil fuels, the future of the post-colonial museum, the consequences of #MeToo for the museum workforce, ethical sponsorship, sustaining regional galleries, and bullying in museums.

 

In early May 2019 the GlobalGRACE project held its second annual Partnership and Capability Event in Rio de Janeiro.

Over an intensive first three days we shared our experiences, challenges, and future plans in a variety of workshop and discussion sessions. New collaborative paths opened up and problems were collectively addressed as we found, once again, how much value there is in being together physically.

In the second half of the event we engaged with the city of Rio de Janeiro as we held a series of workshops and debates with artists, researchers, and activists working from peripheral perspectives and locations. Through artistic workshops we were guided through representing our research sites and concepts in artistic media: from methods of mural production with Mexican artist Libre, to conceptual mapping with the Argentine activist Pablo Ares, and finishing with a collaborative collage workshop with the Afro-Brazilian women’s collective Mulheres de Pedra.

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A series of exchanges, practices and reflections that brought together a diverse range of people, including artists, activists, teachers, and researchers.

The event is co-organized by the GlobalGRACE teams of Brazil - composed by Promundo-Brasil, Maria and João Aleixo Institute, Rio de Janeiro Favelas Observatory and PUC-Rio International Relations Institute - and Mexico - composed of Mesoamerican Voices and National Autonomous University of Chiapas.

Launch symposium for South Africa’s Global Grace project on sex work and theatre. The symposium was mostly sex-worker led and centered on their stories, elicited and supported by the project team of academics and our local civil society partner SWEAT (Sex Worker Education and Advocacy Taskforce)

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Read more about this event in our Postcards from the Field here and here. Learn more about Work Package 1: Working Women here.

Members from WP6 were invited to research session with Women Leaders in Museums Network and SHiFT

Members from WP6 took part in research sessions for the Festival of Change 2018.

The first GlobalGRACE-UP National LGBTQ Writers Workshop was held at the University of the Philippines on 23-27 July 2018. The workshop is the first in a series to be held over the next three years and is a core component of Work Package 4: Making Life Lovable: Digital and Literary Productions of Cultures of Equality Among LGBTQ young people in the Philippines.

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The national level residential writing workshops aim to create a distinctive space for aspiring LGBTQ writers both to formally hone their craft through constructive critique of their work by established and inter/national essayists, novelists, poets and scholars and to do so in a space that recognizes, values and makes safe their subject positions and subjectivities.

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The first workshop focused on poetry and will feature the work of 10 Fellows from across the Philippines who were selected competitively by a panel of established poets and scholars. For further information about the workshop, please see the GlobalGRACE Philippine Facebook page. www.facebook.com/GlobalGracePH/ and the Making Life Lovable website.

Many of the GRACE researchers took part in the opening conference and launch event of Global GRACE, led by the principal investigators Suzanne Clisby​ and Mark Johnson​ at Goldsmiths University. ESRs Barbara Grabher​ , Athena-Maria Enderstein​ and Ale Benitez​ chaired the roundtables on Global GRACE research projects in Brazil, South Africa and Mexico.

Exchanging Cultures of Equality was installed in the Kingsway Corridor of the Richard Hoggart Building at Goldsmiths, University of London, 21 June-1 July 2018, co-curated by Siobhán McGuirk and Nirmal Puwar. The exhibition marked the launch of a major new transnational research project on Global Gender and Cultures of Equality (GlobalGRACE). The exhibition explored modes of exchange between Goldsmiths and collaborators from six countries: Bangladesh, Brazil, Mexico, the Philippines, South Africa, and the UK. Project partners in each country comprise of locally-based academics and grassroots NGO staff, deploying arts-based practices and multi-sensory research to investigate the production of cultures of equality and enable gender positive approaches to well-being internationally.