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20 Arts & Culture BREAKIN’ BOUNDARIES: BLM-INSPIRED ARTISTS LAUNCH NEW MIXEDMEDIA PROJECT By Jamie Morris
A new exhibition at Derby’s QUAD arts centre seeks to highlight the experience of marginalised groups within the city through expressive street culture. Launched as part of QUAD’s annual Format International Photography Festival, AMP Voices combines footage of breakdancing and spoken-word performances with stylised photography and shortform interview clips. The exhibition has been conceived by Disruption, a group of four Birmingham-based creatives who each bring their own unique talents to the project. “It’s our first collective exhibition and I am so grateful to have it be presented at QUAD,” says spoken-word artist Sipho Ndlovu. “I am excited to have it be part of an international photography exhibition which captures joyous diversity, locally.” Disruption was conceived in response to the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, and forms part of the
O’Driscoll Collective, founded by dance artist Jamaal O’Driscoll. Jamaal was born deaf and grew up with severe dyslexia and ADHD, meaning he had to find routes to express himself outside of verbal communication. His father would dance and sing at local social clubs, and Jamaal soon discovered that he too had a passion and talent for dance. “I had a lot of energy, so I always gravitated towards movement in some form, or stuff that’s nonverbal,” he says. When his father passed away after a long struggle with depression, Jamaal founded the O’Driscoll Collective to continue his father’s legacy. The four members of Disruption all met through their shared background in dancing, but have each developed their dance experience into a different niche. Digital artist Anthony Shintai, for instance, realised that he was spending more time capturing dance from behind the camera than participating in it directly. “I just wanted to capture moments
of training – trying to do cool moves and goofing off – but then it came to a point where it felt like I was capturing dance more than actually doing it,” he says. “The love for capturing those moments motivated me to put in the time and dedication to study my craft and get better at it.” Emily Labhart, producer for the Disruption Collective, discovered her passion for dance through growing up in a diverse community and being introduced to dancehall and hip-hop by her friends. “It really broadened my experience and knowledge of different dance styles, but more importantly, the cultures that are attached to those styles,” she says. Emily went on to study the dances of the African diaspora at university, and later set up the Dancehall Origins project to address cultural imbalances within dance around the world. Disruption found themselves at QUAD through an open call to collectives from all over England to pitch ideas for what they could
