In this workshop, the exhibition curator of Lubaina Himid and Magda Stawarska's Nets for Night and Day invites visitors (at any skill or appreciation level) to a day of poetry. Using the exhibition as inspiration, workshop participants will gather, wander, read, listen and respond to a series of guided prompts by Kholeif throughout the session. At the end of the session, everyone takes home a poem of their own making and a sense of how the small things make up the poetics of everyday life.

Biography
Professor Omar Kholeif, PhD is an award-winning author, artist and historian of visual culture – as well as the avatar of Doctor O, and the heteronym of poet, Blake Mitchell, among other non-Portuguese poets. They are the founder and principal of artPost21, a not-for-profit cultural agency, publishing house and collection that explores art and culture at the margins of society. Since 2018, they have served as the director of collections and senior curator, Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE. They previously served as Manilow senior curator and director of global initiatives at the MCA Chicago; curator at Whitechapel Gallery, London; senior curator of Cornerhouse, Manchester and FACT, Liverpool. Longtime trustee and former programme director of SPACE, London, they are ambassador for Mental Health Research UK and visiting research professor the school of arts and the creative industries at MIMA Research Institute, Teesside University, UK.