Diverse Actions Commission: Maya Chowdhry
As part of our membership of Live Art UK, we are proud that Lancaster Arts is a delivery partner on the national Ambition for Excellence project Diverse Actions. This three-year initiative champions culturally diverse ambition, excellence and talent in Live Art.
Through Diverse Actions, we were pleased to be able to open a call for proposals to offer an artist a £3,000 commission and package of support to realise a new piece. We are very pleased to announce that the recipient of this commission on the theme of 'Women & The Future' is Maya Chowdhry.
We are delighted that we will be supporting Maya in developing her new piece 'What's Eating Reality' which will be presented in Lancaster in December 2018.
Maya Chowdhry is an interactive artist, theatre-maker and Transmedia writer. She began her career with Sheffield Women's Film Co-op in 1987. Maya’s work has spanned theatre, video, live art and radio, all of which influence her current work. More recently her practice utilises interactive theatre-making and digital storytelling to create immersive and democratic experiences for audiences.
In 2016 Maya received an Arts Council grant for her development project - ‘Peas on Earth’ exploring food sovereignty through a decolonised lens, the resultant work-in-development was shown at ‘Emergency’, Black Gold Arts and Sapphormation Festivals. Maya was writer and chef-performer with B Arts on ‘A Place at the Table’ (2015) a site-specific performance exploring food and democracy.
She collaborated on ‘Tales from the Towpath’, shortlisted for the international 2014 New Media Writing Prize, this immersive story, for Manchester Literature Festival, included a performance on a canal boat and guided story tours through Manchester’s waterways. Ripple, a triptych of artist books using augmented reality to explore climate change, was shortlisted for The 2016 Dot Award.
Maya will begin work on the commission this Summer and will be in residency at Lancaster Arts come Autumn 2018, and we would love to invite you to keep a look out for further updates and announcements of opportunities to see the piece. For more information about Maya Chowdhry and her practice, please visit her website.
