Come and discover the revolutionary power of flowers, for peace, to lift your mood, and to be creative together with fellow flower lovers.

In the workshop you will learn:

• Flowers for Peace: A presentation about the history and relevance of flowers for peace (15 mins)

• The basics of flower buying and conditioning your flowers for longer vase life (30 mins)

• Break (15 mins)

• How to make and wrap a small hand tied bouquet (60 mins)

Pigeoning the Palaces engages with the misunderstood figure of the pigeon. Based on a previous project of Amber’s, the workshop consists of painting handmade pigeon figurines or pigeon templates (pre-made by Amber); then it’s up to the attendees if you’d like to ‘Pigeon the Palace’ by hiding the finished figurines around Arts One, the Queen Mary campus, or London itself! The workshop is intended to be relaxing; creativity and imperfection are welcomed!

This workshop will be run on a drop-in basis!

Amber Pattisson is a local pigeon enthusiast and artist. She has recently completed her undergraduate degree in Drama at Queen Mary. Pigeoning the Palaces is based on Amber’s ‘Offstage London’ project in which she hid 30 handmade pigeons around London, which linked to a questionnaire asking the public about their feelings on the bird, and whether they had moments where they were misunderstood.

Nonviolent Direct Action (NVDA) training is the embodiment of activism. By empowering ourselves through knowledge, practice, and connection we learn to resist oppression. Integral to NVDA is de-escalation; techniques that channel anger within our protest spaces, our communities and ourselves. This workshop is holistic and rooted in care; a healing process, embracing our collective strength allowing us to manage our trauma, pain, rage and guilt within a safe environment.

Resilient Voices Alliance (RVA) are a small team, ranging in ages, experiences and backgrounds. We aim to help everyone find ways of nonviolently communicating, taking action, advocating, disrupting and speaking up for justice, while staying present with our humanity and respecting the humanity of others too. We do this through workshops/trainings that are free and as accessible as possible.

This is a fun and high-energy class, ideal for dancers of all levels. Whether you are just starting out or looking to refine your hip hop technique, this class will take you through groove techniques and dynamic choreography with a strong focus on gaining a sense of freedom through movement! Come have fun, and get your groove on!

Polly Towers is a young artist based in London. As a dancer, choreographer and actor she is passionate about teaching and creating choreography. She currently teaches twice a week at Pineapple Dance Studios.

Polly started working professionally as a commercial dancer at the age of 18, choreographing music videos and dancing for the artist Tallia Storm.

Her credits include: BBC, choreographing for TRNSMT festival, and performing at venues Theatre Royal Stratford East, Royal Albert Hall, the London Palladium, and writing and performing for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival

Polly continues her training as a member of Sadlers Wells Young Dance Company, training in all styles from Hip Hop to Contemporary dance.

Swati Arora in conversation with Malavika Priyadarshini Rao

An online event, with an in-person screening option. A link will be provided after tickets are booked.

As state surveillance and ideological control of Higher Education institutions intensifies, they are becoming contested spaces where identity, knowledge, and dissent are increasingly policed. From curriculum design to personal expression, universities risk becoming sites of regulation rather than liberation—especially as budget cuts erode support for critical pedagogies. Amidst this repression, marginalised bodies—those oppressed by caste (Dalit, Bahujan, Adivasi), race, religion, gender, and those living under occupation, such as in Palestine—resist. Their everyday performances draw from folk traditions, spiritual memory, and embodied dissent—not as spectacles, but as urgent choreographies of survival and solidarity. Protest becomes not only political but profoundly theatrical: a choreography of resistance, a dramaturgy of refusal.

This conversation will draw on Rao’s forthcoming book Performance and Performativity of Dalit Students Politics in India to explore how the aesthetics of protest—collaborative authorship, horizontal learning, embodied knowledge—can inspire radical, care-centred pedagogies. It asks: What becomes of the university when its spaces are no longer safe? How can we reimagine education not as compliance, but as collective emancipation?

Malavika Priyadarshini Rao is Assistant Professor in the Department of Performing Arts, Christ University, Bangalore, India and author of Performance and Performativity of Dalit Students Politics in India: The Justice for Rohith Movement (2025).

Swati Arora is Senior Lecturer in Performance and Global South Studies, Queen Mary University of London.

A poetry workshop with poet and QMUL Lecturer in Creative Writing Rachael Allen

I was born and grew up in Cornwall, moving to London to study English Literature at Goldsmiths University. There, I started an event and anthology series, which developed into a small press. I have been publishing ever since, working for a decade at the literary quarterly Granta Magazine, and publishing a poetry list for Granta Books. I am now an editor at Fitzcarraldo Editions. My doctoral research at the University of Hull identified an anglophone, feminist lyric emerging in the Anthropocene. My collection of poems Kingdomland was published in 2019, and God Complex, my second collection, was published in 2024, both by Faber and Faber. 

A drawing workshop with artist Lisa Gornick.

Use drawing to unfurl the soul and raise joy, in order to draw our individual and shared revolutions.

We are going to use drawing games for everyone. No drawing experience necessary. 

Bring your own materials if you have them; we will provide basic tools. 

Using drawing we shall start with easy observational drawing games. Then there will be drawing prompts for a personal exploration of revolutionary ideas. Then we're going to make it a bit bigger and look at the outside world, using drawing to explore and create ideas, visions and aims.

We will be doing this individually and also sharing with each other if we want.

We're going to use drawing to open up our revolutionary spirit and our desires for change. This is going to be fun but also we can use it to get serious with ourselves and to really see if we can use drawing as a way to explore change and revolution. 

Lisa Gornick

I am an artist, filmmaker and performer. 

I have made three award-winning feature films: Do I Love You? (2003), Tick Tock Lullaby (2007) and The Book of Gabrielle (2016).

I also create live drawing shows, most recently Drawing on the Bottle (2024/5). This is an innovative form of drawing in real time with live voiceover creating a DIY cinema live performance. 

I run drawing workshops for every ability as a way to explore ideas and stories. Recently, I have worked with the Royal College of Nursing using drawing workshops and live drawing shows in their Climate Action Campaign. 
https://www.lisagornick.com/ 

Join us for a selection of script-in-hand, lightly rehearsed readings of plays produced by BA Drama students in their 2nd year Playwriting class.  

Jen Harvie interviews Mojisola Adebayo on writing for Palestine plus Q and A

On the Stage Left podcast, Jen Harvie interviews artists and companies about their approaches to making performance - how they make it, why they make it, and why they make it the ways they do. Launched in 2017, Stage Left’s interviewees have included Split Britches, Sh!t Theatre, Selina Thompson, Krishna Istha, Lucy McCormick, Breach Theatre, and Reverend Billy. The podcast has had a hiatus, and this double bill live event brings it back strong, with interviews with QMUL Drama colleagues playwright Mojisola Adebayo on her playwriting for Palestine (5:30-6:25pm) and live artist Martin O’Brien on his work (6:45-7:45pm). Interviews will be followed by opportunities for audiences to ask their own questions of the artists. Please join us to hear from these brilliant artists about practices of political resistance in their work. Produced by Debbie Kilbride. 

Jen Harvie is Professor of Contemporary Theatre and Performance at QMUL. Her publications on performance-making include Making Contemporary Theatre: International Rehearsal Processes and the artists’ edited collections The Only Way Home Is Through the Show: Performance Work of Lois Weaver and Scottee: I Made It. She has done consultancy and dramaturgy with artists including Lucy McCormick, Cade & MacAskill, and Lisa Gornick. In 2017, she founded the podcast Stage Left on which she has interviewed artists and companies including Krishna Istha, Breach Theatre and Reverend Billy. The podcast has had a hiatus, and this live event brings it back.

Mojisola Adebayo is a playwright, performer, director, producer and facilitator and Professor at QMUL. Trained in Theatre of the Oppressed, Mojisola has been creating theatre for over 30 years, from Antarctica to Zimbabwe. Her published plays include Moj of the Antarctic: An African Odyssey (Lyric Hammersmith), Muhammad Ali and Me (Ovalhouse), Oranges and Stones (Ashtar Theatre), I Stand Corrected (Artscape), The Interrogation of Sandra Bland (Bush Theatre), Wind/Rush Generation(s) (National Theatre) and the award-winning Family Tree (ATC) and STARS (Tamasha) - coming to BrixtonHouse in June 2025! Publications include Afriquia Theatre: Black British Plays and Practitioners (with Lynette Goddard).

STARS tells the story of an old lady who goes into space in search of her own orgasm. STARS deals with non-consensual gender-based surgeries and the power and politics of pleasure.

Oranges and Stones, co-created with Ashtar Theatre, is a play without words which offers a picture of occupation. A woman lives alone in her home, a man walks, carrying a suitcase, she has no idea who he is, he starts to unpack and move in.

resisters explores non-violent creative forms of resistance to occupation, war and genocide by women and queer people, inspired by Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore during WW2 and women in Palestine today. A young queer woman artist decides to resist the occupation by occupying her own toilet.

Jen Harvie interviews Martin O’Brien on his work and Q and A

On the Stage Left podcast, Jen Harvie interviews artists and companies about their approaches to making performance - how they make it, why they make it, and why they make it the ways they do. Launched in 2017, Stage Left’s interviewees have included Split Britches, Sh!t Theatre, Selina Thompson, Krishna Istha, Lucy McCormick, Breach Theatre, and Reverend Billy. The podcast has had a hiatus, and this double bill live event brings it back strong, with interviews with QMUL Drama colleagues playwright Mojisola Adebayo on her playwriting for Palestine (5:30-6:25pm) and live artist Martin O’Brien on his work (6:45-7:45pm). Interviews will be followed by opportunities for audiences to ask their own questions of the artists. Please join us to hear from these brilliant artists about practices of political resistance in their work. Produced by Debbie Kilbride. 

Jen Harvie is Professor of Contemporary Theatre and Performance at QMUL. Her publications on performance-making include Making Contemporary Theatre: International Rehearsal Processes and the artists’ edited collections The Only Way Home Is Through the Show: Performance Work of Lois Weaver and Scottee: I Made It. She has done consultancy and dramaturgy with artists including Lucy McCormick, Cade & MacAskill, and Lisa Gornick. In 2017, she founded the podcast Stage Left on which she has interviewed artists and companies

Martin O’Brien is an artist and zombie. He works across performance, writing and video art. His work uses long durational actions, short speculative texts and critical rants, and performance processes to explore death and dying, what it means to be born with a life-shortening disease, and the philosophical implications of living longer than expected. He has shown work throughout the UK, Europe, USA, and Canada, and is well known for his solo performances and collaborations with the legendary LA artist and dominatrix Sheree Rose. His most recent works were at Tate Britain, the ICA (London), the Southbank Centre, and as Writer in Residence at Whitechapel Gallery. He is winner of the Philip Leverhulme Prize for Visual and Performing Arts 2022. Martin has cystic fibrosis and all of his work and writing draws upon this experience. In 2018, the book Survival of the Sickest: The Art of Martin O’Brien was published by Live Art Development Agency. His work has been featured on BBC radio and Sky Arts television, and as a double page spread in The Guardian. He is currently Head of the Department of Drama at Queen Mary University of London.