ARTIST TALKS | FILM PREMIERE | CREATIVE WORKSHOPS | LIVE MUSIC | FOOD Friday 4 September 2026 11am - 5pm, followed by Fhungus Friday live music gig (6pm onwards) Doncaster Unitarian & Free Christian Church, 60a Hall Gate, Doncaster, DN1 3PB FREE ENTRY (Pay As You Feel donations welcome) Spaces are limited, please email admin@artbombuk.com to reserve your spot! On Friday 4th September, ArtBomb warmly welcomes you to Stories Grow Here, an all-day celebratory event looking back at a wonderful Summer 2026 at ArtBomb and looking forward to what's next! Through artist talks, creative workshops, live music, food and the premiere of Darshan Gajjar's short documentary film, ArtBomb invites artists and local residents to explore questions of belonging, home, movement, access and art as intervention in public space. The day will be facilitated by Olamide Olaniyan (aka Olamide Sax), a Nigerian-born saxophonist and creative practitioner who has been collaborating with ArtBomb and local bands such as The Skintones since early 2026. Through music-making, Olamide will help shape the rhythm and energy of the day. From Olamide Sax’s Better Rhythm drum circle session and Fiona Cahill’s handmade paper workshop, to Squiggle Gang’s collaborative mural-making, Creative Push’s screen-printing and Terry Hudson’s Little Anarchist Bookshop, the programme creates opportunities to make, listen, play and share. Alongside these hands-on activities, Mark Farid’s artist talk, Tinta Ali’s philosophical discussion on the intersection of migration and homelessness, Jack Clarke and Ciara O’Rourke’s exploration of housing and exclusion, and the premiere of Darshan Gajjar’s My Home in Doncaster invite us to examine the structures that shape our communities—and imagine how they might be changed. This all-day event is an early celebration of the ongoing redevelopment of ArtBomb and Doncaster Unitarian's courtyard area into a creative, open air third space hiding in plain sight on Hall Gate, Doncaster city-centre. Stories Grow Here offers the courtyard as fertile ground— a place to sow new ideas, where different perspectives can grow alongside one another and to see what kind of positive social impact can take root when creativity is given room to grow. At 5pm, the day moves from making and discussion to music, with Jackhno and Fhungus Friday carrying the programme into the evening. EVENT SCHEDULE: AT A GLANCE 11.00 Arrival time 11.30 Welcome & Introduction 11.40 Mark Farid | GUEST ARTIST TALK 12:10 Reflecting on The Anti-Social Housing Agency (Arts & Homelessness commission) with Jack Clarke & Ciara O'Rourke | RESIDENCY ARTIST SHARING 12.30 Bless the People Who Live in this House | FILM SCREENING + GUEST PHILOSOPHER 13.05 Lunch - Pay As You Feel communal meal by Paula Lockey (V) 14.00 Fiona Cahill | AUTOCARTOGRAPHY PAPERMAKING WORKSHOP Olamide Olanayan | BETTER RHYTHM DRUM CIRCLE 15.00 My Home in Doncaster (Rethinking Migration commission) FILM PREMIERE + Q&A 15.40 Squiggle Gang | MURAL DISCUSSION 16.00 Squiggle Gang | STREET ART DRAWING WORKSHOP Terry Hudson | LITTLE ANARCHIST BOOKSHOP & ZINE-MAKING Creative Push – Print It Live | SCREENPRINTING WORKSHOP 17.00 Stories Grow Here event finishes Jackhno live electronic set in courtyard 18.00 Fhungus Friday | GIG MEET THE ARTISTS Mark Farid GUEST SPEAKER @morkforid www.markfarid.com Mark Farid is an artist and Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, and a PhD candidate at the Creative Computing Institute. His practice explores the intersection between the virtual and physical worlds, examining how new technologies shape individuals’ sense of self and collective perception. Farid’s work draws on hacker ethics and focuses on privacy policies, surveillance technologies, and advocacy for data privacy and protection. Collectively, his projects form a critique of contemporary social, legal, and political structures. At a Crossroads: Urban Walk in Doncaster with Mark Farid & Doncaster Ramblers What does the act of crossing the road reveal about how we are governed? At a Crossroads, a new project by artist Mark Farid, treats pedestrian crossings as sites where the state, governance and the body collide, and follows how obedience becomes so habitual it no longer looks like obedience at all. The project began this year at the British School at Rome, filming crossings in eight cities across seven countries, and its English phase, supported by Arts Council England, now comes to Doncaster. On Thursday 3rd September, a circular walk moves from rural edge ground into the town centre. Led by David Gadd of Doncaster Ramblers with artist Mark Farid and Urban Sociologist Louise Rondel co-leading, the walk traces how control is embedded in the ground we move through: access rights and private land, fencing, signage, road design and the pedestrian crossing. The event is a circular walk of around six miles at a leisurely pace, starting at 10am from Hexthorpe Flatts, 209 Urban Road, Doncaster DN4 0HH. Around midday the walk pauses at ArtBomb, 60 Hallgate, for food and a partly recorded group discussion of around an hour and a half, before the return leg to Hexthorpe Flatts. The event finishes by mid-afternoon. The walk pauses at ArtBomb for food and a debrief, a group conversation about what everyone noticed, then loops back to where it began. The walk is free and places are limited. Meeting Point: Hexthorpe Flatts, 209 Urban Road, Doncaster DN4 0HH Date: Thursday 3rd September 2026 Time: 11am start | Finishes mid-afternoon Distance: Approx. 6 miles | Leisurely pace Lunch provided. Please dress appropriately depending on the weather, wear suitable footwear, and bring a bottle of water to stay hydrated. On Friday 4th September, ArtBomb proudly presents Mark as our keynote speaker for Stories Grow Here. Mark will dive into his digital art practice, his early research into At a Crossroads and pose questions around the social impact of contemporary art in the public realm. Olamide Phillips Olaniyan (aka Olamide Sax) HOST & MUSIC WORKSHOP FACILITATOR @olamide.sax www.olamidesax.co.uk Olamide Phillips Olaniyan is a Nigerian-born, Doncaster-based Afro-fusion artist, multi-instrumentalist, participatory artist and creative facilitator. He has ten years and more of live performance, blending saxophone, Yoruba percussion, piano, vocals and storytelling. On Friday 4th September, Olamide will debut Better Rhythm, a participatory creative wellbeing session that uses African drumming, saxophone, voice, movement and cultural storytelling to bring people together through rhythm, creativity and shared experience. Drawing from Yoruba musical heritage and creative health practice, the session explores how rhythm can support wellbeing, confidence, connection and cultural exchange. Olamide also features in the My Home in Doncaster short film by Darshan Gajjar, discussing his story of moving to Doncaster and the role played by music to bring communities together. Ciara O'Rourke & Jack Clarke RESIDENCY ARTIST SHARING @clarkeofsalford @ciara_lil_makes_things Jack Clarke & Ciara O'Rourke are the artist duo behind The Anti-Social Housing Agency, a satirical furniture showroom-cum-housing agency designed in response to ArtBomb's Arts & Homelessness commission. The project uses the visual language of housing offices, furnished tenancies, hostile architecture, waiting rooms, domestic interiors and showrooms to provoke discussion around the systems that shape who gets to feel safe, who gets pushed out, and who is quietly designed against. Through this, The Anti-Social Housing Agency looks at hostile architecture, social housing, rough sleeping, temporary accommodation, furniture poverty and the everyday ways public and private spaces can isolate, exclude or control people. On Friday 4th September, Jack and Ciara break down the process of creating The Anti-Social Housing Agency, their partnerships with local housing and social care charities, the conversations they've had with Doncaster residents, the conclusions they've reached, and probably more importantly, the questions the project has left them with. Tinta Ali GUEST PHILOSOPHER Tinta Ali is a philosopher, community advocate and Partnership and Engagement Coordinator at ARC (Asylum & Refugee Community) Blackburn. Born in the Ivory Coast, he came to the UK seeking asylum after fleeing persecution during the country’s civil war in 2010. Drawing on more than 12 years in the non-profit sector and his own lived experience, Tinta speaks powerfully about migration, belonging, identity, community and what it means to build a life somewhere new. He appears in Bless The People Who Live in This House, reflecting on these questions through his own experiences and wider philosophy of home, dignity and human connection. On Friday 4th September, Tinta offers a philosophical reflection on the intersection of migration and homelessness, the anti-immigration rhetoric embedded in the far right's response to the UK housing crisis, initiating an open conversation about where ArtBomb's Rethinking MIgration and Arts & Homelessness commissions meet. Darshan Gajjar RESIDENCY ARTIST FILM PREMIERE @darshangajjar darshangajjar.co.uk On Friday 4th September, ArtBomb is delighted to premier My Home in Doncaster, a short documentary film created by Sheffield-based filmmaker, Darshan Gajjar, in response to ArtBomb's Rethinking Migration commission. Created in collaboration with CAST, My Home in Doncaster is not your typical documentary. Darshan invited members of the public who call Doncaster home to sit down, grab a cup of tea, and have an informal chat about their lives, experiences, and what home means to them, from a constructed living room on Hall Gate. The project explores how we can humanise one another beyond labels. By bringing together voices from migrant and non-migrant backgrounds, we wanted to create space for honest conversations and show that while our experiences may be different, we often have far more in common than we realise. Many thanks to Nicola Doyle of CAST, Sharon Wilson from Changing Lives and Mary Macmillan of Citizens Advice Doncaster Borough for their support throughout both the Rethinking Migration and Arts & Homelessness projects. Fiona Cahill @elysiandaisies renditionaveformaria.com Fiona Cahill is an artist, activist and carer living in South Yorkshire. From a line of Irish single mothers her work explores institutional abuse, politics, grief and the power of the natural world to overcome separation and containment. Having presented her first exhibition, Rendition, at ArtBomb Fiona is currently touring her own solo show and her work can be seen now in The National Museum of Ireland in the ‘Changing Ireland’ gallery. On Friday 4th September, Fiona will host an introductory session to autocartography - an artistic framework used to map one's heritage and psychological or cultural geography - through papermaking. Using organic materials found in the courtyard such as leaves, bark, soils & flowers, Fiona will show you how to make your own paper from homemade paper pulp, curly cress seeds, nettle twine and a sewing needle. Squiggle Gang @squiggle.gang Join Doncaster-based street artist collective Squiggle Gang to hear the story behind their work in progress mural, a brand new public artwork commissioned by ArtBomb & Doncaster Unitarian church as part of the redevelopment of the courtyard into an open air creative space in the heart of Doncaster. We want ArtBomb & Doncaster Unitarian's shared courtyard space to flourish into a lively hub for street art. We have near-future plans to commission more large-scale murals and to launch a legal spraypainting wall to present new work by emerging street artists. At our Stories Grow Here event, we're inviting members of the public to have a say in the types of street art we might commission next. Take inspiration from the nature, art and community of the courtyard to draw your own mural designs! Squiggle Gang will be on hand to provide tips & tricks. Posca pens, paper & other drawing materials will be provided. Creative Push CIC @creativepushcic Join Chris Perkins of Creative Push CIC for a hands-on screen-printing experience. Bring your own T-shirt, tote bag or fabric item, or pick up a tote bag on the day, and create a one-of-a-kind print to take home. Come and meet the team and find out how we’re making creativity accessible for everyone through inclusive workshops and community projects. Jackhno @jackhno_dancepunk Jackhno (Jen Rozenfelds) is an electronic musician and eco-socialist who plays live alternative dance music with a punky attitude. Jen is also the organiser of Doncaster's EMOM events (Electronic Music Open Mic). Jackhno will be taking us into the early evening with a warm-up set in the courtyard, before doors open for the Fhungus Friday gig at 6pm. Sample the origianl sounds of Jackhno on YouTube Fhungus Friday Gig @motherfhungusevents Fhungus Friday, a monthly music gig featuring a vibrant line up of local bands, is brought to you by Mother Fhungus - a Doncaster collective using DIY music to highlight positive shifts, ideas and alternatives in and outside our local community. Find event updates & ticket links on the Mother Fhungus Events Linktree. Tickets will also be available to buy on the door! WHAT TO EXPECT As with all of ArtBomb's programming, we want to make this event as accessible and inclusive as possible. Please email jennie@artbomb.uk.com if there's a way we can make this event more accessible for you. The event is entirely free, including a buffet-style vegetarian lunch and drinks served throughout the day. Some activities are pay what you feel. Any donations made will be used to support ArtBomb in growing its creative community here in the heart of Doncaster. We're expecting around 80-100 guests to be joining us for Beyond the Scroll. There will be 2 dedicated quiet zones: one on the ground floor of the church and upstairs in the ArtBomb building, where there are comfortable couches and chairs. There are also benches and chairs in our outdoor courtyard area. Team members supporting the running of the event will be wearing coloured lanyards or badges. They will be on hand to offer support throughout the day. GETTING HERE Address: Doncaster Unitarian & Free Christian Church, 60a Hall Gate DN1 3PB ArtBomb is located at 60 Hall Gate, Doncaster city-centre: a 10 minute walk from the train station. Please note that there is no on-site parking. The nearest car park is NCP Doncaster, 1 Frances St, Doncaster, DN1 1JD. If you have any questions about the event, please email admin@artbombuk.com Looking forward to see you there! Event curated by Jennie Gilman & Mikes Stubbs

7th Feb 2026 As part of our ongoing project with ArtBomb, Kalabash spent several days across the Winter months of 2025 listening, walking, and recording along the River Don. We gathered sounds from the water and wildlife, as well as the sound of local traffic and human activity. We’re interested in how these layers coexist, and how the local ecology continues to adapt in the shadow of human infrastructure. Alongside sound recording, we also captured bio-electric signals from local plants and wild mushrooms. Using small sensors clipped to leaves, stems, and fungi, we recorded tiny electrical changes produced as living organisms respond to light, moisture, and disturbance. Rather than treating this as novelty “nature music”, we see these signals as another way of listening to the environment’s behaviour over time. This process sits within our interest in deep listening as an artistic practice. Instead of representing nature or explaining it, we’re interested in creating conditions where people can tune into ongoing processes in engaging and visceral ways. Bio-electric signals resist regular rhythm and repetition, which naturally pushes us away from fixed musical structures and towards slower, more chaotic systems that feel closer to how natural environments operate. At this stage, the audio and data we collected are still raw. The next phase of the project is about experimentation and discovery, allowing this material to shape the direction the work takes rather than forcing it into a predefined form. We’re excited to see how these sounds and signals begin to influence the project as it develops, and what they reveal and inspire when given time and attention. Words by Alby Daniels (Kalabash) Listen to music by Kalabash on Soundcloud here. Keep up with what the London-based electronic music trio are up to ovet on their Instagram (@kalabashmusic)

ArtBomb presents: EcoSoundSystem, the interactive sonic artwork turning hardcore ecological data into something we can move to. On Friday 10th July, ArtBomb launches a mycellium-inspired soundsystem and a DIY night of live electronic music spread across two floors in Doncaster Unitarian Church. Doors open 5pm (Pay as You Feel tickets available on the door) “Data alone will not compel people to reverse the decline of nature…” offers Simon Pickles,“...society needs to feel the urgency before it acts and to do that, individuals must connect with nature. Connect directly through immersion and indirectly through experience.” Simon is the Director of the North and East Yorkshire Ecological Data Centre (NEYDEC), and a prominent figure in UK biological recording, specialising in environmental planning, conservation technology, and biodiversity monitoring. In spite of his occupation, Simon understands that the climate crisis is not just a scientific or technical challenge. It's a crisis of values, power and of storytelling. Dominated by graphs and policy papers, climate discourse often fails to chart the connection between the natural world and the lived realities of ordinary people. It fails to explain why people should care about the climate crisis now, when there are so many other, immediate priorities to contend with: from rising rent prices, to putting food on the table, to safeguarding one’s own mental health. That human-nature dissonance is an idea which leader of the Green Party, Zak Polanski, has spearheaded in his reframing of climate action as foremost a social justice issue intimately tied to economic inequality. Data alone will not move people towards climate action, but perhaps a dance-fuelled night of live electronic music and art will? That’s where ArtBomb — Doncaster’s engine of creative disruption set in a former estate agents — comes in. Through a public programme operating at the intersection of art and activism, ArtBomb creates moments which gather strangers together and remind people of their shared humanity. Towards the end of 2025, Simon Pickles approached ArtBomb with an idea for an ecology-focused artist residency called “Pin Back ‘Tha Lugholes”, a distinctly Yorkshire phrase meaning “listen up”. Artists from across the UK were invited to pitch a project which uses technology to translate complex ecological data sampled from in and around Doncaster into an audio-visual format which invites new ways of listening to and observing the natural environment. Alby Daniels, Joe Caple and Aramis Gorriete, aka Kalabash — an electronic music production trio from London — responded to the brief with the idea of a live, durational sound installation which translates real time environmental data from the River Don and nearby habitats into evolving soundscapes. Kalabash — whose original music has been featured on Radio 6 and Mixmag — have collaborated with the likes of Jelani Blackman, a London rapper featured in Kneecap’s platinum album, Fine Art (2024). In a posthumanist shift, Kalabash are now making music with the River Don. Since November 2025, the trio have been listening, walking and recording along Doncaster’s urban waterways, harvesting subaquatic sounds, as well as the sound of local traffic and human activity. “We’re interested in how these sonic layers co-exist” says Alby, “and how the local ecology continues to adapt in the shadow of human infrastructure”. Ten months later, Kalabash have transformed these recordings into EcoSoundSystem, a bespoke sound system unlike anything out there. Inspired by the branching logic of mycelial networks, EcoSoundSystem is an interactive audiovisual environment which grows from the main hall of Doncaster Unitarian Church, a hidden heritage gem tucked between a Yates’ pub and an independent guitar shop on Hall Gate, Doncaster city-centre. The installation combines large-scale projection, live plant data and synths connected to the church organ, all interconnected by a sprawling network of speakers and sound sources positioned around the space. Transforming the church hall into an immersive soundscape, the work encourages visitors to move around and explore the space, to encounter the distinction between the involuntary nature of hearing and the conscious state of deep listening. At the heart of the installation sits a control station, where visitors are invited to become a DJ and shift the balance of sound and vision in the room using a 4-channel controller. In this sense, the work behaves like a living organism. The sonic environment constantly evolves and reacts to human action, implicating every visitor into a networked ecology. The result is a looping, shape-shifting track composed by hundreds of humans and underscored by nature’s unpredictable rhythms. From 7pm, the evening will shift from sonic meditation to a night of original electronic music, synth pop, post-punk & straight-up dance beats curated by Jen Rozenfelds aka Jackhno, a Doncaster born, non-binary genderfluid electronic musician, playing house & techno influenced alt-dance & electropunk designed to get dancefloors moving. Post-lockdown, Jen has been working hard to bring the Electronic Open Mic Night movement- which first started in Manchester in 2017- to Doncaster, as well as releasing original music. You can listen to her latest track “Kandiaronk” — a bass heavy, head-nodding stoner groove — on Bandcamp. When asked about her motivation to bringing EMOM to Doncaster, Jen said: “To me, EMOM is about helping grassroots music in Doncaster, particularly the live electronic scene. We have a lot of creative talent in our city but it often goes unnoticed because there aren't many outlets for it, which is why a DIY attitude is so important in providing opportunities for the live & original musicians of Doncaster.” That this sonic artwork-cum-club night is taking place in a Unitarian church hall is important. It’s important because, as an inclusive, non-denominational faith space purpose-built to congregate people, the setting explicitly reframes the idea of strangers being gathered around music as a modern ritual, for a culture that has forgotten ritual. This echoes what the late great Andrew Weatherall dubbed “gnostic ceremony” — the idea that dancing to electronic music amongst smoke and strobes — edges towards a kind of transcendence. Dancefloors are not just for hedonistic entertainment. They can synchronize humans emotionally, physiologically and socially. That may have been true of the 90’s and early 00’s. The problem today is that gnostic ceremony is being lost to the collapse of club culture. Some of the best underground clubs across the north have closed their doors in recent years, including Wire, The Imaginarium and Freedom Mills in Leeds and most recently, The White Hotel in Manchester, which recently announced its immanent closure in January 2027. There are some electronic music festivals — such as Houghton Festival in Norfolk and Gottwood Festival in Anglesey — which somewhat manage to cultivate Weatherall’s ideas around electronic music and ritualistic ceremony by capping audience numbers at 5,000-10,000, in a bid to sustain the type of intimacy needed for audiences to feel connected to the music and the people around them . But these experiences are only accessible to those in a position to spend £300+ on a festival ticket. What’s missing, and what we need more than ever, are contemporary, community-led music events which have their roots in DIY free party culture and teknivals. For ArtBomb Festival 2025, we presented Ray Lee's Siren in the main hall of the church, and witnessed hundreds of people become spellbound by the sonic sculpture. Presenting Ray's work allowed us to see the potential of the church as a site for truly outstanding, large-scale sonic experiences. On the back of Ray's piece, we wanted to commission a brand new sonic artwork for 2026 which exists somewhere between ecological science, art and electronic music, which offers audiences new insights into climate beauty and climate catastrophe, and at the same time, a great night out. We hope EcoSoundSystem by Kalabash achieves exactly that! Words by Jennie Gilman (ArtBomb Co-Curator) INFORMATION After opening night, EcoSoundSystem will remain open as a self-running installation Open daily 11am-4pm 10-26 July 2026 Generously supported by NEYDEC & Arts Council England

ARTS & HOMELESSNESS COMMISSION Open daily from 1 July 2026 @ ArtBomb KEY DATES: 10 July 2026 [Opening] 24 July 2026 27 July 2026 Anti-Social Housing Agency is a new socially engaged installation by Ciara O’Rourke and Jack Clarke, developed with ArtBomb in Doncaster as part of its Arts & Homelessness programme. The project uses the visual language of housing offices, furnished tenancies, hostile architecture, waiting rooms, domestic interiors and showrooms to provoke discussion around the systems that shape who gets to feel safe, who gets pushed out, and who is quietly designed against. It draws from the strange emotional deadness of places that pretend to offer comfort while keeping people managed: the IKEA display room where nobody lives, the council waiting area where time seems to thicken, the staged tenancy brochure where home becomes a product, and the liminal retail spaces where every sofa, lamp and plastic plant appears welcoming until you realise none of it is actually yours. Through this, Anti-Social Housing Agency looks at hostile architecture, social housing, rough sleeping, temporary accommodation, furniture poverty and the everyday ways public and private spaces can isolate, exclude or control people. At the centre of the project is a body of custom-adapted furniture by Ciara O’Rourke. Sofas, chairs, domestic objects and improvised interiors become part artwork, part social space, part uncomfortable question. These are not just props or set pieces. They are objects that ask what home means when comfort itself has become conditional. From 24 July, the public will be invited to start undoing the room. To take this slightly cold, showroom-like housing office, part IKEA display, part council waiting room, part liminal retail purgatory where a sofa somehow looks both affordable and emotionally dead — and begin making it feel lived in. Through workshops, mural painting, shared artwork-making and other activities, the space will be gradually softened, marked and interrupted by the people who use it. From 27 July, the installation will shift into The Social House: a reimagined version of its anti-social counterpart. Where the first phase looks at hostile design, isolation, staged comfort and the systems that make people feel managed rather than held, this second phase asks what happens when people are invited to actually occupy the room. To sit in it. Add to it. Talk in it. Make something there. The space becomes less like a showroom pretending to sell belonging, and more like a communal room built through use, care and presence. Across the exhibition, the work will shift between installation, conversation, workshop and community gathering, slowly creating a space where people can talk about housing not as an abstract policy issue, but as something lived through bodies, rooms, waiting lists, furniture, debt, shame, care and survival and will evolve through the exhibition life into The Social House. Anti-Social Housing Agency opens from 1 July @ ArtBomb, Doncaster. Want to get involved? Email jennie@artbombuk.com

On 16 April 2026, ArtBomb hosted Beyond the Scroll: Rethinking Socially Engaged Practice, a one-day symposium including art interventions, workshops and an evening social filled with live music. We welcomed over 150 artists, activists, college students and the curious public to a free day of talks, workshops and live interventions exploring how socially engaged practice can reclaim focus and meaning in an age of distraction. As part of our pledge to make bold, boundary-pushing cultural experiences accessible to everyone in Doncaster, guests were invited to attend Beyond the Scroll entirely free of charge. Galvanized by the success of Beyond the Scroll, ArtBomb is piloting a new donation scheme. If you attended Beyond the Scroll and would like to see more events like this in Doncaster, you can now help us make that happen by making a small donation! All contributions will feed directly back into ArtBomb's programming. In Review Here's what press had to say about our Beyond the Scroll event: JACK CLARKE (ED. BY CIARA O'ROURKE) // CULTURE MATTERS Beyond the Scroll: Doncaster, Doomscrolling, and the Strange Old Art of Paying Attention 28 April 2026 Beyond the Scroll was never going to work in a conference centre or some polished black box that smells faintly of grant money and institutional ego stroking. It needed the ghost of Flares nightclub to sit shuttered just opposite. It needed vape shops nearby, the rumble of traffic, the sound of ping pong upstairs and the constant possibility that someone might walk in halfway through a serious conversation. That’s one of the reasons I’ve stayed fascinated by ArtBomb. It is one of the few places I know trying to produce a different social space in real time, and doing so in a town centre that still carries all the usual British symptoms of hollowed-out civic life. CHARLIE WATERHOUSE // ABSURD INTELLIGENCE Beyond the Scroll: Real art is alive and well, and it's plotting the fightback in South Yorkshire. Shit Tech watch out, Donny's here. 22 April 2026 Beyond The Scroll was blessed with inspiration. From countercultural crocheters Mother Hookers to Sally Kindberg’s Museum of Dust; the Little Anarchist Bookshop to Matt Redfern’s painting this was creativity waybeyond both the scroll and the highfalutin Art World – and all the better for it. It’s the kind of Art Brian Eno and Bette Adriaanse talk of so eloquently in their book What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory. Highlights Eelyn Lee delivered a brilliant keynote, offering an analysis of their own socially engaged creative practice as something inseparable from place, migration and the digital present. Eelyn wrapped up their talk with a powerful invitation: "...when AI does all the work, let's dream". Meanwhile, Darren Cullen (aka Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives) delighted everyone with a brief foray into the world of subvertising art. Tracing his early aspirations to join the ad industry and his swift pivot into subvertising, Darren showcased an impressive archive of projects and gave some practical tips on how to create your own satirical adverts. such as how to access brand fonts vis open source resources. Guests enjoyed the courtyard, animated by Terry Hudsons' Little Anarachist Bookshop, Project 6's mobile coffee cart, live music by local musicians and spraypainting by Squiggle Gang. Sally Kindberg presented the travelling Museum of Dust, a collection of dust presented in miniature bottles, gathered on adventures, including a walk along the Great Wall of China. Sally explains: "Dust is fascinating. Apparently we’re all made of dust from ancient stars, once responsible for the elements that make up our human bodies. Can these tiny specific samples evoke their origins, of locations, events and the characters connected to them?" At Beyond the Scroll, Sally asked others what they would collect and pop in a bottle, bottling their responses with pen and paper. Artwork by local artists & makers Matt Redfern, Diane Wells and Mother Hookers adorned the room, visually translating the Doncaster Unitarian Church's emerging status as the city's destination for original art. Nine students from Doncaster College arrived in the afternoon, their faces concealed by Diane Well's crochet masks, an ongoing textiles project exploring identity, social masking, and the liberating effect of shrouding one's face in public spaces. An impromptu conversation took place between Jack and the students, discussing AI fruit, doomscrolling, mental health and emotional flattening. You can watch clips from the discussion over on Jack's Instagram (@clarkeofsalford). Linda Cassells, Sue Hare and Lyndon Watkinson, working under the moniker, Futures Past Coalition, gathered everyone in the uppe hall for Tolerance is a Paradox, an Orwellian-inspired call-and-response participatory performance exploring division, control and the paradox of tolerance. By evening, that very ArtBomb thing happened. On one side of the main hall, members of the weekly Church of Ping Pong group played table tennis, adding a new rhythm to the live, impromptu jam session happening on stage between local anarcho-fusion band The SkinTones and Nigerian-born saxophonist, Olaniyan Olamide Phillips. It felt like one of those uncurated, unplanned moments that happen when you leave space for just the right amount of chaos. College students came along to see their mates play in their band, members of the local community farm hung out in the courtyard (not a phone in sight), street artists sprayed custom designs on people’s clothes. A lot of our thinking for Beyond the Scroll was based on the assumption that most people are in the grips of doomscroll culture- disengaged with “real life”. ArtBomb's event painted a pretty different picture. As Charlie Waterhouse puts it in his review. “real people in real places”. We had invited people to join us in going “beyond the scroll", but it felt like a lot of the people who joined us- the artists, activists, communards living off-grid & super switched on teens - are already halfway there. Igniting Debate The objective of the forum event was to spark conversations and honest debate between strangers around the prevailing force of arts and culture in an age of digital distraction. We wanted to create a relaxed space where, in-between inspiring artist talks and performances, people could talk openly with one another about how their personal relationship with everyday technologies actually makes them feel. To facilitate this, we designed a 5-part series of provocations: Human vs Platform Who are you actually making work for people or algorithms? Presence vs Documentation Have you ever missed something real because you were trying to capture it? Access vs Overload When does “access” just become dependency? Community vs Audience Are we building something together, or just gathering attention? Care vs Content When does storytelling tip into extraction? Ciara O'Rourke - who is working alongside Jack Clarke on the Anti-Social Housing Agency as part of ArtBomb's Arts & Homelessness project - was commissioned to work with us on the design elements of Beyond the Scroll, including transforming the above provocation into rich visual graphics. Audience Feedback We've received some incredibly generous feedback from many of the guests who attended. Here's what some of them wrote in: Olaniyan Olamide Phillips Video & reflection on Instagram (@olamide.sax) https://www.instagram.com/p/DXNUqkWDWIg/?hl=en-gb&img_index=1 Tonight at @artbombuk , I stepped into a different current of energy with theskintones_uk , a space where reggae, funk, folk, ska, trance, hip hop and ancestral vibrations collide into one living sound. No rehearsal. No limits. Just connection. I brought the sax into their world, and somewhere between rhythm and freedom, everything aligned. What happened on that stage was more than music, it was conversation, it was trust, it was culture meeting culture without resistance. Moments like this remind me that music is a universal language, it doesn’t ask where you’re from, it responds to what you carry. Grateful for the energy, the openness, and the shared vibration. This is how we grow. This is how we connect. This is how we create. #artbombuk #Skintoneuk #olamidesax #communityart#communitymusic Matt Redfern Dear Mike and Jennie, Thank you for you invite to Beyond the Scroll. This was an amazing opportunity rarely seen in Doncaster where a group of creative minds can meet together. The timetable offered lots of perspectives and views that opened my mind to how an artist voice can be developed and effective. This has given my loads of inspiration for the future. The artist talks were informative and delivered in a friendly environment. The performance art was powerful and has stuck with me. My work is based on mental health, after today I am thinking about how I can step this up. Art is truly a powerful way of expressing, thank you for providing the variety and inspiration I need to continue to develop. It was also a great opportunity to meet like minded people, and once again an opportunity for others to see my work. After today I will certainly reflect on how I can build narrative in my work that includes that way pressures from others, including advertising, can affect the way we live and think. Thanks once again, Matt Others A huge thank you to everyone who helped make Beyond the Scroll happen! Jack Clarke - Host, Curation & Project Management Ciara O'Rourke - Fabrication & Design Mike Stubbs - Curation & Programming Jennie Gilman - Curation & Programming Ruth Harris - Marketing Dave Hughes - Facilities Manager (Doncaster Unitarian Church) Paula Lockey - Catering

Tendresse by Matthew Humphreys started with an artist trying to figure out what to do with 20+ years worth of film footage, decades of intimate family moments captured with a variety of digital and analogue cameras. When an artist exhibits work at ArtBomb for the first time, we invite them to walk across the street and look at the building from a distance. We encourage artists not to read the shop as a conventional white-walled gallery space, but rather to see the entire building (its interior, exterior and the symbols of commerce and transaction implicit in its retail shop facade) as the artwork, as a creative intervention into public space. When members of the public step into the building, or even just walk past it, they are implicated in the art. As such, for many visual artists who are perhaps used to presenting in more traditional art spaces, exhibiting a show at ArtBomb is a chance to entirely reimagine what shape their work might take. For Matthew Humphreys, exhibiting Tendresse at ArtBomb presented the challenge of lifting his moving image works from the screen and realising them as an eclectic series of sculptural, painted and interactive works. The result was a 12-week project which saw Matthew collaborate- both directly and from a distance- with school pupils, local poets & creative writers, each of whom were invited or inspired to make their own contributions to the exhibition. Local poet Ian Parks wrote a brilliant history of the pinhole camera to accompany Silent Light (2026), the walk-in pinhole camera fabricated by Doncaster residents, which in turn inspired yoga teacher Melissa Martin to host a creative workshop for 8 participants within the exhibition space (read more below). For Matthew, presenting such an intimate body of work so far away from his home in London, and not being able to physically be with the work all the time, meant handing over a lot of interpretive agency to both ArtBomb's curatorial team and visiting public. Matthew's openness to local creatives translating the work in their own way and to these translations becoming part of the work was a huge leap in trust. It allowed the work to breath and grow on its own terms, whilst sustaining the tender intimacy of the family memories at the core of the work. This idea of a London-based artist creating space for collaboration with strangers feels like an invaluable lesson for ArtBomb in terms of how we ensure that any work by non-local artists we present in Doncaster still offers a degree of creative ownership and opportunity to local residents. Matthew's reflections: a voicenote (May 2026) You know, the project initially started out as a moving image piece. I’ve talked about how the footage was quite overwhelming and I felt I had to remove myself initially and start making things. It was through conversations with Mike [ArtBomb’s Curator] that all these ideas around object-making and bird motifs, bird boxes and carving and stencilling came about. I remember mentioning that my mother went to the Deaf school [Doncaster Deaf Trust]. I didn’t want a collaboration with the Deaf school to feel arbitrary, you know? My work has Deaf themes but I think it’s important not to focus the whole work around that. I needed some time to think about it, and what came out was the wonderful bird boxes and stencilling of my father's drawings. It was strange actually, having this intimate body of work sit away from me. As an artist most of my work has been moving image- just single moving image pieces, which have typically either been presented in a cinema or in a gallery on a screen, and I can be removed from it. But with Tendresse, there was a lot of sculptural and conceptual elements in this show that require the viewer to interpret. It was really wonderful that Ian, the local poet who visited the exhibition, contributed a descriptive history of the camera obscura to be displayed on the entrance to the walk-in camera. I'm really fascinated with the histories of things and I think the camera obscura for me was an important part of my creative practice- not only for being the birth of photography, but more so because of my father's condition- his blindness, his Deafness, his disorientation with Alzheimer’s. When Melissa came in, looked at all the pieces in the exhibition, and was inspired to host a writing workshop within the space- that felt really good. I often think about my father's internal monologue, what he’s perceiving. It’s interesting for people to go through that experience of sensory deprivation. It’s interesting as well having all these intimate works there [in Doncaster] away from me. In a way it mirrored how I felt sometimes. My father was in a care home for 11 years before he passed and every time I left him there was a sense of not knowing, but feeling safe. My mother’s in a care home as well, and I feel a lot safer knowing she’s there. In a way, knowing that the work is existing, is being looked at or passed by in Doncaster, feels a bit similar… I’m struggling to find the words to describe what I mean. That’s why I create these pieces actually- I’m often trying to articulate my experiences. There is a lot of work that didn't make it into the show- works that are still being processed. I think there was around 14 potential works that could have been in the final exhibition. I think only two or three of these were moving image pieces or moving image sketches. I think going through this creative process made me realise the bigger picture- not of what I was trying to make, but what was appropriate for me to make in the form of my moving image piece [i.e. deciding which clips of family moments should be translated for audiences, and which should remain private]. That is my role as translator. Initially, I moved away from signing dialogue in the film. They [Matthew’s parents] were talking about everyday things that I have explored in Goodbye (Selected Videos 2010-13). But there were some heavier issues they were talking about- there was a lot of worry for my mother about illness and old age and the anxiety of not seeing family. I didn't want to make it [the exhibition] about that. But through people viewing these works, it’s all about the space that appears between language and communication and I've been looking at the footage a lot differently now. I’m finding the gestures, the punctuation, these delicate moments throughout the work and now I'm collecting all these together and reforming. It’s still based around the garden and the passage of time, but the work feels a lot lighter now. I feel a lot more confidence moving through the footage and finding my way to what will be the piece that brings the works that I made for Doncaster together as an accomplished accompaniment to the wider film work that I'm making. Its been a wonderful process, and the ArtBomb space has allowed me to explore. I'm just walking towards Finsbury Park- gotta pick up some fruit and…yeah I'll sign off now. Thanks for everything guys, and I'll speak soon. Doncaster Deaf Trust collaboration Back in Febaury 2026, Matthew & ArtBomb spent a day with pupils at Doncaster Deaf Trust. Matthew hosted a morning birdbox making class for Year 8 pupils and co-created a custom wallpaper with KS1 & KS2 pupils, the design of which was inspired by his father's sketching of bird species native to Doncaster. You can read more about what we got up to in our March 2026 blog post here. In April 2026, 60 pupils and teaching assistants came down to ArtBomb to see their work featured in Matthew's exhibition. The wooden birdboxes have been installed in various locations across ArtBomb's shopfront and in the courtyard area, remaining in-situ over the coming months. This will serve as a lasting legacy of our collaboration with Doncaster Deaf Trust and long-term, a means for the ArtBomb team to monitor bird activity from our urban location. As a continuation of the wallpaper design project, pupils were invited to participate in a large-scale drawing & finger-painting activity in the Doncaster Unitarian Church hall, bodies sprawled on the floor around long streams of paper. The group also had the opportunity to experience the immersive camera obscura installed in one half of ArtBomb's shopfront, offering an insight into the history of the pinhole camera & the chance to see a subverted image of the street outside. Here's what the school had to say about the experience: We had a fantastic visit to ArtBomb in Doncaster last Friday as part of our collaboration with artist Matthew Humphreys. Pupils from across the school had the chance to see their own work exhibited alongside Matthew’s. This included Year 8 birdhouses and artwork created by pupils from KS1 to KS4 - such a proud moment for everyone involved! During the visit, pupils explored the exhibition and took part in creative activities like stencil printing and drawing, responding to the artwork in a fun and hands-on way. It was lovely to see pupils so engaged, inspired and proud of their work. A really special experience for all involved. A big thank you to ArtBomb and Matthew Humphreys for this opportunity! Head to Doncaster School for Deaf Children's Facebook page for more snaps from the school trip! Dark Chamber by Melissa Martin: Creative writing inside the camera obscura Building a walk-in camera obscura- something which Matthew had not initially planned to bring to the space, but an idea which came out of conversations with Mike Stubbs - is no small feat. The camera was designed to present an upside down image of the street outside. It did indeed do this, but under a set of specific conditions. To view the clearest image, the audience member was invited to step inside of the blacked-out room, take a seat on a chair or on the carpeted floor, and allow for at least 15 minutes to adjust their eyes to the darkness. Out of these more durational and functionally precarious conditions for a traditional walk-in camera obscura emerged an entirely different audience experience. People found that the blacked-out space, in combination with the conscious adjustment to darkness required to see the image, manifested an deeply meditative and sensory deprivation experience. Melissa Elaine Martin, a Hull-based yoga teacher and therapist, interpreted the camera obscura as a human-sized birdbox, establishing a novel connection between the wooden birdboxes exhibited on the interior and exterior of the ArtBomb building and the camera obscura. Out of Melissa's visit to the Tendresse exhibition emerged a new point of speculative enquiry: what might it feel like to be a bird nesting in a birdbox? What would that smell. sound, look and feel like? To explore this question, Melissa hosted a surrealist writing workshop on Saturday 18 April 2026. The 2 hour session for 8 creative writers, titled Dark Chamber, began with a guided sensory and sitting meditation in the camera obscura, followed by free writing exercise and a reading share. Melissa has since written a poem called Birdsong, which you can listen to via the video below!

RETHINKING MIGRATION COMMISSION Filming is taking place on 17-18 June 2026 during Refugee Week (15-22 June 2026) @ ArtBomb About the project My Home in Doncaster is a documentary film project by Darshan Gajjar exploring what it means to call Doncaster home. We're inviting people from all walks of life — whether you've lived here your whole life, moved here recently, come from a migrant background, are seeking asylum, or simply have a story to share. Participants will be invited to sit in a cosy living room setting, settle into a comfy armchair, enjoy a cup of tea, and take part in an informal filmed conversation about home, community, belonging, identity, and the experiences that shape our town. By bringing together a range of voices, we hope to celebrate both the differences and shared experiences that make Doncaster the place it is today. The project is a critical response to ArtBomb's Rethinking Migration commission, and aims to highlight both the differences and shared experiences that exist within Doncaster's communities, creating space for people to share their perspectives in their own words. By listening to stories from people of different backgrounds, histories, and experiences, we hope to encourage greater understanding of one another's lives and challenge assumptions about who belongs here. Ultimately, My Home in Doncaster is a celebration of the people who make up our town and a reminder that, despite our differences, we all share a common humanity. Want to get involved? We're looking for local residents to take part in the filming of My Home Doncaster. Filming will take place on 17 & 18 June at ArtBomb, Doncaster. Conversations will last approximately 30 minutes. Participants are warmly encouraged to bring along a small object that reminds them of home. This could be anything meaningful to you - a photograph, mug, book, piece of clothing, keepsake, or everyday item. Click here to book a slot or find out more, please email: admin@artbombuk.com Participant Wellbeing We recognise that conversations around home, belonging, migration, and identity can sometimes bring up difficult memories or experiences, including experiences of discrimination, racism, displacement, or loss. Our aim is to create a welcoming, respectful, and participant-led environment. Before filming begins, all participants will be informed that: You are welcome to share as much or as little as you feel comfortable sharing.• You do not have to answer any question you do not wish to answer. You may take a break at any time. You may stop the conversation at any point without explanation. There is no expectation to discuss traumatic experiences, migration journeys, or experiences of racism unless you choose to do so. The project is designed as an informal conversation over a cup of tea and biscuits, with the intention of creating a space where people feel heard, respected, and able to share their own experiences in their own way.

In August 2025, ArtBomb Festival returned with a weekend of creative disruption, deep reflection, and curated chaos. Last year’s theme — A Meaningful Use of Time — invited artists, audiences, thinkers, communities, and dreamers to slow down and tune in. Time is spoken of like money. We spend it, waste it, try to save it. This commodification of time has roots in the Industrial Revolution, when the sun gave way to the clock as the measure of a working day. That legacy persists — not only in the Amazon warehouse, but in how we define ourselves: by what we do, not who we are or how we live. Live art interventions, spoken word and live music spilled out from ArtBomb's hub and onto the streets of Doncaster city centre, disrupting the rhythms of ‘normal’ life. Alongside over 20 artists, including the folk behind The Fete of Britain, a touring arts festival celebrating the people and places making our neighbourhoods and nation amazing, ArtBomb invited local audiences to spend time in the public realm differently: to make, debate and dance, to listen and loiter with strangers in an urban ecology which brandishes street dwelling as anti-social behaviour. Over 3 days, we welcomed around 1450 festival visitors to our activities, with thousands of members of the public encountering our promenaging performances and robot bins wreaking joyful havoc through the city-centre. Read on to hear more about our ArtBomb Festival 2025 highlights, alongside some brilliant photos by Matt Hass. 'We need more spaces like this' - Audience member 'A highlight for me personally was sitting quietly in the church courtyard hearing the flow of gentle hubbub around me, as groups of people met, chatted, created things together, explored their community connections in Doncaster, and just had a happy time. I saw how the courtyard offers space that is accessible yet secluded, public yet well looked after, and offers an inclusive welcome where sacred meets social' - Liz Slade, Unitarian Chief Officer 'the way you can create an audience, a theatre and dialogue between people who wouldn't usually talk to each other just by moving a bin became fascinating... the idea behind all the work that we do is to make people smile and think, and by making people smile and think, we can encourage people to talk to each other' - Roger Hartley, Bureau of Silly Ideas 'I loved Karolina's workshop, especially the fact that it was combining activity in nature (foraging) and an art project linked to materials derived from it. Would love to see more similar initiatives.' - Audience member 'My son who is 5 absolutely loved the experience. I personally loved that I got to attend something so different in Doncaster and didn’t have to travel out the city to gain access to culture & art' - Audience member 'For me this [Ray Lee's Siren] was the standout work. Evoking feelings of censorship, landmines, people in tenterhooks much like what we are living right now. The sporadic sound lent an eerie feelings, especially with it being in a dark room with these red flashing lights' - Linda Cassels 'Something is waiting here, quietly, if you pause long enough to notice it' - Jack Clarke, Z Magazine A huge thanks to everyone who helped us make ArtBomb Festival 2025 so memorable, and for supporting ArtBomb's mission of becoming a northern platform for creative resistance & solidarity! Reading list Dive into some of the ideas which informed our thinking around "A Meaningful Use of Time" How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell (2019) Out of Time by Andrea Phillips (ed. Hull Time Based Arts, 1998) Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Hector Garcia & Francesc Miralles (Penguin, 2016) The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down by Haemin Sunim (Penguin, 2012) Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024) Essays in Idleness – The Tsurezuregusa of Kenko (Translations from the Asian Classics) trans. Donald Keene (Columbia University Press, 1998) Capitalist Realism: Is there no alternative? by Mark Fisher (Zero Books, 2009) Apartheid Apartments: A Showroom for a Genocide We’re Still Furnishing by Jack Clarke https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/apartheid-apartments-a-showroom-for-a-genocide-were-still-furnishing/

Thursday 16th April from 10am-4pm FREE ENTRY @ ArtBomb & Doncaster Unitarians ArtBomb is delighted to welcome you all to Beyond the Scroll, a day of conversation, live art interventions, film screenings and workshops exploring how socially engaged practice can reclaim focus and meaning in a digital age of distraction. Taking place on Thursday 16th April (10am–4pm), we're bringing together artists, activists and curious minds to offer a wide range of perspectives on the role that technology plays within contemporary arts practice and our everyday lives, and how this is shifting our understanding of what socially-engaged art practice is, or what it could be. With activities taking place throughout Doncaster Unitarian Church, ArtBomb's lab space and our courtyard—a hidden oasis in the heart of the city—you're invited to take the day at your own pace. Explore, debate and connect. We expect the forum to end around 4pm, after which you are invited to stay for our evening social, featuring live music performances and poetry readings. Here's a sneak peek into some of the wonderful people featuring in our programme! Jack Clarke HOST @clarkeofsalford Jack Clarke is a Producer, curator and cultural theorist from Kersal in Salford. Background across film exhibition making and socially engaged cultural practice. His work is rooted in Northern DIY traditions and focuses on working class history, community memory and political storytelling often developed within collaborative low budget and grassroots contexts. He has worked with Factory International as a Young Curator, Bury Art Museum as Moving Image Curator, and Working Class Movement Library through the Big Flame Project. He co-curated Keep The Flame Burning with 16–25 year old working class volunteers and produced and co-curated Nothing About Us Without Us the national Big Local Legacy exhibition. With bylines in Culture Matters, Savage Minds, Z Network & STAT Magazine, he writes against the grain of polite arts discourse pulling apart the language of institutions and academia with a mixture of humour frustration and refusal often fucking up the idea that legitimacy only comes through degrees funding or institutional approval. Eelyn Lee GUEST TALK @eelyn.lee.film Eelyn is an award-winning artist and filmmaker based in Sheffield who has exhibited across UK including Barbican, Tate Modern, National Portrait Gallery and Whitechapel Gallery as well as internationally in Paris, Berlin, Bogotá and Toronto. In 2021, Eelyn co-curated Parallel State, a speculative project responding to a provocation; “What Does a Northern Town Look Like in the Parallel State and what happens in it‘s public spaces?". 5 years later, Eelyn returns to ArtBomb to offer fresh provocations on what social art practice looks like in a place like Doncaster and more broadly, within today's digital culture. Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives SUBVERTISING DEMO @spellingmistakescostlives Darren Cullen is a satirical artist, illustrator and writer, born in Leeds to Irish immigrant parents and currently based in London. Cullen initially thought he wanted to go into advertising as a career, but became steadily horrified at the ethical implications of manipulating people's desires inherent to the industry. In May 2025, Darren transformed ArtBomb's shopfront space into a satirical estate agency on the Gaza strip, a razor sharp, anti-war assault on consumer culture. For ArtBomb, this installation—and the positive conversations it prompted with local residents—felt like a real turning point in the type of work we can present on a northern high street. For Beyond the Scroll, Darren Cullen (aka Spelling Mistakes Costs Lives) is hosting a ‘subvertising' demo. Using examples of his own ad hacks, Darren will guide you through simple ways to “hack" print adverts in real-world public spaces, and how disrupting consumer culture can begin by simply replacing ads with art. Shannon Chambers MEDITATION @flowwithshan Yoga & meditation teacher and founder of FLOW Studio in Doncaster, Shannon Chambers, invites you to “The Space Between Stimulus and Self". This 20-minute introspective meditation invites you to notice your patterns of attention, disconnect from digital stimulation, and reconnect with your inner world and senses. John Ledger & John Wright PERFORMANCE @jb_ledger @johnwrightretrobaruniverse Coming out of Straight A's, a 3-month immersive exhibition (17 Jan–11 April 2026) at the Cooper Gallery, bringing together 25 years of his work, Barnsley born artist John Ledger joins his long-time collaborator John Wright to perform Non-stop Inertia (I'm too busy to meet you). This performance-based text discussion illustrates the inability to stay with the trouble and the issue of burn out, followed by a short introduction to their collectives and how things have changed since their first performance of Non-Stop Inertia in 2015. Other art & activities to explore at Beyond the Scroll: Matthew Humphreys EXHIBITION @_mjhumphreys_ In Translation (in ArtBomb's lab space) Matt Redfern EXHIBITION @mattredfernart Complexities of the Broken Mind & the Broken Vases (church balcony) Terry Hudson INSTALLATION Little Anarchist Bookshop (in the courtyard) Sally Kindberg 1-2-1 INSTALLATION @skindbergia The Museum of Dust (main church hall) Mother Hookers CIC CRAFT TABLE @mother_hookers Local crochet social group, Mother Hookers, will be bringing along some of the collective's crochet creations & will be offering scrap materials to be repurposed for your own projects! Church of Ping Pong TABLE TENNIS Pick up a paddle and have a go at table tennis in the upper hall of the church. Church of Ping Pong host sessions here weekly every Monday and Thursday. Squiggle Gang CUSTOMISED SPRAY PAINTING (Pay What You Feel) Bring along a piece of clothing, tote bag or accessory to be custom spray-painted by local street art collective Squiggle Gang! Live music by a roster of local talent will soundtrack the event from day to night: The Skintones Anarcho-confusion band, a blend of reggae, funk, ska, trance, hip hop and ancient vibes, straight out of Doncaster. Olaniyan Olamide Olamide Sax (Olaniyan Olamide Phillips) is a professional vocalist and instrumentalist whose work spans gospel worship. African contemporary music, and cross-cultural repertoire performance. Bioni Samp Artist, producer & beekeeper will be bringing an array of mini synth instruments to take us into the Beyond the Scroll evening social. WHAT TO EXPECT As with all of ArtBomb's programming, we want to make this event as accessible and inclusive as possible. Please email jennie@artbomb.uk.com if there's a way we can make this event more accessible for you. The event is entirely free, including a hot lunch and drinks served throughout the day. Some activities are pay what you feel (please see above), and any donations made will be used to support ArtBomb in growing its creative community here in the heart of Doncaster. We're expecting around 80 guests to be joining us for Beyond the Scroll. There will be 2 dedicated quiet zones: one on the ground floor of the church and upstairs in the ArtBomb building, where there are comfortable couches and chairs. There are also benches and chairs in our outdoor courtyard area. Team members supporting the running of the event will be wearing coloured lanyards or badges. They will be on hand to offer support throughout the day. We will be serving a buffet-style vegetarian lunch in the rear room of the church. For anyone wanting to purchase their own food, there are several great spots within a 5 minute walk of ArtBomb: The Jazz Café 5-7 Printing Office St, Doncaster DN1 1TJ A cosy, colourful cafe with a great selection of sandwiches soups and other hot dishes. The Glass Strawberry 48-50 Printing Office St, Doncaster DN1 1TR A lunch spot with an extensive vegan menu Sterling Foods 118 French Gate, Doncaster DN1 1QQ A popular spot to grab a ready to eat lunch on the go – lots of options for a fiver, including jacket potatoes, wraps and hot sandwiches. The Wool Market Market Place, Doncaster DN1 1NG A modern market hall with a range of food vendors. GETTING HERE Address: Doncaster Unitarian & Free Christian Church, 60a Hall Gate DN1 3PB ArtBomb is located at 60 Hall Gate, Doncaster city-centre: a 10 minute walk from the train station. For anyone travelling by bus, please be aware that Doncaster services are expected to be disrupted by industrial action on 14th, 17th, 22nd and 24th April, and so may have an impact on services running on 16th April. If you have any questions about the event, please email admin@artbombuk.com

Written by Ian Walker as part of In Translation by Matthew Humphreys. This is a camera obscura, the name comes from the Latin and means ‘dark chamber' Step in and sit down. Turn off any phones you have, as the screen light will destroy the effect. Do not turn the screens on; to take photos. This is an experience, just enjoy it. Then use your words to tell your friends. This physical media, not AI slop for the algorithms. IMPORTANT First close your eyes for about five minutes to adapt to the dark. To fill the time I am going to tell you a story. Once Upon a Time… It is not a bedtime story so NO SNORING! As you will notice the camera obscura you are in: is a large black box; big enough to walk into, as they have been for hundreds of years; often as with this one it is just a curtained off part of a room, where light can on only come in through one small hole, on one side. In this case window of the gallery shop front into the street. On the opposite side to the small hole is a black stretched cloth: The viewing screen! This is a lensless camera obscura and is also referred to as a ‘pinhole camera’; you can make one with cereal box and a piece of tracing paper. Camera Obscura have been around for a long time probably right back into Prehistory in cave paintings and from that and sacred underground spaces, such as Göbeklitepe, as signs of divinity and the powers of priest, priestess and shaman. The earliest known written records of a pinhole image, is found in the Chinese text called Mozi, dated to around the 4th century BC western calendar, to a Chinese philosopher Mozi (c.470 BC—c.391 BC), a Chinese philosopher and the founder of Mohist School of Logic. This is earliest written record of light rays. Other philosophers expanded on this. From Aristotle onwards to Ptolomey and the Han Chinese polymath Shen Kuo. They were used to study sunspots and eclipses, without going blind. The Muslim physicist Ibn al-Haytham; one of the creators of the Scientific Method, critiqued Ptolemy's Almagest, Planetary Hypotheses, and Optics and after experiments inspired by Shen Kuo gave us the first modern scientific description of light rays creating the modern concept of optics used even to this day. Painters since the cave times had realised they could get accurate images by tracing them from images through a small crack on to a stretched skin in a cave or tent, such paintings would have made the painter seem magical. We know that after reading a translation of Ibn al-Haytham’s works Leonardo da Vinci started experimenting with camera obscura. In this lensless camera obscura as Ibn al-Haytham proved. If you follow the light ray path of the light reflected from the objects outside the camera obscura, you will see they result in a projected image of the scene outside the chamber on the viewing screen opposite to the hole, that is inverted and reversed. When you open your eyes as they adjust and your brain begins to process the image; the first thing you will notice on the bottom right of the viewing screen is a white oblong. That is the shopfront sign opposite, after a moment you will realise the road and path are at the top of the viewing screen and that the traffic is moving the wrong way on Hall Gate’s one way street and you notice people walking along the paths, they are actually moving in the opposite direction to what is projected on the screen. This then with the invention of lenses became more common in art and lead to discoveries about perspective and massive improvement in the quality of images in paintings that began in the Renaissance. Later in the 19th century Fox Talbot using Silver Nitrate to fix the images to glass plates invented the modern camera, but that is a whole other story.