Projects

Alongside producing journals The Critical Fish initiates projects that help to promote writing and visual culture. Many of these are through collaboration and partnerships.  They might involve open calls for work around a theme or building resources that document past projects. Here we share some of these projects.

Cod – The Critical Fish Trail

As a new ambition for The Critical Fish, we hope to use Gordon Young’s much loved public art trail in Hull as a catalyst for new creative work, commissions and critical inquiry, aiming to reignite this existing artwork by allowing it to live on through new thinking, interpretations, and responses.

Read more about our vision here

Blue Green Zine collects work done by 14-16 College at Hull College media students in response to ‘Our Environment’.

We recommend downloading and viewing as a two-page PDF.

Click Here to Download

22.11.22

22.11.22 is a FREE mini-publication.  It follows an open call for responses to the theme of ‘the same forwards as backwards’.  

We recommend viewing as a two-page PDF.

Click Here to Download

Carbon – Borders – Voices

Okay, so technically we can’t claim this as one of our projects, but it did grow out of The Critical Fish and remains strongly affiliated!
 
It began when artists Kevin Parker and Matt Fratson, and Professor of Tropical Ecology Rob Marchant (University of York), met to discuss individual research, experiences and stories in response to the Fish prompt ‘Above, Below, at the Edge of the Water‘, with the intention to share research and practice and explore synergies. Discussions, comparisons and relationships were opened up through Zoom calls, examining political and socio-economic concerns in relation to climate change, impacts on community life and welfare, and the psychogeography of locations struggling to reconcile the known with an unknown and rapidly shifting present-day landscape.
 
In collaboration with The Critical Fish, they opened up the conversation to the wider community to create new opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration through a publicised open call.
Visit the project website

Previous Projects

Postbooks

image shows a variety of scattered sketchbooks. a small sketchbook is open in the centre, which reads Postbooks.

The Critical Fish had been thinking of alternative ways to facilitate creative conversations in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Designed by disabled artists and thanks to project funders Heads Together / UNION, we developed ‘Postbooks’ ; an exciting, experimental and collaborative ‘slow art’ project that was free for participants.

The aim of this experiment was to create inclusive visual conversations across a number of sketchbooks and notepads by utilising the postal system.

October 2020 – June 2021

See the invitation
Visit the online gallery

Fishbowl Conversations

A ‘fishbowl conversation‘ is a format of participatory communication to help facilitate discussion within large groups. Lots of people can easily contribute to the conversation by asking questions, sharing ideas, offering opinions and listening to and acknowledging the perspectives of others.

Through a series of workshops and guided questions, The Critical Fish asked the people of Hull to share their thoughts and creative responses to Absolutely Cultureds Creative Hull event over social media and email.

 

16 – 18 June 2021

See the invitation
Visit the online gallery