“To produce is not only to do, but to sense”
Behind the scenes, I became aware of a delicate choreography, one that aims to feel effortless even when it is anything but. Timing, setup and response; these move with a constant rhythm, a quiet negotiation. A sound cue slightly off, a shift in seating arrangement, a delayed arrival; each small ripple demands recalibration. Practical logistics and creative intuition are inseparable here. To produce is not only to do, but to sense. Reading a room in anticipation of the need for audience and artwork to deliver a desired experience. It is a practice of quiet attention, where the invisible becomes essential.
In Relation to an Engaged Community: Being Together
The exhibition and event series insisted on presence and shared attention. “Being together” was not a goal to complete, but a practice to inhabit. These encounters made me aware of how space, guidance, and care shape engagement. My labour became part of a wider network that enables communities to gather, converse, and reflect. Small acts supported collective attention. It takes the permission and sometimes a prompt for these connections to form between people, moments, and ideas. Until putting this into active practice, I don’t think I had fully understood the weight of togetherness.
In the Mindset of Curation
Even while working in production, I found myself observing through curation. Event curation is saturated. How audiences move and how attention is held. Where stillness might give shape or depth. Where creating a threshold prompts an action, like removing your shoes to enter the gallery space. All of these are carefully considered aspects. Arranging, adjusting, and facilitating becomes more than an operational task; they become ways of shaping experience. It’s about shaping not only what is seen, but how it is activated and received.
On the Ever-Present Nature of Historical Acts of Resistance
History was never fixed or static. With Compassionate Rebels in Action, the past was foregrounded as a set of living questions pressing into the present. The exhibition offered a vantage point on how legacies of social, political, and artistic organising inform contemporary action. Every conversation, performance, and event became a negotiation with time, shaping how audiences reconsider, and carry history forward. Resistance and reflection were not only remembered, but they were also enacted here and now, collectively.
Resistance is never absent; it continues to pulse through the present, alive and demanding attention. It becomes difficult not to feel a responsibility to sustain spaces where such histories can speak, challenge, and insist on being heard. Likewise, understanding does not arrive fully formed. Instead, it unfolds through a self-reflective process. Considering how Grace’s ideas resonate with me amplified this connection of the past to the immediacy of today.
Do We Operate the Organisation, or Do We Operate Because of It?
This question lingers across my mind every day. The organisation provides frameworks and patterns of how it’s been done, but the lived reality of an exhibition emerges through the presence of those sustaining the organisation. Labour gives shape to what the organisation represents, just as the organisation structures the conditions of that labour. To inhabit both is to experience a mutual dependency. Each undertaking contributes to a living institutional ecosystem where people and organisation are inseparable. But I’m still not sure what comes first; the organisation or the people?
Photo by Lewis Cavinue, courtesy Cooper Gallery
70th annual Flaherty Film Seminar hosted by LUX Scotland at Cooper Gallery, 27 November 2025
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Reflection by Lewis Cavinue, working as Event Production Assistant, Cooper Gallery on Grace Ndiritu's series of events A Season of Peace Building September - December 2025.
A Season of Peace Building was programmed with Grace Ndiritu for The Ignorant Art School: Sit-in Curriculum #5. A series of conversations, workshops and gatherings which were designed by Grace Ndiritu, drawing on her book Being Together: A Manual For Living as a template and accompanying her exhibition:
The Ignorant Art School Sit-in #5
Grace Ndiritu | Compassionate Rebels in Action
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Visit Lewis Cavinue's website: https://lewiscavinue.co.uk/
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