A creative participatory workshop with a collective reading session and collage-making.

Part of York Zine Festival 2024

When: Saturday 14 December, 12:00-13:30

Free of charge; registration required. Sign up here

Important note: The workshop is only suitable for adults. The workshop deals with images of human suffering used for the purposes of humanitarian campaigns.

What: In this workshop, we will take as a starting point the widely criticised album covers of Band-Aid’s "Do They Know It's Christmas?". We will explore how such representations for humanitarian aid purposes have often create ethically problematic representational tropes of “Other’s” suffering and perpetuated colonial gazes. Although humanitarian representational tropes have shifted to a large extent, recently, the debate has re-emerged due to the 2024 re-release of the music album. By looking back at these historical examples of contemporary visual culture, we will consider to what extent these album covers, and the issues they bring to the fore can assist us in rethinking our positionality today.

The workshop will start with a collective 30-minute reading session of extracts from relevant literature. Following this, by engaging in a hands-on collage activity on an album cover format, we will create visual alternatives by asking the question: “Do “they” need to know it’s Christmas?”

Workshop organiser and facilitator: Dr Kyveli Lignou-Tsamantani, Lecturer at York St John University and Research Associate at the University of York.