Opening event: 10th Nov, 5-7pm

Developed through a series of collaborative dialogues and creative interventions, Inexperienced Trespassers begins with the work of geographer Doreen Massey (1944–2016) and cultural theorist Stuart Hall (1932–2014). Across print, archival materials and audiovisual documents, the resulting exhibition interprets their ideas through visual culture to explore themes of displacement, resistance and belonging today.

With archives based in London and Birmingham respectively, Inexperienced Trespassers presents a new iteration of an ongoing research collaboration between the two cities, working with selected pedagogical and political resources to reconnect Massey & Hall’s legacies. As longstanding friends, colleagues, collaborators and neighbours, Massey & Hall’s work was deeply interdisciplinary and publicly-orientated – inspiring new political imaginations and critical understandings of our entanglements with identity and power in urban contexts. Where their work fostered a curiosity for social justice, pluralism and solidarity, Inexperienced Trespassers reengages this spirit to think together about places, their stories and the present conjunctural crisis.

Taking its title from a comment piece authored by Stuart Hall for Mermaid – the University of Birmingham’s historic student magazine – Inexperienced Trespassers emerges in the context of an academic institution, inviting students, educators and activists to translate Massey & Hall’s ideas into new and collectively shaped narratives.

Co-commissioned by Metroland Cultures in partnership with the Open University, with funding from the Elephant Trust and Antipode Foundation.