by Tom Swift

Belonging is an audiovisual installation by Hadrian Creatives that invites audiences to talk openly about racism and broader prejudices, and to consider their own action or inaction in relation to prejudice and injustice. The work encourages people to be welcoming to everyone in their communities. 

Hadrian Creatives is a collective of young artists who aim to make thought-provoking work that challenges engrained assumptions about society. The group was founded in 2020 in the midst of the first COVID-19 lockdown, and designed as an outlet for its members, who turned to each other for support, inspiration and creative collaborations within the rural England-Scotland borderlands when travelling was not allowed. 

Following the high-profile racist murders by US police officers in 2020, the group felt compelled to contribute to the widespread conversation and intensified anti-racist activism.  Wanting to bring the discussion to their own remote and sometimes isolated setting, the group hoped to encourage friends, family and other local people to think about the movement that was sweeping the world in relation to the nuances of their own rural context. 

The result, Belonging, is an interactive installation in which individual testimonies are promoted in volume over a plurality of other voices in response to visitors’ proximity to them. In collaboration with artist Khadea Santi, the group began to look at buildings and architectures, considering their complex and unseen histories, and to build their own images and stories through video and clay.  

As the group writes, ‘We hope visitors will leave feeling that “belonging” isn’t necessarily about where you’re born but rather where you choose to be.’