Cooper Gallery
Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design,
13 Perth Road,
Dundee,
DD1 4HT
Jamming Day 2
Learning from Stuart Hall: What Do We See? What Do We Say?
Thursday 29 October, 6.00–8.30PM
Screening of John Akomfrah’s Stuart Hall Project (2013) introduced by Ranjana Thapalyal with an incantatory verse summoning in response by Omar Kholeif and artist-designed refreshment by Jek McAllister.
A screening event centred on John Akomfrah’s film The Stuart Hall Project - Revolution, politics, culture, and the New Left experience (2013). The film is presented as a starting point to thinking about Hall’s emphasis on understanding the present moment, its historical threads and its potentials. In the face of recent ruptures in contemporary culture and politics and what many see as a backward slide in a belief in social cohesion, what can be learned from Hall’s insistence that while there are patterns which created the present, they do not necessarily determine what may yet be. The event aims to look to methods of reading the contested present in order to build actions of hope.
The event will be bracketed by an introduction from Ranjana Thapalyal and an incantatory verse summoning in response from Omar Kholeif.
Sign-up
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About Jamming Days
Tuned to the collaborative, experimental and improvisational ethos of musical ‘jamming’ and energised by the unruly possibilities of knowing otherwise, Jamming Days brings artists, curators, cultural workers, educators, students, activists, policymakers, and communities together in a series of discursive and participatory events. These charged moments of reflection, exchange and experimentation activate a constellation of (un)learning spaces, equipping individuals and communities to collectively inhabit, contest and transform this dissonant present with critical hope and solidarity that draws on knowledge in all its multiplicity.
Part of Jamming The Ignorant Art School
Exhibition: 9 October – 12 December 2026
Event Access
- Event will take place on level 2 of the gallery
Biographies
Professor Omar Kholeif (born Cairo, Egypt) is an art historian, cultural theorist and documentary filmmaker by training, with two decades in museum and higher-education leadership across four continents. Now an artist, poet and educator, they explore the tentacular threads of the diasporic imagination and how these might be reclaimed as sites of liberation.
Kholeif is Professor of Global Modern and Contemporary Art History at the Glasgow School of Art and Academic Lead: Curatorial Practice in association with the University of Glasgow. They have curated over 100 exhibitions and authored or co-authored 46 monographs translated into 17 languages; their latest, World Child, is forthcoming from Sternberg Press with the MIT Press in January 2027. In October 2026 they launched a decade-long research project on 're-dreaming modernisms', encompassing Fellow Travellers (Tabari, Dubai), Afterglow: From the Residue of a Departed Sun (No.9 Frieze Cork Street) and the touring museum exhibition Dreamwork: Ancestors Echo in the House of Tomorrow (Helga De Alvear Museum, Cáceres; and MAAT, Lisbon). They founded the Society of Dreamworkers and artPost21.
Dr. Ranjana Thapalyal is an inter-disciplinary artist and writer, based in Scotland. Her practice spans ceramics, painting, collaborative performance, poetry and critical writing. Her research has focussed on concepts of ‘self’ in South Asian and West African traditions, cultural politics and the development of decolonising, anti-racist strategies for art pedagogy. Recent exhibitions include Duration at Shrine Empire, A Rising Tide- women artists in the Alkazi collection at Art Heritage (Delhi 2025), and This Animate Earth at Delhi Contemporary Art Week (2026).
Jek McAllister is an artist, facilitator, gardener, and cook based in Dundee. Currently, she is Lead Artist for Alternative (Art) School, a project by Forgan Arts Centre supporting young people who feel excluded from mainstream education through a programme of art, craft and horticulture. Her day to day practice is and always has been concerned with with creating fun circumstances for people to come together, hang out and experience or learn something (often around food). Jek has run Wooosh Gallery since 2019, was a Hospitalfield Graduate resident in 2023–24 and in 2025 facilitated 'Dundee Dye Gardens' as a part of the V&A Dundee exhibition Garden Futures.
Access Funds
A small access fund is available to support travel and access for BSL interpretation, costs for childcare, carers & support workers and other needs. The funds are distributed on a first come first served basis. Please be aware we may need to close the fund early if demand is high, so please get in touch prior to event.
For Travel
- please emailing stating where you are travelling from within Scotland
- Cooper Gallery will book trains in advance for attendees and email ticket collection references
For all other access requests
- please email and detail your access requirement and request
- we will respond as soon as we can and confirm access fund transfer
Contact: [email protected]
General Access
Location
Cooper Gallery is located to the right side of the DJCAD buildings on Perth Road
Entrance is via double doors which face onto a car park
The gallery is on two levels
Level 1
- Ramped access
- Wheelchair accessible toilet. The toilet is gender neutral
- Invigilator desk
Level 2
Lift route
- Accessible via lift, corridor and 5 steps. For wheelchair access via a stairclimber
- Please email in advance if you require lift or stairclimber access
Step route
- 24 steps. Two flights of 12 steps with handrails are separated by a landing
- No toilet on first floor
Exhibition
- Exhibition videos are subtitled and captioned in English
- Seating is provided and/or additional seating available, please ask an invigilator
- Large print versions of the exhibition information handout are available, please ask our Guides. If you require alternative formats for material in exhibitions please email or ask our Guides.
BSL & captioning
- For event requirements please email: [email protected]
Toilet
Ground floor has a wheelchair accessible toilet. The toilet is gender neutral.
All Enquiries
- Please email: [email protected]
Funding support
The exhibition is supported by the National Lottery through Creative Scotland and with the kind support of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art Centenary Trust.
Cooper Gallery
[email protected]