A season of artists’ films selected by Let’s Make Art, in collaboration with Film and Video Umbrella.
Arnolfini presents The Child Inside Us All – a season of artists’ films selected by our Creatives in Residence, Let’s Make Art from the Film and Video Umbrella archives. Responding to themes explored in their exhibition ENJOY YOURSELF, each film reflects on the power of connecting past and present, childhood and adulthood – a core value at the heart of Let’s Make Art’s practice.
The season begins with an exhibition of artist Mikhail Karikis’ No Ordinary Protest (2018), which documents a nine-month collaboration between the artist and a class of primary school children. Karikis centres the children’s voices and activist visions of a transformed world. Through storytelling, sound, performance, debate and play, No Ordinary Protest spotlights the imaginative force of young people as they examine their inherited past, make sense of the present, and speak back to it – conjuring new possibilities for protest and change.
Drawing on the surreal children’s tales of artist Kurt Schwitters, the season continues with Andrea Luka Zimmerman’s Merzschmerz (2014), a series of short videos created with a group of young people as they recall fragments of these recently read stories to familiar adults. Merzschmerz positions the children as the authors, inviting us to recognise their capabilities to transform, reinvent and breathe new life into forgotten ideas.
Our season concludes with Melanie Manchot’s Celebration (Cyprus Street) (2010), a collective portrait of an intergenerational gathering of families, friends, and neighbours on a street in East London. Working with the residents of Cyprus Street, Manchot revives the British street party tradition in one continuous 35mm tracking shot. At once intimate and expansive, the film reflects on ways artists, galleries, public spaces, and our contemporary communities can interact and learn from one another.
Encouraging us to learn from and trust in the abilities of children as artists, storytellers, activists and guides, each film highlights the value of artists working alongside intergenerational communities. Together, spaces can be created where both collective and individual needs are seen, understood, and meaningfully responded to. Exploring ways past material can be reactivated, stories retold, and traditions remade, The Child Inside Us All echoes Let’s Make Art’s experience delving into Arnolfini’s art education archives while developing ENJOY YOURSELF. By uncovering what’s come before, Let’s Make Art open up imaginative possibilities for what they will bring next to Arnolfini’s legacy of collaborating with children, families, and intergenerational communities.
19 July to 13 August
No Ordinary Protest by Mikhail Karikis.
2018, 8 minutes 1 second.
Commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella, Middlesborough Institute of Modern Art and Whitechapel Gallery. Supported using public funding by Arts Council England.
15 August to 10 September
Merzschmerz by Andrea Luka Zimmerman.
2017, 15 minutes.
Commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella. Supported using public funding by Arts Council England.
13 September to 1 October 2025
Celebration (Cyprus Street) by Melanie Manchot.
2010, 19 minutes.
Commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and supported using public funding by Arts Council England. Additionally funded by Film London and the UK Film Council Digital Archive Film Fund and supported by the National Lottery.
About Let’s Make Art
Let’s Make Art is an independent arts education organisation created by Alice Hendy and Karen Davies in 2012. Their approach to art education keeps the child inside us all at its’ centre, seeing children as thoroughly capable creators. Let’s Make Art have a fun and inventive style to their workshops, making them one of the UK’s most sought-after mobile art studios. They work with schools, community groups, galleries and festivals. Their first art book for children and families was published in 2022.
About ENJOY YOURSELF
ENJOY YOURSELF is a curated collection of projects from Arnolfini’s art education archives. Our Creatives in Residence, Let’s Make Art, run by artist duo Alice Hendy and Karen Davies, have selected works which chime with their own practice and which explore the themes of joy, collaboration, and making meaning. This exhibition weaves together past and present through archive materials that highlight innovative and experimental art education at Arnolfini and artworks that illuminate all the work Lets Make Art deliver as part of our family programme at Arnolfini, and beyond. Expect to smile a lot.
16 August to 2 November 2025. Gallery 5, Level 2. Details here.
About Film and Video Umbrella
Film and Video Umbrella commissions, produces and curates artists’ moving-image works, and presents them in collaboration with galleries and cultural partners throughout the UK and internationally. We enable artists to make challenging and ambitious projects, promoting innovation through our support of new and significant voices working across the visual arts. FVU has supported more than 200 different artists’ projects, from multi-screen installations to online commissions.
