30 Oct 2019 | GATEWAY DINNER with Aida Silvestri

30 October 2019 7pm | GATEWAY DINNER with Aida Silvestri

A Gateway Dinner celebrating different cultures, cuisine and music

at Urban Room Folkestone, One the Plaza, Tram Road Car Park, Folkestone

Aida is a UK based artist who creates work concerning the sensitive issues of culture, ethnicity, identity, health, politics and the urban landscape. She holds a BA (First Hons) in photography from the University of Westminster, London. She has experience of coordinating photo-shoot sessions, running workshops and public speaking on these issues. Her work explores new and unique approaches to documentary photography to raise awareness, give voice to voiceless and to promote acceptance within communities.

Aida has had work shown in London at Autograph ABP, Photographers’ Gallery, Saatchi Gallery, Roman Road Gallery, Mall Gallery and abroad in France, Greece, Luxemburg, Taiwan and Reunion Island. She was voted one of the British Journal of Photography’s two Best of Show Winners at the Free Range exhibition, London in 2013. She has won the Festival Audience 2017 Award Circulation(s) and was shortlisted for the 2017 Arendt, European Month of Photography awards.

She is currently working on a project called “Why Folkestone?”

Why Folkestone?

A question that newcomers to Folkestone are asked frequently.

This project aims to create a new photographic narrative of a town that is changing demographically.

It also aims to start difficult conversations around the idea of home, belonging and the implications of migration and the local communities in Folkestone.

It hopes to push boundaries by bringing together different groups of people who generally don’t have much, if any, association with each other in a gallery space to promote integration, acceptance and coexisting.

This project will encourage diverse groups of people to take part in different activities and enable their voices to be heard.

A new exhibition for Platforma 5. Presented alongside her previous project Even This Will Pass, work depicting the journeys and experiences of Eritrean refugees into the United Kingdom.

Aida invites the public and experts in the fields to the Urban Room for lunchtime conversations and discussions around: Migration, race, identity, diversity and integration in Folkestone and surroundings.

Why Folkestone?

17 -27 October 11am-5pm

The Brewery Tap 53 Tontine St, Folkestone CT20 1JR

Opening Event: 16 October at 7pm.