22 Bridge Street
The new home of Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival and The Burr Film Library.
Exploring grief, communitarian care, and imaging what we might palliate.
Led by Toronto/Tkaranto-based artist and community activist Mikiki. Mikiki will explore models of communitarian grief work and the forms of the “holographic will” and “Pepper’s ghost” to image what we might palliate. The workshop exercise will focus on somatics, parasympathetic nervous system reset, and self-soothing strategies.
The session explores communitarian grief work and care as maintenance, relating to Mikiki’s practice of death cleaning as part of life. Frameworks include the Swedish death cleaning process. The workshop will use the “holograph will/death box” concept to explore imaging what we might palliate. The final workshop, March 27-29, will be the closing event of the BFMAF Festival , which will include a culmination screening
Queer helplines, archives, and sound imagine futures of community care
Archivists Conal McStravick and Louise Neilson share cross-border histories of lesbian and gay support networks, drawing from switchboards, groups, and media collections. Together we explore how connections formed beyond visibility, and how listening to earlier practices can inspire new approaches to mutual support today within cultural, rural, and international contexts.
Lothian Health Services Archive contributors introduce materials tracing helplines and peer-led infrastructures that linked cities with smaller places during the 1970s and 1980s. Questions emerge around finding each other without visibility, and what those models offer now. Participants encounter ephemera, recordings, and a Stuart Marshall 1970s sound artwork repurposed as a speculative answering machine for future queer and trans health. A curated screening presents Michael Balser’s 1995 experimental television work for Toronto Living with AIDS, featuring voices from artists and activists connected to Diseased Pariah News.
Food, shared fruits, and everyday care objects become tools for collective listening, sonic play, and imagining tomorrow across borders, generations, practices, solidarities, memories, pleasures, and responsibilities together, shaping responsive ethics for community wellbeing collectively.
This workshop is part of The Burr Film Library ‘Queer Care Caravan’, exploring resilient LGBTQIA+ community led care.
- 17 Jan – 29 March: Saturdays 12-4pm : Drop in and explore the Film Library
Events
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17 Jan 2-4pm : Community Care with Cannach MacBride (NL)
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21 Feb 2-4pm: Self Care with Conal McStravick + Lothian Health Services Archive (UK)
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20-22 March: Palliative Care with Mikiki (CA) and culmination screening for BFMAF 2026
Collective exploration of community, self, health, and palliative care experiences.
Over four weeks we will collectively explore and share from our experiences with community care, self-care, healthcare and palliative care. We shall walk, talk, eat and share together. We shall think across borders and transnationally to see how activist media can become queer care tools
Queer Care Caravan is a temporary LGBTQIA+ community group that will gather at the Burr of Berwick monthly through Winter to Spring 2026. Workshops are facilitated by LGBTQIA+ artists Cannach MacBride, Conal McStravick, and Mikiki , who have gathered queer and trans care media and community care resources at The Burr. This invites LGBTQIA+ people from Berwickshire, the Borders, and North Northumberland to build resources and mutual understanding through media workshops and archive events. Each workshop includes a walk or group exercise and the sharing of food.
Free Entry/ Drop In
12-4pm, Saturdays, 17 Jan – 29 March
Opening workshop ‘Community Care’ , 2pm, Sat 17 Jan
Book free place here
The Queer Care Caravan is a library of resources and series of events inspired by the use of caravans as a therapeutic retreat. 3 artists from Scotland, the Netherlands and Canada hosted by BFMAF explore resilient LGBTQIA+ community led care.
For Berwick Heritage Open Days, drop in and create your own striking banner for Berwick inspired by the rich history of banners used by activists – from striking Miners to anti-nuclear protesters. This is a free family-friendly drop-in workshop open to all from 12 – 4pm.
Join free workshop exploring collective approaches to media production.
Our current Vertical Screen Commission is If One Of Those Dots Stopped Moving Forever by Uma Breakdown. Catch the 3 min film through the window of The Burr of Berwick on 22 Bridge Street.
Miners’ Weekend School (1984) is a six-part documentary produced by Amber Films’ Current Affairs Unit during the 1984–85 Miners’ Strike.
Our current Vertical Screen Commission is I’ve been trying to reach you by Anna Chapman Parker and Lyndsay Mann. Catch the 4 minute film through the window of The Burr of Berwick on 22 Bridge Street.
Join a free creative workshop exploring looped animation and free software led by artist Uma Breakdown.
Join a free creative workshop exploring writing and filmmaking through text led by Anna Chapman Parker and Lyndsay Mann.
‘If every person on the planet could make a love tape, then you’d really know what it’s like to be human’ ~Wendy Clarke
Endless Love Tapes (United Kingdom, 2025) is a pilot project by Wendy Clarke (US) and Kim Coleman (UK). Artist Wendy Clarke’s participatory video project, Love Tapes – which she began in 1977 – is an incredible collection of over 2,500 three-minute videos where people discuss what love means to them.
An incredible collection of over 2,500 three-minute videos where people discuss what love means to them. Beginning in 1977, the collection continues to expand today with contributions filmed at the 20th Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival 2025.
Our next Vertical Screen Commission is What would it take to convince you that something was real? by Andrew Wilson. Catch the short film through the window of The Burr of Berwick on 22 Bridge Street 24hrs a day.