Royal Academy of Music
Mainly New: Gavin Bryars's The Sinking of the Titanic

Tuesday 1 March, 7pm

Gavin Bryars’s The Sinking of the Titanic has a unique place in British music of the late twentieth century. Tonight music broadcaster and writer Paul Morley curates an evening of sound and film installations around his interpretation of Bryars’s iconic work.

Tickets £5 (concessions £4) from the Academy’s Box Office: www.ram.ac.uk, or telephone 020 7873 7300 10am–4pm Monday–Friday.

For further information: http://www.ram.ac.uk/whats-on/event/mainly-new-gavin-bryarss-the-sinking-of-the-titanic

Royal Academy Opera: May Night

Performances: 
Monday 7th March, 7pm
Tuesday 8th March, 7pm
Thursday 10th March, 7pm
Friday 11th March,  7pm

Rimsky-Korsakov’s first folk-opera is a lyrical combination of the farcical, the romantic and the supernatural. Based on a story by Gogol, set in Little Russia in Whitsun-week, Levko and Ganna fall in love to a background of small-town politics and village traditions, with the ambivalent help of the restless spirits of the Unclean World. Royal Academy Opera continues its year ‘on the road’ in a venue a world apart from its traditional home, in spite of being only minutes away from the Academy. Ambika P3, the University of Westminster’s former concrete testing hall, will be the dramatic location for Christopher Cowell’s welcome directorial return to Royal Academy Opera, following his production of Cendrillon in 2013. Gareth Hancock conducted the Walton/Berkeley double bill in summer 2015; he will take over as Director of Opera at the Academy from July 2016.

Tickets £25 (concessions £20) from the Academy’s Box Office: www.ram.ac.uk, or telephone 020 7873 7300 10am–4pm Monday–Friday.

Gareth Hancock conductor
Christopher Cowell director
Mandy Demetriou choreographer
Bridget Kimak designer
Jake Wiltshire lighting designer

For further information: http://www.ram.ac.uk/whats-on/event/royal-academy-opera-may-night

Nonclassical presents:

Rise of the Machines // Schools' Performance

Friday 15 April 2016, 2-3pm

Nonclassical will host a schools’ performance at Ambika P3 as part of its Rise of the Machines series. The centrepiece of the concert will be the Fifth Movement of Gabriel Prokofiev’s Concerto for Turntables and Orchestra, which is one of the BBC Ten Pieces, written to explore the use of electronics in classical music on a large scale. The other pieces in the concert will further look at the use of machines (such as the turntables) in classical music. 

Please contact hanna@nonclassical.co.uk for more details.

Rise of the Machines // Evening Performance

Friday 15 April, from 7pm

Nonclassical has paired up with Southbank Sinfonia for their latest mini-series which explores the use of machines and mechanical influences on music. The highlight of the event is the UK premiere of Gabriel Prokofiev’s Concerto for Trumpet, Percussion, Turntables and Orchestra with soloists Daniel de Gruchy-Lambert, Joby Burgess and DJ Mr Switch. Other works include the Fifth Movement of Gabriel Prokofiev’s Concerto for Turntables and Orchestra (one of the BBC Ten Pieces), Alexander Mosolov’s Iron Foundry and the Alarm Will Sound arrangements of electronic wizard Aphex Twin’s Cock Ver. 10 and Blue Calx. 

BA Fashion

26 May 2016, 7pm. Ticket holders only. 

BA Mixed Media Fine Art

Private View:   6 June 2016, 6:30pm - 8:30pm
Exhibition continues:  4 - 7 June 2016, 11:00am - 6pm


BA Graphic Communication Design & BA Contemporary Media Practice

Private View: 20 June 2016, 6:30pm - 8:30pm
Exhibition continues: 18  - 22 June 2016, 11:00am - 6pm

Fab Fest

28 June - 2 July 

FAB FEST is a new summer festival, celebrating design and making, with live music and entertainment. It is hosted this summer by the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment and the Fabrication Laboratory at the University of Westminster.

FAB FEST will feature over 50 innovative cardboard pavilions designed and built by students from Westminster as well as by guest teams from India, China, USA, Italy and Turkey. Each team of five students will be mentored by either an academic or a practicing professional from the field of architecture and the built environment.

The event is a celebration of design and making and will generate an urban festival to start the summer, with family friendly events and activities from 12-4pm and an evening event from 5.30-9pm on 2 July. FAB FEST will include live performances from bands including performers from the University’s Westminster School of Media, Arts and Design. It also includes a variety of making activities including cardboard robot-making, mask-making and sketching, with drop-in workshops for the public to enjoy. The afternoon will finish with the presentation of the publically voted Festival Prize for the best pavilion. 

The challenge for participants is to design and fabricate pavilions to facilitate this festival, making a mini ‘Glastonbury-in-the-City’. The pavilions will be made from cardboard and a range of other lightweight, cheap, recyclable materials, provided by our Fabrication Laboratory Westminster. Teams can use hand tools or the Lab’s digital fabrication machines to make the pavilions. 

The festival will be held at the University’s Central London Marylebone Campus, in the Fabrication Laboratory Westminster and Ambika P3. It begins on Tuesday 28 June when teams will have access to the area to build the pavilions and will culminate in a day-long festival open to the general public on Saturday 2 July.

The festival will close with live music from Emmanuel Nwamadi, a University of Westminster student and finalist of BBC’s The Voice 2015, a drinks reception and film screenings.

New Stories

2 - 6 September 2016, 11am - 7pm

Private View: Thursday 1 September 2016, 11am - 7pm

New Stories is the 2016 University of Westminster MA Photographic Studies exhibition. The show gives an opportunity to view the work of the fifteen visual artists who have completed a period of intensive study on one of the leading photography courses in the UK. The course has established itself as a launch pad for many successful photographers, artists and curators and is proud of its well-structured yet open framework incorporating both academic study and photographic practice. 

The graduating students exhibiting work are: 

Olga Bortkevich
Richard Collins
Jorge Luis Dieguez
Pippa Healy
Letitia Kamayi
Reka Komoli
Katie Longley
Rebecca McClelland
Thomas Nicolaou
Anthony Prevost
Blerim Racaj
Catherine Sanderson
Jennifer Wang
Lei Huang Yu
Ren Zhao

Symposium: Saturday 3 September 2016, 3pm - 5pm
'Fiction and Non-Fiction; a discussion on new developments in narrative' with Lisa Barnard, Federica Chiocchetti and Tom Seymour, chaired by Rebecca McClelland

For further information: www.newstories2016.com

Fabrication Workshop & Exhibition

13 October 2016

The Fabrication Workshop brought together over 250 Westminster students, and tutors from across the Faculty. It gave students the opportunity to design, build and in a short period of time, exhibit a 1-to-1 installation in Ambika P3. The workshop developed skills in design through making and team working, while offering a rapid introduction to the Fabrication Lab and valuable practical experience on our analogue machine tools.  

Students participated from first year BA Interior Architecture, first year BA Architecture, and second year BSc Architectural Technology, Construction Management and Building Engineering. The groups followed briefs developed by their tutors, culminating in a variety of built installations presented in a public exhibition in P3. The event was followed the next day by the documentation of the installation through photographs and sketches, as well as Crits and presentations.

If you were a participant in the workshop, please would you take a couple of minutes to give us your feedback at the following link: Fabrication Workshop Feedback. We want to involve you in the development of this and other future workshops, so need to know how you found it, and what you would like to see more of next time. Your participation in feedback allows you to shape the way we run your courses at Westminster. Thanks in advance for your help, and we look forward to seeing you at the next workshop.

SUNDAY Art Fair 

Opening Reception 
Thursday 6 October 2016, 6 – 10 pm, open to the public

Fair Opening Hours 
Friday 7 October and Saturday 8 October 2016, 12 – 9 pm
Sunday 9 October, 12 – 6 pm

Contact
www.sundayartfair.com | info@sundayartfair.com

SUNDAY is an annual contemporary art fair held in London which focuses on new and emerging artists and galleries from around the world. The fair supports the young, emerging and most exciting artists and the galleries who are nurturing them at the early stages in their careers.

This year SUNDAY will showcase  25 international galleries exhibiting solo projects or curated group presentations. SUNDAY Art Fair is held at Ambika P3, less than ten minutes walk from Frieze Art Fair. Entrance to the fair is free and open to all.

The editions section will return as part of the fair this year with artist’s editions presented by regional institutions. This year will also see the return of the SUNDAY Art Fair Print Portfolio with new editions from young artists.

For further information on participating galleries & artists please see here

Buffet d'art

Opening reception
Friday 4 November 2016, 6:30 - 8:30 pm

Open to the public
Saturday 5 & Sunday 6 November 2016, 12 - 6 pm

Buffet d'Art showcases an array of artists, all of whom have been invited to bring along a buffet size piece of work, to be perused on a plinth. 

The show will be a meleè of mismatched yet aspiring works, some with delusions of grandeur, others grubby with spillage and monotonous repetition, set to a medley of smooth and relaxing music, designed to whet the senses and heighten your experience of these buffet-inspired memories. 

Participating artists
Gustavo Ferro, Veronika Seifert, Rachel Lowther, Jo Addison, Doug Fishbone, Marcia Farquhar, Edwina Ashton, Keith Bowler, Gayle Chong Kwan, David Cotterrell, Lucy Joyce, Stuart Cumberland, Judith Dean, Dolanbay, David Donald, Kitty Finer, Adam Gillam, Louise Ashcroft, Luke Gottelier, Georgina Starr, Peggy Atherton, Eric Bainbridge, Maria Bartolo, Phil Allen, Katie Cuddon, Holly Hendry, Ian Kiaer, Renata Bandeira, Sharone Lifchitz, Justin Fitzpatrick, Mark Wilsher, Brendan Lynch, R J Hinrichsen, Annie Davey, Peter McDonald, Pete Owen, Des Hughes, Keith Wilson, Flora Parrott, Fabian Peake, Ben Joiner, Robert Rush, Raine Smith, Sarah Pucill, Kerry Stewart, Pip Thompson. Francis Upritchard, Demelza Watts, David Mabb

Curated by Ben Joiner, Peggy Atherton and Maria Bartolo (Westminster School of Media, Arts & Design)

ADAPT-r

26 November - 18 December 2016, open daily from 10am - 6pm
Private view: Wednesday 23 November, 6:30 - 8:30pm

What do architects, artists, and designers actually do? What inspires them? How do they make the leaps of imagination they need to break new ground? Where do they find their ideas? How do they develop, test and share them with each other? How do they know when something’s going right?

Ambika P3 is proud to present ADAPT-r, a major exhibition exploring research processes of working artists, architects and designers – revealing the diverse approaches and how they do what they do. From digital designers to landscape architects, brand designers to design activists, painters to performance artists, and many different types of architects, 

The exhibition concludes an EU funded research initiative and provides rare insights through 35 international practitioners from around the globe - John Brown, Koen Broucke, Alice Casey, Michael Corr, Cian Deegan, Federico Del Vecchio, Martí Franch Batllori, Dermot Foley, Eric Guibert, Karin Helms, Tom Holbrook, Chris Johnstone, Gitte Juul, Thierry Kandjee, Sam Kebbell, Ana Kreč, CJ Lim, Hseng Tai Lintner, Petra Marguc, Colm Moore, Siobhán Ní Éanaigh, Steve Larkin, Karli Luik, Claudia Pasquero, Sébastien Penfornis, Anna Pla-Català, Marco Poletto, Irene Prieler, Deborah Saunt, Siv Helen Stangeland, Johannes Torpe, Alicia Velázquez, Michael Wildmann

ADAPT-r offers a rich terrain of work to explore. It is divided into distinct areas charting the different stages of discovery within the creative process. Individual exhibits in the Studio show work in progress and completion by 35 practitioners, whereas Rooms reveals cross views of working together. The Library includes books and discoveries, while the Garden will be the site of a daily programme of events, including discussions, performances and screenings.

ADAPT-r is a partnership of seven European Universities - Aarhus School of Architecture (Denmark), University of Ljubljana (Slovenia), KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture (Belgium), Estonia Academy of Arts (Estonia), Mackintosh School of Architecture - Glasgow School of Art (UK), RMIT Europe (Spain) & University of Westminster (UK). For more information see: http://adapt-r.eu

This project has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 317 325.

ADAPT-r Events

All events are free, booking essential

Thursday 24 November, 6:30pm
Book launch and talk with Dr Tom Holbrook
Launch of Designing from the Room to the City: Expanding Disciplinarity in Architectural Practice,  published by Routledge. 

Friday 25 November, 6:30pm
Practice Research Symposium
Opening Lecture by Dr Deborah Saunt
With introduction by Professor Richard Blythe. Please note that this event will take place in the Hogg Lecture Theatre. 

Wednesday 30 November, 6:30pm
Bio Salon
The BioSalon round table will discuss design methodologies operating at the intersection of disciplines such as biology, computation and urban ecologies.

The BioSalon will be structured as a conversation between architects, artists, microbiologist and theorists: Ricardo De Ostos, Simon Park, Marco Poletto, Melissa Sterry and Emmanouil Zaroukas. The event is curated and moderated by Claudia Pasquero, ADAPT-r fellow.

Friday 2 December, 6:30pm
A Night of Images by Paul Khera
A screening of 3 films: 1. always being one - a study on solitude; 2. we thought we were plural -  an investigation by the band, in particular on the betrayal of contemporary life; 3. when survival ended - hundreds of photos picked at random, from the pursuit of entertainment

Tuesday 6 December, 6:30pm
Strange Objects / Weird Realism

"Reality is made up of nothing but substances — and they are weird substances with a taste of the uncanny about them, rather than stiff blocks of simplistic physical matter."  Graham Harman

A programme of immersive  video and music exploring speculative environments which highlight the creative scope of the imagination in the production and representation of space. Featuring a selection of films by Peter Burr, Dave Gaskarth, Sarah Hammond and Richard Healy, plus a sound performance by composer Lee Fraser.

Thursday 8 December, 6:30pm
Milan Design Film Festival at Ambika P3
The Soul of the Projects
The first event collects six shorts which, despite the demonstrating vastly different filmmaking techniques, each explore the idea of living and life as 'project' in which individuals collaborate in the pursuit of a common or shared goal. 

Programme
Modernism Walks into a Bar Alone at Night, Ben Sheehan & Will Harvey-Jones, Australia 2015
Dance with Architecture | Jessica Lang & Steven Holl, Spirit of Space, USA 2016, 12’15”
The Learn’d, Victor Vroegindeweij, The Netherlands 2015Jean Nouvel: Reflections, Matt Tyrnauer, USA 2016
A marwoolus journey, Jasmine Schroder, Emanuele Marzi, Italy 2015
Think Energy (Paris), Gerardo Marmo, Maria Veltcheva, Italy 2013-2014

Friday 9 December, 6:30pm
Milan Design Film Festival at Ambika P3
Design Overview Around the World 
The second event by MDFF explores the concept of making and the processes by which designers and architects from all over world turn their ideas into finished objects. 

Programme
Building M+ (Herzog & de Meuron), Stephy Chung, China 2014
The Campana Brothers by Fernando & Humberto, Gabriela Bernd, Brazil 2016
Yesterday/Tomorrow (14+ Foundation), Jenna Elizabeth, Zambia/USA 2014
Pojangmacha, a Korean typologies production, Jan Schabert, Korea 2015
WY-TO Designers & Architects, Michele di Salle-Hullabaloop, France/Singapore 2014

Tuesday 13 December, 6:30pm
The Life and Music of Iannis Xenakis
Dissolve Specific Objects presents a screening of Something Rich and Strange with introduction by Mark Kidel. Along with performances by Distractfold Ensemble. Please note that this event will start promptly at 7pm. 

Wednesday 14 December, 6:30pm
Action Space screening
Founded in 1968, Action Space used large inflatable structures to create alternative spaces for art, education and creative play outside of the restrictive gallery arena. This film explores the history of Action Space through the construction of a new inflatable. Followed by a Q&A with director Huw Wahl, Amanda Ravetz, Ken Turner and Johan Siebers. Please note that this event will take place at the Regent Street Cinema. Tickets £12 / £11 concessions / £7 University of Westminster students.

Friday 16 December, 6:30pm
Practitioners in Conversation -  Computational landscapes: Critical reflections on contemporary design practice
Launch of Landscape Architecture and Digital Technologies by Heike Rahmann and Jillian Wallis, followed by presentations and a round table discussion with participants from featuring practices, including Neil Porter and Mary Bowman from Gustafson Porter, Enriqueta Llabres and Eduardo Rico from Relational Urbanism and Marco Poletto and Claudia Pasquero from EcoLogic Studio. 

Sunday 18 December, 6:30pm
Screening of Think Energy

Think Energy 
Gerardo Marmo, Maria Veltcheva
Italy 2016, 30’

The ThinkEnergy project represents different urban realities in a non-documentary form through a series of audio-visual productions that take into account different types of "urban energy." The methodological approach of the work is based on observations caught on camera while walking around the city, recording images and sounds. During the editing phase, a reflection on the perception of the contemporary city becomes a critical, subjective reading of the captured energy. The result is a mix of sounds and moving pictures from Rome, Sofia, Paris, Berlin and London, that recreate immersive urban environments for the end user.

Please note that entry to Ambika P3 for each of these events will be via the main University of Westminster reception at 35 Marylebone Road.

Supported by the Francis and Margaret Mackenzie Legacy.

National Student Pride 2016

Saturday 6 February, 12:30pm - 5pm

National Student Pride, now in its 11th year, is back in London. Once again focusing around its daytime festival on Saturday 6th February 2016 at Ambika P3, part of the University of Westminster’s Marylebone campus, over 1500 LGBT students from across the UK will be taking part in a weekend of festivities from Friday 5th to Sunday 7th February.

This year the focus is the difficult, but vital discussion of mental heaLth, which disproportionately affects LGBT people. 

For more information: www.studentpride.co.uk