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YAK! is an open and communal reading group exploring radical histories through conversation and text. Journeying into worlds of protest, art, and writing, we take inspiration from poetry, prose, letters, journals, speeches, and plays to better understand those that came before us and the world we live in today. Meant as a forum through which our artistic practices are read, YAK! seeks to offer clarity, introspection, and dialogue for understanding the processes and praxis of our art making. It is a nomadic reading group, facilitating conversations in towns and cities across the UK, hosted in non-institutional spaces.
YAK! is an ongoing alternative education project led by writer and curator Alexander Stubbs.
Alexander is a writer and curator based in Hull. Working primarily in text-based practice, his writing explores the world through imaginary landscapes in order to deconstruct and decode memory, grief, and language. Alexander has a particular interest in community-building practices, and shared and embodied knowledge through collaboration. He works often with artist-led organisations to deliver workshops, reading groups, and mentoring to a wide range of groups, and regularly works in collaboration with other artists. He enjoys working with young people and artists at all stages of their careers, especially in settings outside of mainstream education.
As a collaborative exercise, YAK! invites artists and curators into the conversation, responding appropriately to the space the groups are hosted in and the moment in which they happen.
This iteration of YAK! has been curated in collaboration with Wes Foster, and is being hosted by Hyde Park Book Club and Hyde Park Art Club.
Wes is a practitioner based in Leeds, UK. His image making is focused on the relationship between text and image, communities and social space and culture. His commercial practice focuses on photography and video of workshops, the arts, space and happenings. He is a digital communications specialist as well as writer, and his writing has been published in numerous places both in print and online, and focuses on collaborative relationships and culture.