- 5 June 2026
- 10:30 – 11:45 am
- A breakfast talk with curator and researcher Viviana Checchia.
- Paul Mellon Centre, Paul Mellon Centre
This breakfast and talk with curator and researcher Viviana Checchia explores her ideas and methods as an instigator of a living practice of Social Permaculture in various contexts such as Void Art Centre in Northern Ireland and Vessel art project in Puglia, southern Italy. The organisational structures she ended up creating are based on models of co-existence and co-creation as well as sustainable use of local resources. In this talk Checchia will question how exposure to nature can influence our behaviour as researchers and art practitioners. Rather than simply looking at how we are addressing our new relationship to nature in the arts and academic sector, or how we are trying to respond to current ecological and climate crises, she aims to explore the natural cross-pollination within art and research modus operandi coming directly from the natural world. In what ways are we really learning from nature and moving beyond a simplistic or symbolic connection to a bucolic past or to a rural idyll?
Schedule
10.30: Arrival with refreshments and pastries available
10.45: PMC Welcome
10.50-11.20: Checchia talk
11.20-11.45: Q&A and general discussion
Accessibility at a Glance at the Paul Mellon Centre
✔ Level access: A portable ramp is available to provide wheelchair access. Please ring the bell on the right-hand railings outside the main entrance at number 16 for assistance. If possible, it’s helpful to let us know in advance if you will need the ramp, so we can have it ready. Please contact us at events@paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk
✔ Accessible for large power wheelchairs
✔ One accessible toilet on the ground floor
✔ Hearing loop available (please contact events@paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk)
✖ Livestreamed
✖ Recorded
✖ BSL
✖ Live captioning
About the speaker
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Viviana Checchia is a curator, programmer, and researcher active internationally, and currently Director of Metal - Peterborough and Cambridgeshire. She has recently moved from her role as Director of Void Art Centre in Derry, where she and the Void team created a living practice of Social Permaculture.
Viviana is also Co-Director of ‘Vessel’, an international curatorial platform based in Puglia, southern Italy, for the support of social, cultural, and economic development through contemporary art.
Other posts include Residency Curator at Delfina Foundation, London, Senior Lecturer on the MFA at HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg and Public Engagement Curator at the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow. Viviana has produced and contributed to a range of international projects, including the Young Artist of the Year Award, Ramallah and the 4th Athens Biennale.
Viviana has lectured on curatorial studies and contemporary art practice at, amongst others: British School in Rome; the Centre for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York; the ‘Social Practice and the Creative Environment’ Masters programme at Limerick Institute of Technology; the International Academy of Art Palestine, Ramallah.
With Anna Santomauro, she received the 2013 ICI/Dedalus Research Award for research into the legacy of socially-engaged art practice in the U.S., and in 2016 was awarded the Igor Zabel Award for Culture and Theory Laureate’s choice for her contributions to the comprehension of and international interest in Eastern European art. Viviana holds a PhD from Loughborough University that focused on alternative Mediterranean curatorial practices. She currently serves as a trustee of cultural organisation, Timespan, Helmsdale, Scotland.