Media Release
29th August 2024
Ione Maria Rojas appointed as artist for Honiton multicultural history partnership
British-Mexican artist, facilitator and food grower Ione Maria Rojas has been appointed as the artist to work on a multicultural history partnership based in Honiton, heading off a strong field of applicants for the opportunity.
Ione uses mark making, drawing, and writing to create a dialogue between ourselves, others and the land we live on. She has been working with Key Stage 2 primary children in Devon and Cornwall to deliver creative engaging workshops. For this project Ione will be partnering with Offwell School, the town’s library and the renowned Thelma Hulbert Gallery. Some questions central to her practice are:
How can small acts of imagination, creativity and making disrupt and dismantle
dominant thought systems?
How can working with our hands (in the soil, with clay, through gathering and making)
catalyse new conversations or new ways into existing conversations?
Jess Huffman, Honiton Project Coordinator for Telling Our Stories, Finding Our Roots said: “The shortlisting panel felt Ione answered the brief well. We are confident that she could work with us to ensure the materials she uses will reflect something of the stories we are telling as well as be immersive and fun for the children she’ll be working with. The workshop suggestions sound really engaging and we felt excited about how this might materialise as a tangible exhibition piece for later in the year.
We felt Ione’s personal experience will ensure her work aligns closely and sympathetically with the project themes and she could bring something new to the project that will help us engage audiences in a different way.”
On hearing of her appointment Ione said: “I’m really excited to be working on this project and getting to know some of the hidden histories of Honiton. I think there’s a lot of polarisation that happens with the urban-rural divide, with many people moving to the cities to experience a more diverse culture. Yet there are these multicultural histories that pulse through the countryside too, with pastoral England being inseparable from the realities of colonisation – a past that deserves a closer look. This opportunity offers a creative and tangible way in to doing so, getting to know the stories of individuals who’ve lived in the town, imagining into their realities”.
Ione’s website is: https://www.ionemariarojas.com/
This opportunity is funded by the Creative East Devon Fund through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. The project begins in September. The exhibition that will include the final project piece launches on 22 November at the Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Honiton and will run from 23rd November to 22nd December.
For further information please contact Hilda Kalap Project Coordinator: hildatosfor@gmail.com or Jess Huffman Honiton Project Coordinator: jesstosfor@gmail.com
Notes to Editors: The Telling Our Stories, Finding Our Roots project began in June 2023 and will take 18 months to complete, finishing at the end of 2024.
With the help of a team of enthusiastic volunteers led by project coordinators, Telling Our Stories, Finding Our Roots is a trailblazing project aiming to bring to light the forgotten or unknown diverse history in the towns of Honiton and Ilfracombe, stories which have often not been recorded but which show the value and richness that diverse communities have brought to Devon. It will leave a legacy of archive stories, oral history recordings, exhibitions, educational resources and walking tours in each town.
Funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund it follows on from two previous Telling Our Stories projects in Exeter, Tiverton, Bideford and Okehampton.
Website: https://www.tellingourstoriesdevon.org.uk/
The project is run by Devon Development Education a global education charity (reg 1102233), based at The Global Centre, 17 St David’s Hill, Exeter, EX4 3RG, with over 20 years’ experience of providing expertise to schools and communities in Devon. We develop and run projects with groups throughout the county. We aim to provide a “window on the worlds” to enable children and adults to understand links between their own lives and those of others worldwide; and to develop skills, attitudes and values which enable people to work together to bring about change to create a just and sustainable world.
The National Lottery Heritage Fund was set up in 1994 to fund projects of all sizes that connect people and communities to the UK’s heritage. In that time it has invested £8.8 billion in heritage and supported 51,000 heritage projects.
