INSPIRATIONAL SPEECHES

A project with speakers Abraham George, Teresa Merryfield, Shelley Musfelt, and Abel Pagaling, performed at Illingworth Kerr Gallery as part of the IKG Live1 performance exhibition, 2016.

“Inspirational Speeches” was a collaborative project that provided space for a diverse group of people to speak. I am interested in the power speech has to inspire, the feeling like no other one gets from hearing a speech, and a return to oral tradition in contemporary society. 

With these thoughts in mind, I felt that the content similar to the Fish Creek Bravehearts' speaker series "Inspiration," needed to be shared with a broader audience as a method for bringing positivity and inspiration back into art ideas. Each of the four members of the group gave two 10-minute speeches or one 20-minute speech, totalling 1.5 hours of positivity to the Illingworth Kerr Gallery (inside a university dedicated to visual art), an environment where students often struggle with stress, expectations, constant criticism, and the source of inspiration.