Summer House is an installation and programme of events by Croydon based RESOLVE Collective working with Black community practitioners and artists in Croydon and Brighton. The project asks how it might be possible to build recuperative and organisational spaces for those who are working to sustain their communities. To do so, Summer House appropriates the Brighton CCA gallery as an open space for generative rest, gatherings, and organising for this enduring work. Incorporating both sculptural and live elements, the installation centres on groups of ‘work and leisure’ furniture, built using salvaged materials from industrial and commercial sites around Croydon and Brighton. A public programme pairs three Brighton practitioners with three Croydon practitioners for a series of open events and closed exchanges, exploring the shared value in their respective work.

Brighton-based artist manager and youth worker Bobby Brown will meet London-based Ella Adu, architectural designer and member of Tanum Sound System; Carolynn Bain of the inspirational Afrori Books will collaborate on a photo exhibition and talk with Croydon-based photographer Theo Mettle, celebrating the lives and work of Black women in Brighton; and writer and curator Pacheanne Anderson will co-curate a multi disciplinary exhibition of student work, culminating in a public conversation with Croydon-born interdisciplinary artist, writer and teacher, Rosa-Johan Uddoh. Details of all events are available in the gallery and online at www.brightoncca.art

RESOLVE have twinned their Croydon base with Brighton to explore their commonalities and differences as communal sites of creative production. Croydon and Brighton are united by more than just a transport link. Family and friendship networks regularly extend from the shopping centres to the shores and what defines both places is frequently shared by a common public. More importantly, actively disempowered communities in both Croydon and Brighton are engaging in radical new forms of industry; world-building and organising work that supports their networks where mainstream provisions have failed. Through this project RESOLVE have sought to celebrate this work, and highlight the inequitable processes that require it, as they see friends and colleagues forced back and forth from the city to the shore by rising prices, hostile industries, and lack of work and opportunity.