THE MANJI GATHERINGS

This event invites artists and cultural workers together for an honest conversation about RECLAIMING ART.
Together, we’ll examine how art can be used as a tool for healing, social justice and transformation – especially when made accessible and experienced as a universal form of expression.
Guided by Artist and Creative Director, Ed Vince, the conversation will take place on a Manji, a traditional woven daybed that is a place for rest, reflection and collective care, and will unfold through thoughtful questions that invite multiple perspectives and deeper inquiry.
We will begin and end with Simran, a practice of stillness and deep listening, and create space for presence and authentic connection as we step outside familiar narratives towards collective possibility and meaningful action.
This gathering is part of a series beginning at our HQ in Slough that will later move to The Whitworth in Manchester. It aims to engage in honest exchange about what’s working – and what isn’t – within us and the systems we inhabit. Each will take place around Roo Dhissou’s Manji (A String of Love, 2025), offering a ground for fellowship, shared progress and collective care.
BIOGRAPHY, EDWARD VINCE
A London-based Sculptor, Artist and Creative Director with almost 20 years of experience in the art, design, advertising and technology worlds, including five years in Silicon Valley.
Responding to his extensive background as an advertising creative director, his sculptural works reflect on society’s uneasy relationship with consumption and waste. Through thoughtful transformation of materials, Ed gives new meaning to what has been discarded - offering a possibility that, like these reimagined objects, we too might find more thoughtful, sustainable ways of living beyond the systems that currently define us.
Ed has lectured at institutions and design conferences around the world and exhibited his work at global design shows in London, Milan and Tokyo.