In May, Coventry’s Mead Gallery will invite local people to take part in a unique opportunity to help curate a new exhibition based on the work of celebrated poet T. S. Eliot. A Journey with The Waste Land is part of a project, led by Coventry-raised Michael Tooby, which will lead to exhibitions in 2018 at Turner Contemporary in Margate, Leeds Art Gallery and the Mead Gallery in Coventry to coincide with the centenary of the end of the First World War.
 
The project at the Mead Gallery will use the knowledge and experiences of participating local communities who will also select the objects and artwork to feature in an exhibition that will explore the significance of T.S Eliot’s The Waste Land and the way it resonates with the visual arts.
 
The Waste Land’s depiction of a landscape and its people out of harmony is as relevant today as it did in the aftermath of World War One.  Project curator, Michael Tooby, comments: “The context of Coventry and Warwickshire offers many resonances with The Waste Land: the everyday situations of people coming to terms with the aftermath of war, but evoked within a great tradition of poetry and myth, and offering glimpses of redemption in many voices from many different cultural and faith backgrounds.”
 
On Thursday 5 May Michael Tooby and the project’s research curator Trish Scott will be at Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry to introduce both T.S. Eliot’s poem and the project. The event will include a special reading of the poem and refreshments will be provided. The event will lead into A heap of broken images - a more in-depth workshop, on Saturday 21 May. Both events are free but advance booking is essential.