Artist Development Bursary

Benedicta Valentina Mamuini and Lila Naruse are mixed-heritage, mixed-cultured North East-based freelance dance artists, who’s working together has developed through close attention to their creative passions. They are both working professionals, primarily in performance, and have combined experience and skills in collaboration, creation, and teaching contemporary dance.

Motivated by experiences of mixed-cultured upbringings, they are interested in the personal understanding of culture, and what others may perceive culture to mean.

The project researches the link between inherited and learnt cultural traits and the blurred lines in-between. Looking into the point at which social, work, artistic, blood and other cultures blend.

They said “We want to focus on the concept of blended culture and how culture is something fluid and malleable, not a category of rigid boxes for us to tick off on a form.”