Aidan Jolly - About

I am a musician, songwriter/composer and performance maker, taking inspiration from world wide cultural movements, and the history, identity and undocumented stories of particular communities and environments. I am involved in touring, performing, events, community plays, and multimedia production, and have released two well reviewed CDs of original songs, ‘System Fault’ (2006) and ‘State of Hysteria’ (2008).

My practice is collaborative, narrative, rooted in popular themes, and with a diverse range of influences, and ranges from one off workshops to full scale commissions.

My work with Collective Encounters began with ‘Other Ways Of Telling’, a theatre for social change project in St Helens that had its debut performance, ‘Break Free’, in 2013. This was a site specific performance featuring original songs, music and poetry that looked at the experiences of people with mental health problems. Since then we have produced several other performances, such as the street theatre performance, ‘What If?’ in April 2015 looking at political engagement.

I am a core member of Virtual Migrants, a Manchester based Digital Arts Association that explores issues of race, migration and globalisation. In 2015 and 2019 we toured ‘Continent Chop Chop’, a national production and participatory workshop programme that looked at austerity, climate justice and the scapegoating of migrants. We recently collaborated with Manchester University and TiPP on arts-based research into how the PREVENT agenda is affecting high schools

I also work with the Threepenny Festival Association (3PF). Founded in 2013 to look at artistic responses to austerity, it has since developed into a solidarity organisation that works in partnership with people affected by fracking in the UK, and indigenous people in Latin America around issues of extractivism and environmental justice. 3PF centres the experience of indigenous peoples through the use of popular education techniques, and transnational solidarity mediated through the internet. From 2017 it has engaged in protest performance, and ceremonial and ‘recuperative’ actions to support specific campaigns.