Saturday 10 October

6pm

Join us for launch of “Imperfect” , a new book from photographer David George.

When I step into a new landscape my first question is: why does it look like this? For me, the answer reflects where we are as a society. - David George.

Sublime and ethereal. These are works of love and loss. Susan Andrews, London Metropolitan University.

Poetic, tactile, almost painterly. A meditation on endurance. Zelda Cheatle, Curator.

Breathtaking, magnificent and intimate at the same time. Seamus Murphy, Photographer.

Extremely moving. The colour makes my heart sing! Sandra Lousada, Photographer.

Exceptional craft, an eye for beauty - and a thoughtful approach in each picture. Michael Pritchard.

Both evocative documentation and visceral abstraction. An amazing series of meditations. Barry Lewis, Photographer and filmmaker.

In Imperfect, photographer David George brings together some 200 unpublished photographs – striking night-time colour images, and fine monochrome photogravures using the century-old intaglio method. It is the culmination of eight years’ work, drawn from more than 4,000 images made while walking hundreds of miles over carefully planned routes along the major river corridors of North-East England.

Uniquely, George has deliberately relinquished control over the final outcome, accepting ‘imperfection’ as part of his process. The result is a body of work of exceptional power and subtlety: a memorable record of land shaped by industry. Images that invite us to think about our landscapes – and what they reveal about our society.

Thread-sewn, OTA binding, with flaps
Cover: Essential Velvet 300 gsm
Text: Essential Velvet 150 gsm

Saturday 26 September

3pm

Join artist Vlatka Horvat in a conversation about her new exhibition at kollectiv - Which Stops You Going Further - with curator Sammi Gale.

Vlatka Horvat is a Croatian-born London-based artist who uses a range of media such as sculpture, installation, drawing, performance, photography, video, and writing. In her work, she explores the relationship between the body and its surroundings, as well as questions related to presence and the ways in which things occupy and share space. She has had exhibitions at institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, PEER (London), Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna), Hessel Museum – Bard Center for Curatorial Studies (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY), and MoMA PS1 (New York City), and her work has been included in the Croatian Pavilion at the Biennale Architettura 2018 (Venice), Aichi Triennale (Nagoya), and the 11th Istanbul Biennale.

Sammi Gale

Sammi Gale is a curator, poet and the editor of Plinth. His recent poetry pamphlets include Port Folio (Broken Sleep Books, 2025) and Torch Loose Panic (Datableed Editions, 2026). His journalism features in GQ, the i Paper, and Little White Lies. He lives in London.

Every Monday

10am-1pm

Join us for a wholesome morning at kollectiv - let’s play scrabble together! Join us for as long as you can - grab a coffee and a cake from the bar and let’s get scrabbling (is it even a word?)

People of all levels of experience are very welcome to join this friendly and chatty group. It's a good opportunity to meet new people, have fun and improve your Scrabble skills.

Why scrabble?

An easy to learn game it keeps your mind active. It’s a great way of socialising, getting out of the house and making new friends.

And even if you don’t know how to spell a word, it might turn out you just find a new one!

Thursday 15 October

6:30pm

It's the first one. Everybody walking in will be new.

Is this for me?

Almost certainly, yes, and you do not need to be technical. Not a bit, not secretly, not "well, I did a course once".

FAM is for everybody, but specially for people who make things: illustrators, filmmakers, producers, sound people, designers, writers, anybody working in or around the creative industries that have suddenly got a lot to argue about. You do not need to understand how any of this works to have a useful opinion about what it is doing to your work, and the people who do understand how it works are, on the whole, keen to explain it to you at the bar.

Some people coming are excited about all of it. Some are angry about all of it. Quite a few will be both, on the same evening, about the same thing. All of that is welcome, so long as you extend the same patience to the person standing next to you that you would want extended to you.

Nobody is selling anything from the front. There is no recruiter working the room and no pitch at the end. It is a room, some chairs, a projector and a bar.

And since this is the very first one: there is no in-crowd to be outside of. Everybody there will be working out what it is at the same time you are.

If it helps to know where the line is before you come: read the code of conduct. It is short and we mean it.

More info here:

https://fam.andcake.dev