Markets And Movements Weekend: Foreign Pickers

Our Markets and Movements Weekend launches with the premiere of a newly commissioned film Foreign Pickers by Kathrin Böhm in collaboration with Sue Giovanni, and the latest stage of Kathrin’s ongoing project, Company: Movements, Deals and Drinks.

This premier screening will be accompanied by a talk by Kathrin Böhm and Dr Toby Butler, University of East London, and the launch of two new Company Drinks beverages which result from the trips to Kent in 2016: a Thinning Soda and a Gleaned Cider.

The film offers an insight into the culture and economics of ‘going picking’, bringing together former hop-pickers ‘who went down to Kent’ from east London and today’s pickers who come there and are both key to British agricultural success. They share the experience of being so-called foreigners in the Kent countryside; east Londoners and current ‘foreigners’, often EU citizens from eastern Europe, who come to Kent as seasonal agricultural workers.

Both groups of pickers are and have been essential to British agriculture, providing the en masse low-cost manual labour necessary to grow and pick crops and fruits. Furthermore, both have developed their own cultures around being seasonal and casual workers on low income, from adapting mobile or low-spec accommodation, securing cheap travel, inventing free spare time activities, to socialising away from home.

Programme supporters

With thanks to Delfina’s patrons and partners, as well as those who have supported artist projects directly:

Acción Cultural Español (AC/E), Al Serkal Avenue, Arts Council England, Czech Centre London, Charles Wallace India Trust, Cockayne – Grants for the Arts, Hybrid Platform Berlin, Icelandic Arts Fund, Icelandic Academy of The Arts, Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation, The Keir Foundation, Kingston University, The London Community Foundation, Nicoletta Fiorucci, Outset, Stanley Picker Gallery, Walton Family Foundation and Delfina Foundation’s family of individual supporters.

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