Open Table – Call out for Castlefield Gallery Associates

Posted on 21 November 2023

For Castlefield Gallery Associates only

For the third event in our partnership with Corridor8 (a journal for contemporary art and writing in the north of England), we are inviting Castlefield Gallery Associates to respond to our current exhibition of work by Omid Asadi.

We have a small bursary available for a current Castlefield Gallery Associate to develop a text based or visual response intended for publication on the Corridor8 website. The Open Table event will take place at the gallery on Monday 16 January 2024, 6:30 – 8:30pm. 

At this public event the commissioned response will be shared alongside an invited piece by academic and researcher Katy Shahandeh. This will be followed by an open discussion about the responses and the exhibition. After the Open Table event, both pieces will be published on the Corridor8 website contributing to a growing series that explores and reflects upon the gallery’s exhibition programme.


Previous Open Table commissions in the series can be read here:

Open Table no 1: Bryony Dawson & Elysia Lukoszevieze — Corridor8 

Open Table no 2: Enya Koster, Grace Collins & George Gibson — Corridor8 


Bursary Amount:  £150

Selectors: Katy Shahandeh, Omid Asadi and Matthew Pendergast (Castlefield Gallery Curator and Deputy Director).

Selection Process 

– Selection will be made based on the strength of proposals in the context of our contemporary visual art programme and their relevance to Corridor8’s contemporary art and writing readership.

– The decision to award the bursary is at the discretion of the selectors. Outcomes of the decision-making process will be final and will be based on a scoring and balancing process.

– After submitting, if you do not hear from us further by 6pm on Tuesday 12 December 2023, unfortunately on this occasion your proposal will not have been selected. Due to limited capacity, on this occasion we are not able to offer feedback. 


To apply please send:

A brief outline of your proposed response, detailing how you would approach the exhibition and the medium of your response (250 words max). You may propose a text based or visual essay that can take any form including but not limited to: essay style prose, fiction, experimental writing, poetry, digital collage etc, as long as it is suitable for online publication.

A relevant example of a previous text based work or a visual essay (500 words max)

Confirmation that you will be able to attend the Open Table event in person 

If possible, please provide this in a single pdf no more than 10MB in size, which can include hyperlinks to web pages. Please send this by email to associates@castlefieldgallery.co.uk with the subject line: Corridor8 Open Table, by 12 noon on Tuesday 5 December 2023.


Important Dates: 

Deadline for submissions: Tuesday 5 December 2023, 12 noon

Open Table Event: Tuesday 16 January 2024, 6:30 – 8:30pm

Omid Asadi’s solo exhibition will be on until 21 January 2024. The gallery opening times are Wednesday – Sunday 12 noon – 5:30pm.

To learn more about the exhibition, please visit castlefieldgallery.co.uk/event/omid-asadi

Please note, Castlefield Gallery will be closed over the Christmas period from 18 December 2023 to 2nd January 2024 inclusive.


Access, Equality and Diversity 

We are aware that not everyone has access to software, internet or IT equipment at home and will take steps to make sure that this is not a barrier to anyone’s participation. If you have access needs that could be a barrier to applying or participating and want to discuss this, please contact James Mathews-Hiskett at associates@castlefieldgallery.co.uk and ensure you also copy your email to Leslie Remonato at leslie@castlefieldgallery.co.uk  

If you need to contact us by phone, please call 0161 832 8034. If calling outside of our office hours then please leave a voicemail stating your full name, what you are calling about and your contact number. We will call you back as soon as we can, and within 3 working days of you leaving your voicemail.  

Please note Castlefield Gallery office hours are Tuesday–Sunday, 10am–6pm. Castlefield Gallery offices are closed on Mondays. 


Equal Opportunities

Equal Opportunities Castlefield Gallery is an Equal Opportunity Employer and will not accept unfair discrimination or less favourable treatment on the grounds of race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion or belief, disability, marriage and civil partnership, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity or trade union activity. Castlefield Gallery’s Equality Policy is underpinned by the Equality Act (2010) which provides a legal framework to protect people from discrimination, harassment and victimisation in the workplace and wider society.

Castlefield Gallery is committed to the promotion of equal opportunities in all aspects of our work, including management, employment practices with both paid workers and volunteers, access to services and service provision. We fully support the principles of equality, diversity and inclusion. We recognise that groups and individuals in society are disadvantaged due to discrimination directed against them by both direct and indirect discrimination.

We aim to remove any barriers, bias or discrimination that prevents individuals or groups from realising their potential and to develop organisational cultures that positively value diversity. Our venue is fully wheelchair accessible and assistance dogs are welcome.


Katy Shahandeh is a British-Iranian academic and researcher affiliated with SOAS, University of London. Her scholarly focus centres on contemporary Iranian women artists and the complexities of gender and identity in their works. Her academic interests cover non-Western art, notably Iran, and include feminist art histories, gender, and postcolonial studies. She examines how gender and cultural identity influence art in non-Western contexts, particularly Iran, and explores the impact of colonial legacies on cultural expressions. Her work aims to give voice to marginalised perspectives and broaden the understanding of non-Western art and gender issues.

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