Participatory Art
Chanje has had numerous artist residencies that has lead to a wide variety of public engagement initiatives. In 2024 she did a international project entitled ‘Creating a Climate for Healing’ looking at environmental issues in Subsaharan Africa. Working with female artists in Zambia, they wanted to highlight the problem of plastic pollution: clogging up rivers and grasslands and cities being overrun with discarded bottles. With little or no recycling facilities, the plastic pollution crisis is acute. We worked to create art as activism, which took the form of a social media campaign and also a performance installation in Lusaka.
This lead to a participatory project with the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, where Chanje worked with young people age 16- 25 who were studying art and design, textiles, or performing arts in further education. We did a performance intervention entitles ‘Climate Change Carnival’ in response to Jogn Lyons exhibition ‘Carnivalesque’
Internationally, Chanje has had artist residencies in Zimbabwe and South Africa. There she lead creative workshops and collaborated with aspiring theatre makers, performers and dancers. She has also lead empowering writing workshops for young women in deprived areas. These type of workshops can be done in community centres, schools, colleges and universities, as well as in gallery and theatre spaces.
Here Chanje worked at the Chongwe Community Art Gallery with young cultural performers from the shanty compounds of Lusaka, creating opportunities for cultural expression in the public realm.
Public Art
When Artist in Residence at central Manchester Hospitals, Chanje wrote a poem that is on permanent display in the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital entrance. The poem is a tribute to all the children that have lost their lives in in Manchester hospitals. She also produced text art to be displayed in the Hathersage Centre for sexual and reproductive health, and delivered creative writing workshops on the paediatric psychiatric in patient ward, as well as in the hospital school.