2022’s Community Ideas Fund recipients are Rhiannon Mudaliar and Erin Farley with the Dundee Guerrilla Film Festival! Find out more about their collaboration.

Each December our Amps network comes together for our Forum, where we also host our annual Community Ideas Fund. Designed to enable an exciting collaboration between supporters of our network, Amps are encouraged to connect and pitch a new idea that will result in a positive social impact in Dundee. The award exists thanks to our growing community; not only do the network vote at the Forum on which project receives the fund, but the award itself is funded by Amps subscriptions. It’s amazing to see this support stretch beyond our network through each project’s wider impact in the city.

This year, the network awarded the fund to a project designed to question artistic ownership, elevate exchange, and amplify urgent narratives. In this blog we share more about what they hope to achieve.

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Twelve ‘artistic happenings’. Once per month, for a year. The Dundee Guerrilla Film Festival is a series of opportunities for artists to share, discuss and discover, taking place at a different location each time across Dundee in 2023.

Brought to life by artist and director Rhiannon Mudaliar and local historian, storyteller and library worker Erin Farley, the DGFF seeks to challenge the unethical, capitalistic reality of copyright laws, and promote connection, inspiration and exchange within our artistic community.

Each month, a different Dundee-based artist will be invited to collaborate with the team to tackle topics close to them at a happening comprised of three parts:

• The screening: a film, representative of themes in the happening, selected to set the evening’s tone.
• The exhibition: a body of work, created and presented by the month’s artist, discussing key issues dear to them.
• The response: a chance for the audience to become involved: crafting, discussion, and artistic response.

Who’s invited to be part of this project?

Anyone who creates, and wants to share their work, professional or not, falls under the DGFF’s audience! The DGFF will have no tickets and charge no admission. While focusing mainly on the artistic community, they’ll offer a huge range of screenings and art, with the end goal of making inspiration and culture available to anyone who’s curious enough to look for it. The DGFF want to make art available to all without the constraints of capitalism, and to encourage community exchange and fellowship, to fight against the isolation that’s becoming so common for creative minds.

To support a culture of radical artistic exchange, each happening will facilitate the non-profit trading of artistic materials, from zines and badges, to games and films. Bring your work, and be ready to swap.

Working together, collectively

The nature of a large project means that coordination is almost impossible without a team effort (and very good friends!). Coordination will be a collaboration between Rhiannon—who brings experience in curation, organising screenings, and a passion for art and film—and Erin, who has a deep knowledge of Dundee, a love of storytelling, a wide range of contacts, and interest in the unethical nature of copyright laws in historical contexts.

Here and now is an alarming place to be. The DGFF seeks to ground itself firmly in the social, political, and physical landscape of Dundee by offering screenings that pertain personally to artists who live and work here. The messages they carry, and the translations of these themes in their work, will serve to highlight the most urgent problems the community is facing.

Together, the DGFF discuss the ways in which we are all affected, and how best to address them through fellowship, compassion, and collective action.

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Want to get involved?

The Dundee Guerrilla Film Festival are open to collaborators, whether you’re interested in taking part as an artist, coordinator or supporter. Curious? Get in touch via email.

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About the Team

Rhiannon Mudaliar (she/they) is an artist, director, recent DJCAD graduate and planning extraordinaire! After time spent documenting queer joy over the last year, they’re now making waves as a bright spark in the troublemaking business.

Erin Farley (she/her) is a local historian, storyteller and library worker. She works with communities around Dundee to share stories and ideas about the city’s history, memory and people, and is interested in the power of creative histories and traditional storytelling.

This new collaboration was made possible through our Amps network’s Community Ideas Fund. Everyone in the network can choose which project they’d like to award the fund to at our annual Amps Forum—find out about the other amazing projects that pitched in 2022. This cash award is funded by Amps subscriptions each year—join Amps and help us make the fund bigger and better!