Crossing cultures, creating stories, constructing influence. 

To promote and celebrate cross-cultural understanding through international artistic collaboration using photography and storytelling.

CONFLUENCE is a grassroots collaborative initiative, which began in Scotland and Morocco in February 2017 bringing together storytellers and photographers. By using photography to inspire and communicate, we look to bridge cultures and highlight links within storytelling traditions.

Many ‘Confluence’ events and artistic residencies have taken place. By the artists researching and sharing they are discovering common links and inspiring each other as storytellers and visual artists.  

We are discovering identifiable themes running through ancient stories, evidencing at a human level that despite apparent cultural differences and potential barriers there are common themes to the human experience. By discovering these links we are finding a different way to cross cultures, break down barriers and shine a light on shared elements of cultural heritage and humanity.

Jemaa El-Fnaa’, the main square in Marrakech, Morocco, is a place of historic storytelling traditions where the ‘hlaykia’ have been reciting tales for perhaps one thousand years; therefore, Morocco was the perfect place to begin to look more deeply at the links running through the stories.

Spurred on by our part as ‘Artist in Residence’ at the 2017 Wigtown Book Festival in Scotland, ‘Confluence’ has gathered newly created photography and tales, both traditional and modern, which have been collected together in a ‘Confluence’ book: ‘Celtic and Arabian Visions and Stories’. The book first launched in May 2018 in Wigtown, Scotland’s National Book Town, with a further launch taking place in Morocco in October 2018, at the British Ambassador’s residence in Rabat.

The Confluence journey continues, join us….

Laura Hudson Mackay
Photographic Artist, Confluence Founder