About us
Kin Structures builds and sustains infrastructure for cultural and community expression.
Working with culture and relationships as materials, we create spaces where art, learning and play are tools for people to express themselves fully and realise their collective agency. Countering the disconnection produced by contemporary structures of power, our work centres connection and exchange as dynamics that can reshape our relationships with our bodies, each-other and more-than-human kin.
Kin Structures began as a response to the declining numbers of cultural and community spaces in London, particularly community centres. So far, most of our work has been rooted in community centres that are under-used and at-risk of closing down. This has meant our work is also focussed on revealing and transforming the bureaucratic systems that govern these spaces so that they can best serve the communities around them.
Kwame Lowe Kwame Lowe is an artist and curator. His practice involves creating spaces around art, outside of institutions, and making these spaces works of art in themselves.
Kwame is a co-founder of Kin Structures, along with Arman Nouri, where they are exploring new approaches to building and sustaining community and cultural infrastructure. Their first project (2022) was a nine-month residency at Orchard Gardens Community Centre on Orchard Gardens Estate in Lewisham, where they worked with local residents to imagine new futures for the space and wider neighbourhood.
Kin Structures were the Curating and Producing Partner for Rehearsing Freedoms, leading on the curation of a month-long festival of art, community-based healing and movement building in Autumn 2023. Working alongside Healing Justice London and other key partners, Kin Structures held the vision for the festival, developing an innovative cultural and infrastructural strategy, pulling together the steering group and collaborators.
Kin Structures are now focussing on developing and delivering a 10-year vision for the Soanes Centre in Tower Hamlets Cemetry Park, in partnership with Setpoint London East, as co-stewards of the space.
Kwame is a member of Design Council’s network of experts through which he contributes more broadly to research, policy and thought leadership on community and cultural infrastructure.
Instagram: @kwame_lo
Arman NouriArtist-educator dwelling at the intersections of hybrid infrastructures. Gatherer of breaths, movements, gestures and glances, practicing how to notice and reveal the dynamics and relations that structure our lived experiences. The vision is that patterns shift and structures soon follow.
Currently he is 1/2 of Kin Structures alongside Kwame Lowe, co-stewarding the Soanes Centre and sowing seeds of Solfi, Music Before Medicine and Where Pathways Meet. His sound work Sound and Solidarity (2021- with Sound Advice) has been commissioned by The Mosaic Rooms, SOAS and the Roundhouse. Between 2021 and 2022 he led the Mayor of London's Culture and Community Spaces at Risk Programme during Raja Moussaoui's maternity leave. Between 2021 and 2023 he led the Critical Creative Practices unit (MA Cities) at Central St Martins UAL. Previously you might have seen him publishing, writing, curating, organising and facilitating with EYESORE, which he co-founded in 2015. Arman has also produced exhibitions, installations and books for Approved by Pablo, Somerset House, Rafael Schacter, the Brunei Gallery, British Council, Filippo Minelli and Manifesta.
Instagram: arman___nouri