Award-winning artists, Alina Akbar and Conor Rogers, spend the evening exploring the intersection of football and contemporary art.

Chaired by BBC East Midlands journalist Owen Shipton, this seated discussion will delve into the artists' creative practices, the ideas behind their prize-winning works, and how football has shaped and inspired their artistic journeys. Together, they'll reflect on the role of the game as a source of creativity, identity and community.

Enjoy this special opportunity to hear directly from the artists and gain a unique insight into the artistry of the beautiful game.

Alina Akbar is a Manchester-based visual artist and storyteller working across film, photography and spatial installation. Her practice is rooted in both personal and collective experience, often developed through conversation, collaboration, and being chronically online. She intuitively detangles the complexities of working-class representation and questions of diversity, amplified through a cinematic eye that captures raw reality intertwined with poetic narratives.

Alina’s work has been shown at The Whitworth, Touchstones Rochdale, Harlesden High Street, Aviva Studios, and Victoria and Albert Museum Late. Her most recent film Pardesi Raga is a permanent part of the Manchester Museum South Asia Gallery, commissioned for its project space, and was also featured in the CIRCA Art Prize 2024, with screenings across London, Milan, and Berlin.

Conor Rogers is an award-winning Sheffield-based artist and graduate of Sheffield Hallam University. The heart of his practice is storytelling. It is manifested using a visual, poetic, and symbolic language translated through painted, sculpted, and poetic depictions from everyday life. In 2014, he was shortlisted for the John Moores painting prize and was selected to exhibit in the Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2015 at Primary Gallery, Nottingham & ICA, London. He has since exhibited work both nationally and internationally in group shows, arts festivals and biennales. He was twice shortlisted for the John Ruskin Prize in 2017 and 2019 both exhibitions being held in Sheffield then Manchester. In 2019, Conor was named as the 1st Prize winner of the Robert Walters Group UK Young Artist of the Year Award held at the Saatchi Gallery London. In 2020 he exhibited in ‘Me Myself and I’ a group show held at Collyer Bristow gallery, London. He took part in numerous group online exhibitions throughout the pandemic. His debut solo show ‘Manor Boy’ was exhibited at Yorkshire Artspace in 2021.

Owen Shipton is a journalist and presenter who covers news and sport for the BBC. Previously, he produced and hosted Team Talk, a weekly football programme broadcast on local television. Owen is a regular presenter on BBC East Midlands.

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Image Credit: Alina Akbar, Footwork, 2025 © the artist

Description supplied by the event organiser.