For the past two months, artists from the UK, including Polly Brannan, and the UAE (Khalid Mezaina and Karima al-Shomely) have been working on a piece for the Shubbak festival of contemporary Arab culture, on the theme of shopping. Rather than trading with cash, 'Shopopolis' focuses on a different commodity: stories. For their research, the artists visited luxury malls in the UK and Emirates to compare how trading
spaces are used to meet, eat, shop and celebrate, and chatted to locals to document their personal stories about the retail outlets where they work or shop. For Shubbak, the artists are resident in Westfield Shopping Centre, where they will transform shoppers' stories into illustrations, animations and products, with the aim of producing a visual portrait of the shared experience of shopping. The project has been produced by the Delfina Foundation. Details of times and dates when you can contribute to the project are on the Delfina website (www.delfinafoundation.com). For full details of the Shubbak festival see www.london.gov.uk/shubbak