CVAN WM is pleased to share a new series of videos that document key moments from our collaboration with DASH as part of Coventry Biennial 2025: Obsessions, Possessions (3 October 2025 – 25 January 2026). The festival’s fifth edition of exhibitions, events and artistic activity examines the roles and functions of collecting across the sector, within communities, and in artists’ studios.

These films serve as legacy resources, capturing performances, conversations, and creative outcomes that developed through this strand of work exploring obsession, collecting and creative connection. Both events form part of a three-part public series delivered by CVAN WM & DASH and supported by event venue hosts Coventry Cathedral and The Herbert Art Gallery & Museum.

CVAN WM launched its public programme in February 2025, which includes opportunities to collaborate closely with DASH, our host organisation. Our partnership is centred on areas where our missions align, enabling us to support a wider network of artists, arts workers, and organisations.

This hybrid in-conversation brings together Helsinki-based artist Sophia Ehrnrooth with DASH Executive Director Peter Bonnell, chaired by artist and DASH Artistic Director/CEO Heather Peak.

The discussion delves into our cultural obsession with football—its power, passion, and pitfalls. Drawing from Sophia’s CB25 exhibition 879 Heroes by Heart, a major four-screen moving-image installation, the conversation explores fandom among young people, the impact of celebrity worship, and the fine line between play and fixation.

Peter contributes insight as a student of football history, reflecting on the emotional and social forces that drive collective passion. His curatorial work includes the 2014 exhibition The Pride and the Passion, and he famously selected Bill Shankly as his specialist subject on Mastermind in 2016.

Sophia’s exhibition at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum invites viewers to examine the deeper social forces behind sporting devotion, touching on identity, collective dreaming, and the more volatile aspects of fandom.

This film documents the creative outcomes presented during the second CB25 event In Collaboration, featuring artists Caitlin Kiely and Laura Wilson, who each respond to the layered histories of Coventry Cathedral through exhibition-making, performance, and storytelling.

Documentation shares highlights from Resurfacing, Caitlin’s Coventry Biennial exhibition that draws on archival material, social engagement, and overlooked fragments of the Cathedral’s ecology and social history.

Laura Wilson presents Eating into the Surface, a new spoken-word response developed through her long-standing interest in craft, materiality, and embodied knowledge.

Following the sharing of work, this in-conversation, led by Colette Griffin, Director of CVAN West Midlands invites the Caitlin and Laura to reflect on their practices, processes and their engagement with the Cathedral’s history, architecture and build.

All videography is by Robert Alexander.