The research report New Model Visual Arts Institutions and Social Engagement is now on-line! You can read it/ download it from here:
http://www.uclan.ac.uk/schools/school_of_social_work/research/pru/files/wzw_nmi_report.pdf
This study asks how socially engaged visual arts practice can change individuals and communities – or put it another way: what are the ingredients of transformation through the arts.
Four intensive organisational case studies characterise and compare distinctive approaches to socially engaged practice. Artangel (London), CCA (Glasgow), FACT (Liverpool) and Grizedale (Cumbria) were chosen because of their significance in this emergent field and the ways in which they combine local embeddness with international resonance. Particularly striking are the ways these institutions are re-imagining civic action and forging partnerships with communities and other sectors, showing that the arts can be a key connector, point of provocation or tool of individual and community self-development. Each of them offers particular insights into the opportunities and pitfalls of socially engaged practice from episodic events to open-ended and immersive processes.
Perfect mix! This looks like a great event!
Sunday Soup and Other Ways to Feed Culture / Friday 24th February
An introduction to alternative economic models and collaborative practices in times of decreasing mainstream funding.
More info here:
http://www.publicartonline.org.uk/whatsnew/trainin…
This is going to be a blogful year! I have started my residency in Parson Cross (Sheffield) and I will be blogging about it on Yorskhire Artspace website. Check it out:
http://artspace.org.uk/residency-journal/src/resid…
And if you live nearby and wish to join me for a walk around the estate or to contribute to the thinking and making of the focus group get in touch with me! aniabas{at}gmail{dot}com
We were silent because we were both busy! Ruthie and myself took part in A time and a place project at SITE gallery in Sheffield. Details of this 2 week long exploration of patcipatory waters can be found here:
http://blog.sitegallery.org/atimeandaplace/
One more for today from newest e-flux journal (31)
After OWS: Social Practice Art, Abstraction, and the Limits of the Social by Gregory Sholette
http://www.e-flux.com/journal/after-ows-social-pra…
excerpt:
Perhaps, rather than thinking of social practice art as a strategy for unlikely survival against the forces of neoliberal enterprise culture and its strip-mining of creativity, we could inscribe this still-emerging narrative with a stubborn sense of materiality and a vibrantitness, that if nothing else would challenge unspoken hierarchies, and divisions of labor, because a critical, social practice should above all acknowledge the limits of the social within the social itself.
