4/7/12 Down your toolkits!
SLG workshop with Sophie Hope and Alison Rooke.
Shared experiences of evaluation, to be collated in blog/book.
10 steps to critical evaluation:
Evaluation involves the development of a critical framework that’s transparent and honest (to you, organsiers, funders) and backed-up with evidence. It’s not a sales pitch.
Evaluation is a generative practice that is integral to the creative process.
Discuss the language you are using and have clarity from the start about what you expect the evaluation process to be.
Evaluate your funders. Offer ‘kite marks’ for best practice.
Record the unexpected and incidental, failure (where you learn), not-knowing.
Evaluation needs to be protected, paid, planned time and space for reflection. Needs to be a sense of safety and trust for all.
Invite those who don’t know the process of evaluation.
Build in learning conversations; Curators club, critical friends, use social media
Share resources and approaches with colleagues.
Where does the evaluation go? Be inventive about the evaluation ‘product’. How do you share it?
12/7/12 Sonia Boyce and Barby Asante: Towards a Hybrid Gallery Space
Talk at Chelsea College. With Emily Druiff (Peckham Space and hosted by Paul Goodwin.
People as the palette that artsists work with. Is it relational aesthetics, political (Claire Bishop, Thomas Hirschorn) or is it about dialogue (Grant Kestler)? Difficult for institutions, so need a new curatorial framework: hybrid, as in Peckham Space, where curatorial and education are equal. Rather than curators as selectors and education as crowd-pleasers. Work over long time period with artists, developing the brief.
Barby: wanted dialogue about issues around identity. ‘Wig therapist’ in Brixton hairdressers. Open, responsive, receptive. South London Black Music Archive: listen, share, contribute. ‘Do this sort of work because I want to’.
Authorship: who is being used?
Work to be valued as art or social outcomes: a false separation?
Art to be valued as a transformative experience
10/7/12 Camden Arts Centre
Get the message 2012. In conversation with artists Georgie Manly and Judith Brocklehurst, with Jeremy Deller.
A heartwarming 10th-year celebration of work with kids from three SEN schools.
Interesting juxtaposition with Bruce Lacey Experience (curated by Jeremy).
Collaboration discussion: use simple language, you’re an artist, not a teacher, psychologist etc, you never really know what’s going to happen when working with people, art as an equalizer, a space to dream, a free space, offer guidance – can’t tell people what to do – trust their judgement. Reassuring to hear the familiar.
GTM set up a framework and pre-planned (experience from previous years) show structure, allowing process to evolve.
Institute for International Visual Arts (InIVA): Social Archive Two: fluctuating economies in Shoreditch. www.iniva.org
A 3-year project (Art at the intersection: art & economies) exploring critical and creative approaches to economics.
Workshop (30/6/12) with Undocumentary (Shiraz Bayjoo and Jessica Harrington) for an afternoon’s filming on the highstreet. Interviewed shopworkers about their impressions of the Olympics – how it’s affected them/their business, thought about the future.
A great opportunity to engage in the now, in an area I lived and loved for 5 years. Well thought-out simple instructions and easy-to-use discrete equipment for conducting the interviews. Loved asking the questions and roaming around with intention.
Film screening party on Thursday 12 July, 6.30 (show continues to 21 July)
The Showroom: Art vs Rehab Focus Group Series
http://artvsrehab.com/
A series of focus groups exploring ideas in different settings in London. Organised by Hannah Hull www.hannahhull.co.uk; www.twitter.com/hannahhull_uk
1: Criticality and Evaluation within a Culture of Optimism. 2: The Role of Art Institutions in Art Outreach 3: Providing and Promoting Social Inclusion: One in the Same? 4: Artists vs Art Therapists 5: The “Other” and the Mental Health History of Practitioners. 6: The Role of Arts Practitioners’ Own Art Practice
I took part in FOCUS GROUP 2: The Role of Art Institutions in Art Outreach(15/6/12). Entry was by email application, which was a detailed set of questions, mainly about previous experience and expectations. We were also asked to suggest a task to be completed by the focus group on the day. There were 8 participants.
Provocations…Are galleries involving themselves tokenistically in education and outreach due to funding streams? How can galleries avoid undermining art when trying to make it more accessible? Is introducing target groups to galleries really empowering, or are we just confirming the gallery system’s authority over creative practice? Do outreach policies resolve the accessibility of art, or simply of galleries themselves? When galleries show work that is below the usual exhibition quality, does this provide genuine inclusion for our participants? Which is more rehabilitative: viewing art, making art or exhibiting art? And is it reasonable to expect these practices to go hand in hand for new artists?
I was very impressed with the high standard of organisation. The day itself was focused and fast-paced; a bit of a shock to my system – but welcomed! We engaged with the ideas using a mixture of group, paired and individual exercises (tasks we submitted on the application form) and the whole event was audio-recorded and documented by a cartoonist/illustrator, who impressively displayed a live stream of images/text on a growing ‘washing line’. To end, we were presented with a blank postcard and asked to write our address on one side and 3 aspirations for the future. These will be posted back to us in 2013 (a nice touch, I thought).
So, thinking about my four words:access, hierarchy, equality and exchange.
Despite feeling a bit inexperienced, I was generously welcomed by everyone in the group; listened to and invited to comment. I didn’t have any sense of hierarchy. My naivety was seen as an asset; a fresh take on the over-familiar ideas and language. I left feeling very excited that I’d encountered a group of artists interested in talking about ideas I’d been thinking about in isolation: art school in the world.
