Roberto Marcelo Sanchez-Camus

Marcelo is a creative practitioner who develops works of art in collaboration with community partners. He creates site-responsive works that activate dialogue, interaction, visual impact and community cohesion. His interests lay in neighbourhood narratives, hidden mythologies, psychogeography, and outdoor works. He is a London-based creative practitioner born in New York City to parents who emigrated from Chile. His work explores interaction, public spectacles, social systems, the body politic and urban imagination. His practice can be understood in four layers that mutually compliment and inform each other: collaborative making, psychogeographic explorations, visual arts and social art. Marcelo’s commitment to social engagement and site-specific work has led him to design and deliver a range of works such as parades, street banners, outdoor performances, sound installations, audio walks, circus, and immersive theatre. He earned a Bachelor’s in Fine Arts in 1999 from the School of Visual Arts, NYC and in 2006 was awarded a Master’s in Scenography from Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design in London. He was successfully awarded a PhD in Performing Arts at Brunel University in 2011 entitled: 'Applied Live Art: co-authorship in socially engaged and site-responsive performance practice', which was subsequently published as a book. Marcelo’s research and practice unfolds in two strands: participatory governance and cultural democracy. His focus is on working collaboratively with communities, sector support, research and organisational strategy to help improve participatory practice. He is Director of Applied Live Art Studio, a social practice art studio and runs Social Art Publications He was Head of Delivery for Participation at the Imperial War Museums and co-lead of the Arts & Humanities Research Council, Equality Diversity and Inclusion fellowship producing research findings around arts access and policy. From this he published Socially Engaged Art in a New World Order, Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy (2023). His exhibition From Birth till Death: Scrolled Life Stories was nominated for Museum + Heritage Awards, Exhibition of the Year 2021. His work can be found in the permanent collection of the Museum of London. From this experience he published Community Engagement as Museum Exhibition in Engage: The International Journal of Visual Art and Gallery Education, Issue 45 on Class and Inequality (2021). Marcelo also worked as part of a clinical team at St Christopher’s Hospice, specialising in arts and health at end of life. From this he published The Art of Dying: Aesthetics and Palliative Care in the Journal of Applied Arts & Health, Intellect Journal Vol. 2 Issue 2 (August 2011). He has created and delivers the Central Saint Martin College of Art & Design Short Course: Creative Health & Wellbeing through Artmaking since 2019. Marcelo has co-founded various mutual aid groups and networks including: Coalition of Creative Artists in New York, Social Art Network in UK, and Social Art International in Berlin. He has organised and run various conferences and symposia including: Objects of Engagement (2008), Facing Death Creatively (2015 to 2018), Social Art Summit (2018), Social Art Assembly (2019 & 2023) London