From Network to Meshwork Executive Summary | Page 21

3. Directory of social practice artists
for use by funders, commissioners,
participants and artists
4. Training / skills and other kinds
of artist development specifically
relevant to social practice
5. Research programme looking at social
practice systems & communities, with
particular reference to the funding
landscape
6. Identifying, mapping and strengthening
communities of practice
7. Partnership building between communities
of practice and gatekeeper organizations
8. A social practice meshwork able to support
and promote social practice art, involving
different constituencies and communities
of practice in an accessible, horizontal
exchange structure
Given that respondents indicated a strong preference for a flat and emergent
model of validation, we recommend that actions 1 – 7 are carried out
through the approach and ethos of recommendation 8, a meshwork structure.
A meshwork is an interweaving of growing, moving lifelines (Ingold 2014).
It has knots of encounter where lines entangle. Thought of as an organisation,
a meshwork is a correspondence of lifelines that require attention to, and care
for, its concurrent movements.
This can be distinguished from a network, visualised as a fixed array
of more and less powerful nodes interconnected by geometrical lines that
communicate point to point. By contrast, a meshwork grows in relation to its
capacity for concurrent movement and mutual correspondence.
As just one example: Axisweb and Social Art Network showed meshwork
tendencies in how they nurtured a common purpose during the research,
beyond a transactional notion of what either might get from the encounter,
thereby adopting an ethos of care for the larger social environment.
This approach can also be informed by current theories of social change
(such as Wheatley and Frieze, 2006) and enabled through the leadership
styles, use of resources and principles of cooperation adopted by social
justice organisations.