EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 15
This report is a summary of the first sustained
programme of public research into validation for
social practice artists. It is about the challenges
artists face in accessing critical support, acclaim
and development opportunities for social practice,
essential ingredients of validation.
The report makes eight recommendations for how to create a
new model of validation, scaled up to benefit as many artists
as possible through a meshwork approach to organisational
structure.
It is written for artists working in social practice, but also
for cultural organisations who support and engage them and
for funders and commissioners working with influential institutions
such as ACE and the NHS, who might wish to know more
about social practice artists’ current experiences of validation
and to influence policy accordingly.
During the research we encountered debates and disputes
about terms and definitions. Definitions involve drawing
borders. For example, Francis Matarasso (2019: 46) writing
about participatory arts practice, argues for tight definitions, as
“… without a clear definition, it is impossible to
distinguish good practice from bad, or to protect
ethical principles and ways of working from external
pressures, such as institutionalisation or
appropriation.”
We have chosen ‘social practice’ as our umbrella term instead,
defining this as follows:
Social practice artists work closely with participants and/
or audiences. They make social relationships and structures the
primary medium of their work, instead of, or in addition to the use
of material and digital media.
The solution is imperfect. We envisage social relationships
and art practice as reciprocally and materially entangled and we
want to challenge binaries. But to some, social practice implies
the exploitative use of people as art materials in artworks.
Taking control of the definitions raises further questions of
visibility and power.¹ The reduction of complex practices to a
word or phrase is fraught with potential misunderstanding; critical
responses and live debate are needed to counter this. It is
for this reason we advocate a move from network to meshwork,
in which connections appear not as rigid points in a grid, but
ever emerging ‘thread-lines’ out of which relationships occur.
At the same time Alison Jeffers (2017: 18) cautions that
“… the person who holds the ‘umbrella’ [of definition]
is implicitly allowed to shape the narrative,
they maintain control over definitions and frames,
getting to say what makes up the umbrella and what
is allowed to shelter under it.”
How then to make judgements about quality and ethics
without excluding difference?
When beginning this research, we used the term ‘socially
engaged art’ (SEA) as an umbrella for a wide range of artistic
social practices. It was later suggested that SEA can imply the
use of art to provide social fixes — an interpretation we resist.
1 Jeffers and Moriarty, (2017: 18)