INSIGHTS 38
Broadly, a dichotomising tension between two agendas
was described by the interviewees:
1. Social art as primarily critically
engaged and art-world-facing:
Social practice is when the audience
completes the work in some way… something
where the audience is participating
in some manner and it’s actually
having some kind of progressive effect
on the artwork (Artist, 6A)
2. Social art as primarily communityfacing
and concerned with addressing
specific local needs:
Really, we’re looking at the arts as
a kind of instrument for transformational
change, rather than arts in and
of itself (Commissioner, 9B)
Although the interviewees reported that institutions
tended to prioritise one agenda over another, many artists
talked about working hard to balance both aims over the course
of their social projects.
As a result of these competing agendas, artists can experience
disparities between commissioning opportunities and
their own values, leading to mismatched expectations between
the organisation commissioning a project and the values of
an individual artist’s practice. For example, time allowance
was identified as an area of potential conflict, as funders put
pressure on artists to achieve results quickly:
I think even when commissioners say
they want a socially engaged artist,
it is debatable, because they don’t
give enough time for that process. They
want a commission that is already tied
down and that to me doesn’t match with
socially engaged practice. (Artist, 4A)
The wide applicability of the term social practice in a
range of contexts meant that some felt that the term and more
importantly what it stood for, risked becoming diluted and
harder to advocate for:
Of particular concern to artists was the perceived misappropriation
of the terminologies around social practice to
describe work that was not coherent with the broad values of
particular social practitioners:
You’ll have artists talking about
being socially engaged and they’re not!
(Artist, 3A)
It can get made to kind of bolster up
the reputations of institutions or to
make them seem more like they’re being
inclusive, so I think that’s a massive
problem (Artist 10A)
For commissioners, the difficulty in articulating social
practice also meant that on occasion, projects were less successful
than hoped for, or failed to meet certain expectations:
I think [artists] didn’t really understand
what it is that we wanted… or
maybe we didn’t understand what we
wanted actually (Commissioner, 2B)
This can have a negative impact on artists going for
commissions, where those offering a commission sometimes
use artists coming for interview to test out their ideas, as if they
were consultants, only to then decide they want something/
someone else.
Artists, commissioners and researchers identified a lack
of critical writing as a significant factor in the lack of visibility
and frequent misunderstandings identified around social
art practice:
There is little formal assessment or
criticism on any of its qualities other
than ethical or use value, leading to
moralistic and trite characterisations
of the field… Because of this lack of
critical dialogue, much contemporary
art criticism throws the baby out
with the bathwater, dismissing social
practice as non-art, exploitative or
non-critical (Artist, 13A)
It’s a throwaway word that people are
starting to use quite a lot and then it
becomes a capsule term for everything
(Commissioner, 7B)