THE COMMISSIONING PROGRAMME 58
Lady Kitt & Louise Brown
Kitt and Lou provided a drop-in service,
the Social Practice First Aid Kit, with
‘prescriptions’ and resources (physical,
digital, imagined, emotional) for social
arts practitioners.
https://www.lladykitt.com/socialpractice-1st-aid-kitt
Mark Prest
Mark Prest — founder of Portraits of
Recovery — presented ‘PhotoLoo’, asking
how art might be useful to explore our feelings
and our conflicted selves. Mark guided
participants in making self-portraits using
a set of instructions to explore feelings and
internal conflicts — and the resulting polaroids
formed a temporary gallery that visually
articulates a better collective identity fit.
https://www.portraitsofrecovery.
org.uk/about/
Rosalie Schweiker
Rosalie sold or traded copies of the book,
Teaching For People Who Prefer Not To
Teach, which she edited together with
Mirjam Bayerdoerfer and co-designed with
Margherita Huntley. Visitors to Rosalie’s stall
were invited to try out some of the exercises
in the book.
http://www.rosalieschweiker.info
Sharon Bennett & Sarah Dixon /
Women’s Art Activation System
Sharon and Sarah presented the Bureau for
the Validation of Art in which attendees at
‘Social Works? Live’ were given the opportunity
to submit their work for validation.
Using a series of pre-set questionnaires,
the Bureau’s officials came to a decision as
to whether the art presented was valid as
art, providing an official stamp and docket
recording the outcome.
http://thewaas.org
Leslie Thompson
Leslie — a regular artist at Venture Arts
studios — documented and depicted
proceedings at ‘Social Works? Live’ through
live observational drawings.
https://venturearts.org/artists/lesliethompson/
Rabab Ghazoul
Rabab, an artist and director of the Cardiffbased
grassroots organisation Gentle/Radical,
documented reflections, critical musings and
provocations from ‘Social Works? Live’ — in
the form of a live publication. Her summation
talk invited participants to think about
how our readings of power might inform our
social practice work; personally, politically
and institutionally.
http://rababghazoul.com/artwork
Social Art Network
Fresh from their success at Tate Exchange the
previous day, Social Art Network provided
a space to discuss the development of
resources for social arts practitioners.
The commissioners
The commissioners’ hot seat included
sessions with Scott Burrell (Head of
Programme for Create London), Beth Emily
Richards (Artist and Producer with Take a
Part) and Paul Hartley (Founding Director of
In-Situ). Attendees were invited to ask any
questions about the commissioning process
and to share their experiences of undertaking
commissioned projects.
The fringe
Having received a very a high number of
excellent proposals for the ‘Social Works?
Live’ commissions, The Fringe was created to
enable more artists to showcase their work,
both as planned activities and informal interventions
within the space. Bursaries were
provided to facilitate travel and contributors
included Katy & Rebecca Beinart, Amelia
Baron, Sally Lemsford, Alana Jelinek, Zoe
Toolan and others.