Led by artist and producer Mat Jenner this interactive online workshop has been designed to support artists and people working in small-scale arts organisations to reflect on what it means to be public, and how we can realise artworks made from a dialogue between artists, audiences, community, and place.
Using a range of TACO!’s projects as case studies, we will work through a series of questions focusing on how we can use arts and culture to create space for communities and individuals.
Mat will support us to think through how we navigate this terrain – in all its messy human-ness and contradictions – with a range of questions including:
- How is ‘the public or ‘community’ defined?
- How is cultural value constituted and where is cultural capital situated?
- What is the role of the ‘artist’ in supporting people to actualise their cultural and creative agency and have a voice?
- How can we develop and manage equitable relationships with different publics, communities, and partners?
- What does co-authorship and co-production really look like?
The workshop will focus on generating practical ideas and ways of working that you can apply in your own projects and will involve plenty of opportunities for questions, discussion, and peer-to-peer learning.
Our Workshop Leader
Mat Jenner is an artist and producer at TACO! an artist-led space for research, production, and exchange located in Thamesmead, SE London. TACO! Is engaged with its local context and centres the work and role of contemporary artists in all its work.
Presented as part of the STEAMhouse Create Programme.
STEAMhouse is a space to experiment, test and develop new knowledge. At the project’s heart are five key principles – conversation, exploration, collaboration, openness and newness.
From early 2018 the STEAMhouse Create programme has been powered by Birmingham City University, in partnership with Eastside Projects and funded by the European Regional Development Fund. It supports businesses, including self-employed, sole-trading artists, to test new ideas, prototype and make new products and services (which if you are an artist may be artworks) as well as explore the potential of digital technologies to help you collaborate and innovate.
