Social practice in isolation

Preston Street Union | Instructions to live by | 2020

I've spent the autumn immersing myself in social art practice, through two excellent projects. The first was a social art study group - (un)Survey - organised by Blind Ditch. Over six weeks Blind Ditch shared an incredibly rich and thought-provoking range of content including online presentations from Paul Hartley of In-Situ Arts, Natasha Davis, Ellie Harrison and Clare Parker. 

Along with the rest of Preston Street Union (PSU), I've also helped to user-test a new social art practice platform - Social ARTery for Axis. An allied Axis project, the Social Art Library is also underway, to which I/we contributed a case study of PSU's Galleries R Us. 

Both projects raise many interesting questions about the role of artist activists in communities. For example...What kinds of change could or should artists try to effect? How do artists look after themselves and their practices when involved in projects with significant social impact? What are the ethics of involving non-art professionals in your work (eg care of participants, aftercare, legacy, authorship etc)?  

A pandemic is an odd time - but perhaps also the right time - to be thinking about social art practice, which has had to dramatically reinvent itself over the past nine months, but which may also have an important role to play in post-Covid rebuilding.