Rethinking Social Engagement in the Arts: shifting disciplinary boundaries and imagining new possibilities for the Arts and Cultural Industries

Rethinking Social Engagement in the Arts: shifting disciplinary boundaries and imagining new possibilities for the Arts and Cultural Industries

Thursday 13 May 2021, 5-7pm

Contributors

Facilitators

• Connie Bell – Consultant, Memory Worker, Cultural Producer and Founding member of Decolonising the Archive
• Alex Cooke -  Co-Artistic Director at Little Fish Theatre

Panellists

• Olu Alake, Strategic Grants Lead The London Marathon Charitable Trust, Consultant in Delivering Cultural Policy and Diversity programmes
• Natasha Anderson, Head of Community Engagement, Sadlers Wells Theatre
• Dr Sylvan Baker, Lecturer Community Performance Applied Theatre, The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama
• Mandy Colleran, Writer, Actress and Disability Arts Activist
• Cleve Jackson, Social Worker and Tutor, Royal Holloway University London
• Hassan Mahamdallie, playwright, writer, activist and specialist in diversity and art
• Jonathan Schifferes, Housing Policy Manager, Greater London Authority
• Simon Startin, Artistic Director, Vital Xposure

Questions to be sent to contributors before event via Video Ask:

• What does social engagement in the arts look like in local, national and international contexts?
• What needs to be re-configured to make social engagement more inclusive and more impactful (funding, training, practice)?

Contributors: Please present a 2 minute response to one or both of the above questions and if possible, record your response via Video Ask or using video or audio app.

Questions to be explored at the roundtable led by facilitators:

1. How are the disciplinary boundaries within the arts, socially engaged performances and the cultural industries  curated and upheld? Who are the gate-keepers of this, in terms of policy, funding, and distribution, etc? In what ways can these boundaries be re-imagined and to what effect for cultivating greater social engagement?
2. How should training, education and community interconnect with the professional arts and culture industries? What has failed in this area? What needs be re-imagined?
3. What is the social value of socially engaged arts practice? How should ‘value’ be reconfigured in a post-COVID and post-Brexit world? Should value be thought as ‘intrinsic’ or ‘extrinsic’? Value for whom and for what end?
4. In light of the experience of the BLM protests and movement, how might ‘value’ and ‘impact’ be reimagined through an engagement with those who have been historically and culturally excluded from the arts, or at best, have subsisted at the periphery of cultural funding?

Book your place for Rethinking Social Engagement in the Arts on eventbrite

This event is a part of the Forum for Social Engagement and Inclusion in the Arts and Cultural Industries Summer Event Series, Manifesto for Change: Re-imagining social engagement and inclusion in the arts.