With For About: Art, Activism & Community

Friends Meeting House,

20B George Street,

St Helens

Merseyside

WA1BU

Tuesday, May 2nd 2017, 10.30am – 6pm

In May 2017 we will host the second iteration of our conference series With For About. With invited guests and an audience, we will explore three conversations on the fierce and urgent questions facing collaborative and social art today.

ON COLLABORATION

‘If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.’ Lilla Watson.

This conversation will look at the questions:

Who are our collaborators? Why are we working together?

BEYOND THE RHETORIC

‘There is no art practice that avoids all forms of co-option, compromise, or complicity’. Grant Kester.

This conversation will ask how we avoid the co-option of the language and methodology of collaborative and social art practice by neo-liberal agendas and move towards a ‘vision of social justice’ that excludes ‘over simplification’ and ‘quick fixes.’

SOLIDARITY AND ACTION

‘Useful art (Arte Util) is about transforming people’s lives, even on a small scale. It is art as activism and activism as art.’ Tania Bruguera.

This conversation will look at the role of art and artists in this time of political and social urgency. Where should we be working? What do we need to be doing? How can we work in solidarity with partners and collaborators to ‘convert our fears, findings and conversations, into plans, projects and results?’