Develop critical thinking skills and curatorial approaches for collaborating with communities.
Explore the shifting culture of curating projects with communities, considering changes in practice, language and legacy.
This course initiates a collective learning approach. It takes a systems view on a range of institutional strategies to develop collaborative projects, considering both the assumptions and the bigger picture, the successes and the challenges of programming with local audiences.
What to Expect:
We’ll begin by considering Modern Art Oxford as a site of research, looking at the gallery’s beginnings, its approach to working with communities, and present day programmes in the wider historical narratives of alternative art spaces. How do the viewpoints of the start to consider the different view points of the institution, the practitioner or curator, and the community differ?
We will collectively review our insights from Modern Art Oxford’s archive materials before turning our attention to what it means to use Systems Thinking – a practice which provides a space for practitioners across different disciplines, sectors and from different backgrounds to come together. How can we identify our own assumptions, judgements and boundaried ways of thinking? How do these influence and motivate our responses in each situation, or the systems we build?
10am – Welcome and Introductions
11am-12:30pm – Collaboration with Communities
During the morning session you will be invited to use a selection of archived projects which document the gallery’s changing approach to working with a public audience and communities, to understand changes in practice, language & legacy.
1-2pm – Lunch in the Modern Art Oxford cafe
2-3pm – Systems Approaches to Making Change
The afternoon session introduces tools to consider what it means to think systemically, in a public programme context. This session invites practitioners to consider collaboration across disciplines, sectors and with professionals from different backgrounds.
3-4pm – Final sharing with the group